what's up y'all welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the importance of art direction and world building. I would say the irony in this is, I think we're actually hyper-focused on art direction as a whole, just on the content side, right? We went from, on one end of the spectrum, things being very unpolished, like, yo, do not shoot on high-production cameras, to then shoot. Now it's like art direction, art direction, art direction, without the focus on creative direction as well, which I think is a big mess, right? Everybody is focused on just the idea of these elements and how they can tell a visual story or how they can represent whether it's luxury, whether it's representing nostalgia, etc.
And don't get me wrong, art direction is insanely, insanely important. This whole episode is going to be about art direction. But when we're talking about art direction and world building, world building is centered around an idea. It's centered around a perception, centered around a story that you're trying to create in somebody's head. And so the way I'm going to be talking about this is how to use art direction to amplify those things, amplify the elements of the story, amplify the elements of a character, etc., so that people feel your world. They don't just see it, they can feel it. They feel like they're a part of it, and for a microsecond, or for 30, 45 seconds, a minute, whatever, they're a part of it.
And there's a lot of elements to that. It's not just like, hey, we want to feel nostalgic, we want this to feel nostalgic. What is that brand? Sporty & Rich. They do it, yeah. She does an amazing job of using art direction to put people in a world where it's not just like, hey, we're doing this because it's cool. It's like, this is how our brain exists, and so all of our content is going to put you in that time and place, right? And that's so key.
When I think about art direction, there's three primary ways I'm thinking about it through a social lens. So the first one is being collective for a brand as a whole, right? We talked about Late Checkout on an episode a while ago. Their art direction is the same from every campaign to every piece of content. Sporty & Rich, very similar. That's one way. Number two is campaign-driven. It's these micro-worlds that you're creating for a campaign or for a product to exist within. I'll touch on Tier and what we did for Maverick, but you saw one of the most recent examples, like Bandit Running and what they did for the New York City Marathon, right? They created this whole dystopian universe for the product to live within. That's not their standard. It matched some of the New York is dystopian right now, though. It's great.
Yeah, yeah, it is. You still going? And there was still a lot of the same through lines in the micro-world that they created, in their overall brand essence, and in typical art direction that they do for all of their content, or even day-to-day content. Then the third is a series or show-based, and how you can leverage the art direction to put someone in a time and setting that's familiar or nostalgic or in the future, right? I don't want to harp on or get stuck on Brooklyn Coffee Shop, but there's a reason Brooklyn Coffee Shop's art direction does put you in this Brooklyn, very creative, kind of snobby hipster world, right? And they do that on— Go ahead.
No, hit him with it. It's like the snobby hipster. Yeah, like right now in New York. And so I'll dive into some of the different elements, but if you look at a brand that does it very, very well as an entire whole, Late Checkout, right? If you look at their entire feed, every campaign feels like it takes place in The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was Wes Anderson, yeah. You can tell that they're so inspired by Wes Anderson, which, if you look at his art direction, his art direction is these nostalgic palettes and color themes, and then this very meticulous symmetry with how he uses the framing and the composition.
A lot of this is just the continuation of brands as TV and brands as media, yeah. Think about how hard it would have been for a brand's art direction to really, really matter in 1995. Yeah, you could have some hard advertisements, but their billboards or their adverts in a magazine, whatever it is. Now brand art direction is like they're on equal footing with a creator. Every brand has an equal opportunity to show up on someone's feed like a creator does. And so when they're thinking about art direction, the level of attention it should be getting is huge.
I keep thinking about this reoccurring idea where cinema is making its way into social from an art direction lens and how things are shot. It's like that's where the skill is going to flow, right? There's all these people who AI maybe is going to take away the VFX industry's jobs, right? It's like you can create something with Midjourney that would have cost you $500,000 in production costs, all this human talent, whatever. Create it in like 30 minutes with AI. Then maybe, where do those people go? Where do those skill sets go? Because there is still a need for unique strategy and the ability to piece together different things from a first-principles place, rather than someone prompting it into reality. And I do feel like we're going to see a huge flow of cinematic talent into the branding and consumer world, because where else would their skill set go?
Couldn't agree more. And so I think about cinematic and Hollywood-esque content. It is going to make its way more so to Instagram, eventually YouTube, but more so on the Instagram side. But then the way it's formatted is going to be more like TV, yeah. And that's how you're going to get these two worlds blending. And I think we're seeing that here.
Dude, I think that this is a separate episode, and it will derail us a bit, but I do see a world too where more brands are going to be hosting or creating two-hour films, two-hour films that maybe it's a once-a-quarter thing, maybe it's once every six months, maybe it's once every year. They're going to be putting on hour-and-a-half, two-hour films that they bring people to literally consume like it was a movie. If you look at it, movie theaters are dying. Half the time there's a movie that's out in theaters, within the second week it's on Amazon Prime, and you just rent it for 20 bucks at the crib. It's crazy. They have the “only in theaters” is now an actual value prop that movies are starting to articulate.
For sure, for sure. Like BPN put on, I think we talked about it, that Last Man Standing race. Did you see the IShowSpeed Dick's Sporting Goods Tom Brady thing? IShowSpeed, where he did the NFL Combine metrics, and then he one-on-one'd versus Danny Amendola. Dick's Sporting Goods sponsored that whole thing, yeah. And I think the triangulation of IShowSpeed as an emergent creator, Dick's Sporting Goods has the bag, and then the concept is obviously the NFL that they wanted to attach everything to, right? So those were the three pillars of this phenomenal sure thing. They had the creator with the huge audience who's going to bring in the new blood, the guaranteed baseline of viewership, yeah. Then they have the concept that they're going to attach it to, the nostalgia like you're saying. They had the school, they had the Hard Knocks guy narrating it, Liev Schreiber.
So the guy who narrates Hard Knocks every year. Oh dude, you know what's so funny is you said Hard Knocks. You said “I school hard.” Yes, bro. And I was like, really? He narrated? That's very interesting. But then shout out to James for getting that, yeah.
For sure, yeah. The actual guy from Hard Knocks, right? And so it felt like you were watching Hard Knocks. There was a lot of association there without necessarily having to infringe on the trademark, which is kind of crazy. And then obviously Tom Brady and Danny Amendola bring in, now he's going to go against the GOAT, whatever, whole thing. It was a Dick's Sporting Goods commercial. So how do you even quantify that as a marketing investment? I don't know for sure, but I do think that's the lever getting blurry, dude. That sort of three-way partnership is so innovative and is really where, especially at the enterprise level, you should be looking.
But with Bandit, right? They have all these people running the New York City Marathon. They should be trying to own the New York City Marathon. I don't know how they would. I mean, there's so many running influencers. Maybe have Matt Choi get smoked by that Kenyan dude that wins every year, you know what I'm saying? Do something. No, it's an interesting take. But my goal with this episode is to think about art direction a little more strategically, not just through the lens of, oh, I saw this brand do it, it's hot, let me recreate it, because that's not truly how a brand is built.
know for sure, but I do think that's the liver getting blurry. Dude, that three-way partnership is so innovative and is really where, especially at the enterprise level, you should be looking. But with Bandit, they have all these people running the New York City Marathon. They should be trying to own the New York City Marathon. I don't know how they would. There's so many running influencers. Maybe have Matt Choy get smoked by that Kenyan dude that wins every year. You know what I'm saying? Do something.
No, it's an interesting take, but my goal with this episode is to think about art direction a little bit more strategically, not just through the lens of, "Oh, I saw this brand do it, it's hot, let me recreate it," because that's not truly how a brand is built. A brand understands their art direction, and they make it one of one, or they make it very unique, and they have their elements that make it the brand, right? We'll go through examples of this, but I'm going to give four reasons as to why I want someone to thoroughly pay attention to their art direction in 2026, and then how they look at their brand and their world-building as a whole, and then say, "Okay, our art direction is going to cement this next year."
Number one being, art direction defines how the world feels. I like using obvious examples as well versus always, we're very good at finding these little brands, then breaking them down sometimes to get a point across. We have to talk about a big brand, and it's obvious, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And that's Apple, right? Apple is very minimal. Their art direction is very minimalistic but futuristic at the same time. Okay, that implies creativity, that implies precision, it implies innovation. Those are very key elements for people like yourself. There's reasons we have Apple, right? There's reasons that McCoy, as a creator, is on Apple, right? All of these elements are so key, and it's because the art direction is telling us how we should feel about a product. Yeah, if all of their shit was very messy and very maximalist and very in your face, we wouldn't feel the same way about it. So art direction is key for describing and defining how we should feel about a product.
Bandit Running, again, if we're going to use them, they're trying to communicate and get you to feel that their clothes are both functional and fashion-forward, right? So then how would you be able to use art direction in this case to communicate that feeling? All of their art direction has this focus of streetwear aesthetic with running functionalism, right? For the streetwear side of it, they use a lot of urban, gritty context, and then they layer in, for the running functional part, a lot of motion and this feeling of being in movement. You see a lot of blurs, a lot of streaks, you see a lot of these elements. This helps them create the use of the setting and then the use of how they shoot it to create this intersection between functional and fashion-forward, right? So by seeing that content, it is creating the feeling of, or how we should perceive and feel about, that product.
We should see that in, I mean, you could look at the type of runner that runs in New York and is wearing Bandit. They are fashion-forward, and they're also this function-meets-fashion type of individual. They're leveled. They're not the best runner, per se, but they are a leveled-up runner from a, "Yeah, I'm communicating that I have money," you know what I'm saying? They're also very, like, I go to Rhythm Zero a lot, the coffee shop in Bandit, when I'm in New York. Yeah, and there's always a run club in there. Yeah, and it's fascinating how it's always a founder's run club or someone in the tech space, right? They definitely appeal to a very early-adopter type of consumer as well, where it's someone who wants to have the thing before it's cool. I think Bandit will honestly run into a challenge at some point where they stop being the disruptor, and how do you innovate at that point, right? Because all this art direction shit is cute when you're in the 20 to 50 million range of it. Once you start being the big dog on the block, I think it'll be really interesting to see how they evolve there and meet the moment.
Agree, because their core demographic will be looking for the next Bandit. Yeah, because everyone else is going to Bandit now, so they're cooked, they're chopped, like me at 30. Like what I said, they're chopped, referring to myself as a chopped dunk. But yeah, that's also a TikTok brain.
I know, I feel you. I was talking to someone I hadn't seen, and I went to college with, and I hadn't seen them in a minute. I ran into them at the gym. She's teaching now, and she was talking about what were they doing at the gym and in Dripping Springs. She lives out near me. Oh, she got a farm too? She's, yes. No. And anyway, she was telling how the fourth graders are teaching a new vocabulary, right? When we were growing up, you'd call someone an F-word, right? And she was like, in fourth grade they say "zesty." She's like, "I don't know what zesty is." And it was, dude, I was fucking crazy.
No, I love zesty. Carl-Anthony Towns, yeah, zesty is big in the league. But I told her, "No, zesty is more so if you're clowning someone, you know what I mean?" It's not as derogatory. Yeah, it doesn't hurt as much. It's like you do something that's a little questionable, like, "Brian, that was zesty." You would never call a truly zesty person, you know? You'd be like, "Yo, that was zesty." Yeah, you let them zest. Let them otherwise. That's the way. Charles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you're wearing the most cropped shirt I've ever seen. I thought your belly button was going to poke out. That's why I got the undershirt. Godspeed. Amen.
All right, the second. Oh, actually, to toot, yes, me and one of the CEOs that we work with, we talk about that often. Like, 20 to 50, it could be an art project, you know what I mean? And then 50 to 100, 100 plus, it's a lot harder because of the saturation. Totally. And as much of a fan as just the brand life cycle, right? I also think it's happening with 24/7, like Represent, for sure. They're cool, they're still very, they're maturing. And now it's like, as you mature, you're still charging 140 for a workout T-shirt, bro. You're not streetwear anymore, you know? Yeah.
Number two, when you've done something over and over again, you create recognition and familiarity. That's very powerful. So if we're spending three to four hours, depending on generations, three to five hours on our phones, or sorry, scrolling through social, probably six to eight hours on our phones, recognition and familiarity should be something that you are literally strategically planning and trying to figure out how to leverage. It's not something that you don't think about, especially when, if I'm on Instagram for three hours a day, how much content do you think I consume? How many things do you think I scroll past? So when we're thinking about this world where our feeds are flooded, you need elements of your world that people recognize.
I would say probably one of my favorite examples of this outside of, we're literally looking at brands, is House of Errors. They create this familiarity with their art direction. Their art direction is both minimal but narrative, right? From their lookbooks to the sets that they build that follow a similar pattern as their lookbooks, it's this mid-century-inspired interior, right? They have this beautiful wooden wall in the background. It's this polished wooden paneling, and then they have this deep blue carpet on the floor where they do all of their lookbooks and they create a lot of their campaigns in front of, right? So it communicates this feeling of a timeless brand. But the thing is, when everybody is doing lookbooks from this vertical or overlays where I take this concrete table and I put my shirt here and I shoot down, when everyone is doing that and I'm consuming for hours, it feels like the same brand. There's no differentiation, there's no familiarity or recognition, because now I'm just winning on the product trying to catch my attention versus you can use the familiarity and the recognition from doing something over and over again, and the expectation-setting of that, to leverage the familiarity from your content. So that is key. That's another huge element. That's why you look behind us and we're building these sets for my content, for Kai's content. You're going to see my set and know that your familiarity and recognition are going to get attached to that once I do it. I think you're already doing that with your new style too. I think if you keep hitting that for a while, people will call out that that's your thing. Yeah, if someone else were to copy it, for sure. I mean
and I'm consuming for hours. It feels like the same brand. There's no differentiation. There's no familiarity or recognition because now I'm just winning on the product trying to catch my attention versus you can use the familiarity and the recognition from doing something over and over again and the expectation setting of that to leverage the familiarity in your content or from your content. That is key. That's another huge element. That's why you look behind us and we're building these sets for my content, for Kinds content. You're going to see my set and know that your familiarity and recognition is going to get attached to that once I do it. I think you're already doing that with your new style too. I think if you keep hitting that for a while, people will call out that that's your thing. Yeah, if someone else were to copy it, for sure. We talked about this three weeks ago. I got called out for copying, I think, Joshua Neal, or not I think, Joshua. I was just saying I think about his name, but Joshua Neal, on the very one specific video, on how I hit the video. Now I got to find my own angle for it. Fine, we're doing it. But yeah, that is the goal. The goal is to make something so familiar, familiar and something that gets recognized so easily that someone would call you out for it.
The third, it communicates tone and emotion, right? If you want someone to feel a specific emotion around your product, whether that's aspirational, whether that's inspiring, whether that's this, whether it's happy, sadness, etc., you can do that through the color palettes, through the lighting, all of those different elements. If you have dark, saturated or desaturated tones, you can evoke despair and tension. Have you watched Ozarks? Yeah, Ozarks, the entire show, is moody. It's dark. It never feels like it's 12 p.m. You know what I'm saying? It always feels like it's blue hour and it always feels like there's constant tension in that show. That's done intentionally through the art direction of that show. It's very, very intentional, and it works. That is one of the most, after episode three, it is hyper tension the entire time. Another example, you can use bright and high-contrast palettes and very, very bright and kind of neon colors to convey optimism or energy. Someone that does an amazing job of this is Salt, Sult, I think you know what I'm talking about. Drink Salt. Yeah, everything is this lime green and very much more, you look at Element, you look at any of these other hydration brands, they stay at, where they're all trying to position themselves either as performance or luxury, Drink Salt's coming in as this lifestyle that's full of energy, right? For the individual that lives their life to the fullest, and they party, but they also take care of their health, right? They convey that through their art direction by having these fucking very, very bright colors. Yeah, and it conveys that energy. You can feel it from their text to the carousels, etc. You can use organic shapes. You can use a lot of that to suggest warmth or humanity, etc. For Tier, when we were shooting in the lab specifically, a lot of people use a spotlight to represent the sun, right? If you ever watch Dune, they'll use a spotlight in there to literally mimic the sun and mimic energy. We used it differently. We used the spotlight in the lab specifically to communicate this desperate need of information and this maniacal focus from the scientist, right? Because of that, we didn't use orange. We used cooler tones, more blues, more deep blues, etc. to communicate that this scientist is so hyper-focused on this individual that there's a spotlight on them, right? We communicate that emotion of this guy is desperate to find an answer through the colors, the lighting that we used on set.
That's super key, which goes into the fourth element of why you need to pay attention to your art direction and be obsessive about it. It supports the storytelling and it supports the characters. Our character for Tier specifically was an obsessive, maniacal scientist who is, when you think about a scientist, it's like there's the guy who, if you watch a lot of running shit, is just walking around with a notepad, and it's like, yeah, that's cool, but that's not enough. That's not what we wanted our scientist to be like. We want to differentiate him. We want him to be literally crazy. He has notes everywhere. He's sweating. He's intense. He's yelling at the subjects, etc. We wanted that feeling. Art direction here gives that narrative context to the environment and the characters. Everything that he was doing was, even the way that we shot things was, if we used a fisheye or a wide angle very close to his face, to show how deeply focused he was on something, we used a lot of the colors and light in specific kinds of shots to evoke and support that storytelling, that character, because art direction really deepens world building, right? It makes each design choice meaningful rather than ornamental. I think that is the key line here. Meticulously focus on your art direction. Every decision you make is meaningful. If you are just copying inspiration and you're just trying to do the next best thing, then your decisions are ornamental, meaning they're there to just be there because you think they should be there versus they need to be there. Great art direction makes something feel like it needs to be there because without it, the story doesn't come to life. Again, my whole plea to you and to anybody listening is that art direction, and in this case as a brand, is the idea of taking the world that you want to build, the story and the perception you want to build, and making it in a way where people experience it every single time they consume your content, they read an email, they get an SMS from you. Pay attention to the brands that are doing it in a way that, if you copy them, it's obvious that you're copying them. I'd say Late Checkout is an amazing, amazing example of a brand doing that because if anybody copied their world, it'd be obvious that they copied their world, from where it takes place to the characters, how they roll something out, how they talk, all of those elements. My plea for 2026 is not to be hyper-focused on art direction from a we-need-to-be-cool layer, art direction from an I-have-this-dream-and-a-vision-for-how-this-world-exists. I'm going to give a lot of shits about my art direction to make sure that exists how I want it to exist and how I want it to be perceived.
Yeah, there's a fundamental difference between the two. It's one of those things where I think a lot of founders get really lost in the revenue side, and you're really talking about love-of-the-game type thing. Yeah, this is something that happens in your off time, right? It doesn't feel necessarily like work. Yeah, I think people are so addicted to the numbers and what can drive more revenue. How can I send better emails? How can I run better ads? How can I optimize my conversion? Oh, I'm out of inventory. I think this is just something that everyone should, it's an exercise almost. I think that'd be a cool thing that you could even do as a giveaway long term, would be like, hey, here's a free worksheet to go through and identify where you want your art direction to go. Yeah, because my guess is a lot of people are going to hear this and want to do it and then honestly not be sure where to start, which my recommendation would be, you've got to look within. Then you're going to think your first idea is stupid or is not going to appeal to anyone. You're going to think, oh, I just like that, but it's as minimal as Power Rangers, right? Crazy, stick with me now. You have kids on the way. No, no, but I feel like Power Rangers or Pokémon or all these kind of nerdy things from our childhood, people really don't necessarily tap into because they're maybe thinking, oh, this is not cool, or people are going to think this is whack, whatever. At the same time, taking inspiration from things that we all kind of went through as either '90s kids or in the early, there's just so much power in the association phase that I wonder how people could drill into things that they don't even think would appeal to a lot of folks, that they experienced when they were younger, and use those associations on their own.
The last thing I'll say is there's not a top-grossing series or movie that doesn't obsess over world building, right? Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, etc. These all obsess over the idea of building a world, right? When you think about that, art direction is so key to making sure that world exists and people feel like they're part of it. That's a wrap. I will make something.
You're going to think this is whack, whatever, and at the same time taking inspiration from things that we all went through as either 90s kids or, I don't know, in the early. There's just so much power in the association air phase that I wonder how people could drill into things that they don't even think would appeal to a lot of folks that they experienced when they were younger and use those associations on their own. The last thing I'll say is there's not a top-grossing series or movie that doesn't obsess over world-building. Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, etc.—these all obsess over the idea of building a world, and when you think about that, that art direction is so key to making sure that world exists and people feel like they're part of it.
So that's a wrap. I should, I will make something. I got some YouTube videos in the chamber that we're loading up, and I'll create fucking playbooks and frameworks, etc., for them. But guys, if you haven't already, we have some big changes.
Cool. I know we've been talking about it. We're going to start building one of them. Obviously you've seen the office and the difference there, but if you haven't already, please subscribe and help us grow this thing. We're growing the team around it, we're growing partnerships around it, etc., and we are going to make a heavy push in the remainder of the year and even in 2026 to make this thing even better with more guests, more different formats, etc. We're about to get zesty with our testing. All right, we'll catch y'all next week. Peace. right if you look at their and we talked about this where their entire feed every campaign feels
like it takes place in uh the grand budapest budapest hotel was wes anderson yeah like they're so so inspired you can tell that they're so inspired by wes anderson which if you look at his art direction like his art direction is these nostalgic palettes yeah uh and color themes and then like this like very meticulous symmetry with how he uses the the framing and the composition a lot of this is just the continuation of brands as tv and brands as media yeah um think about how hard it would have been for a brand's art direction to really really matter in like 1995 like yeah you could have some
hard advertisements but you know their billboards or their adverts in a magazine whatever it is where now brands art direction is like they're on equal footing with a creator every brand has an equal opportunity to show up on someone's feet like a creator does and so when they're thinking about art direction like just the the level of attention it should be getting is huge you know i i keep thinking about this reoccurring idea where cinema is making its way into social from an art direction lens and how things are shot it's like that's where the that's where the skill is going to flow
right there's all these people who you know ai maybe is like gonna take away the the vfx industry's jobs right it's like you can create something with mid journey that would have cost you five hundred thousand dollars in production costs all this human talent whatever create it in like 30 minutes with ai then maybe you know where do those people go like where do those skill sets go because there is still a need for like unique strategy and the ability to piece together different things you know from a first principles place rather than like someone prompting it into reality
and i do feel like we're going to see a huge flow of cinematic talent into the branding and consumer world because where else would their skill set go couldn't agree more and so i i think about like cinematic and and the hollywood-esque content will make it is going to make its way more so to instagram eventually uh youtube but more so on the instagram side but then the way it's formatted is going to be more like tv yeah and that's how you're going to kind of get these two these two worlds blending um and i think we're seeing that like here we're dude i think that this is a like a separate
episode and it will derail us a bit but like i do see a world too where more brands are going to be hosting um or creating like two-hour films two-hour films that are maybe it's a once a quarter thing maybe it's once every six months maybe it's once you know once every year they're going to be putting on hour and a half two-hour films that they bring people to to literally consume like it was a movie like if you look at i mean movie theaters are dying like half the time there's a movie that's out on theater within the second week it's on amazon prime for sure and meaning you just rent it for 20 bucks at
the crib it's crazy they have the only in theaters is now a actual value prop that movies are starting to articulate for sure for sure like bpn put on um i think we talked about it but like that last man standing race did you see the speed dick sporting goods tom brady thing i show speed where he did the nfo combine metrics yeah and then he like one-on-one versus danie mandola like dick sporting goods sponsored that whole thing yeah and i think the triangulation of i show speed is like an emergent creator dick sporting goods has the bag and then you know the concept is obviously like
the nfl that they wanted to attach everything to right so those were kind of like the three pillars of this like phenomenal sure thing they had the creator with the huge audience who's going to bring in the new blood kind of the guaranteed baseline of viewership yeah then they have the concept that they're going to attach it to the nostalgia like you're saying they had the school they had the hard knocks guy narrating it leave schreiber so the guy who like narrates hard knocks every year oh dude you know what's so funny is you said hard knocks you said i school hard yes bro and i was like really he narrated that's very interesting but then shout out to james for
getting that yeah for sure yeah uh but the actual guy from hard knocks right and so it felt like you were watching hard knocks there was a lot of association there without necessarily having to infringe on the trademark which is kind of crazy and then obviously tom brady and daniel medola like kind of bring in sort of like oh now he's going to go against the goat whatever whole thing was a dick sporting goods commercial so like how do you even quantify that as a marketing investment i don't know for sure but i do think that's the liver getting blurry dude that that sort of three-way
partnership is so innovative and is is really where like especially at the enterprise level you should be looking but like you know with bandit right like they have all these people running the new york city marathon like they should be trying to own the new york city marathon i don't know how they would um i mean there's so many running influencers like maybe like have matt choy get smoked by that kenyan dude that wins every year you know what i'm saying like you know do something no it's yeah it's it's an interesting take um but my my goal with this episode is to think about art direction
a little bit more strategic a little more strategically not just through the lens of like oh i saw this brand do it it's hot let me recreate it because that's not truly how a brand is built like a brand understands their art direction and they make it one of one or they make it very unique and they have their elements that that make it the brands right and and we'll go through examples of this but i'm going to give four reasons as to why i want someone to thoroughly thoroughly pay attention to um their art direction in 2026 and then how they look at their brand and their their
world building as a whole and then say okay our art direction is going to cement this next year so number one being art direction defines how the world feels there's you know i like using obvious examples as well versus always like we're very good at finding like these little brands then breaking them down sometimes to like get a point across we have to talk about a big brand and just like it's fucking obvious you know what i mean like yeah yeah and that's apple right apple is very minimal like their art direction is very minimalistic but futuristic at the at the same time
okay that implies creativity that implies precision it implies innovation those are very key elements for people like yourself i mean there's reasons we have apple right there's reasons that mccoy as a creator is on apple right like all of these these elements are so key and and it's because the art direction is is telling us how we should feel about a product yeah if all of their shit was like very messy and and very maximalist and very uh in your face we wouldn't feel the same way about it and so art direction is is is key for describing and defining how we should feel about a product bandit running again like if we're going
to to use them um they're trying to communicate and get you to feel that their clothes is both functional and fashion forward right so then how would you be able to use art direction in this case to be able to communicate that feeling well all of their art direction has this focus of like streetwear aesthetic with running functionalism right they use for the streetwear side of it they use a lot of like urban gritty context and then they layer in for the running um for the running functional uh functioning part a lot of motion and kind of like this feeling of being in this movement you see a lot of like
blurs a lot of of streaks you see a lot of these elements this helps them create like this the the use of the setting and then the use of how they shoot it to create this intersection between functional and fashion forward right and so by seeing that content it is creating the feeling of or how we should we should perceive and feel about that product we should see that in in i mean you could kind of look at the type of runner that runs in new york and is wearing bandit it is like they are fashion forward and they're also like this function function meets um um sorry function meets fashion type
of individual they're like a leveled they're not the best runner per se but they are a leveled up runner from a yeah i i'm communicating that i have money you know what i'm saying like they're also uh they're very like i i go to rhythm zero a lot the coffee shop in bandit when i'm in new york yeah and there's always a run club in there yeah and it's fascinating how it's always like a founder's run club or like someone in the tech space right like they definitely appeal to a very early adopter type of consumer as well where it's someone who wants to have the thing before it's cool
you know like i think bandit will honestly run into a challenge at some point where they stop being the disruptor and how do you innovate at that point right because all this art direction shit is cute when you're in the 20 to 50 million range of it once you start being the big dog on the block like i think it'll be really interesting to see how they evolve there and meet the moment agree because you know their their core demographic will be looking for the next bandit yeah because everyone else is going to bandit now so they're cooked they're chopped like me at 30 like what i said they're
chopped um referring to myself as a chopped dunk but yeah that's also a tiktok brain you know i i know i i feel you um i was talking to someone that i hadn't seen and i went to college with and i hadn't seen in a minute i ran into them at the gym she's teaching now and she was talking about like what were they doing at the at the gym and in dripping springs she lives out like near me oh she got a farm too she's yes no um and anyway she was telling how like the the fourth graders are teaching a new vocabulary right and like when we were growing up you'd call someone an f word right and she was like
in in in fourth grade they say zesty she's like i don't know what zesty is and it was dude i was fucking crazy no i love i love zesty like cat like carl anthony towns yeah zesty is big in the league but i told her i was like no zesty is more so like if you're clouding someone you know what i mean like it's not as derogatory yeah it's not it doesn't hurt as much like it's like you do something that's a little questionable like brian i was zesty you would never call a truly zesty person you know you'd be like yo that was zesty yeah you know you let them zest let them otherwise like that's the way
charles yeah yeah yeah so i mean you're wearing the most cropped shirt i've ever seen i thought your belly button was gonna poke out that's why i got the undershirt godspeed amen all right the second oh actually to tut yes me and one of the ceos that we work with like we talk about that often like 20 to 50 it could be an art project you know what i mean and then like 50 to 100 100 plus it's a lot harder because of the saturation totally and like as as much of a fan as just the brand life cycle right i also think you know it's happening with 24 7 like like represent for sure like he's not i mean they're cool they're still very they're maturing and now it's like well
as you mature like you're still charging like 140 for like a workout t-shirt bro like you're not like streetwear anymore you know yeah um number two so when you've done something over and over again you create recognition and familiarity that's very powerful so if we're spending three to four hours depending on generations right like three to five hours on our phones or sorry scrolling through social probably six to eight hours on our phones recognition and familiarity should be something that you are literally strategically planning and trying to figure out how to leverage it's not
something that like you you don't think about especially when if i'm on instagram for three hours a day how much content do you think i consume how many things do you think i scroll past and so when we're thinking about this world where our feeds are flooded you need elements of your world that people recognize and i would say probably one of my favorite examples of this outside of like create like we're literally looking at brands of how is house of errors like they create this familiarity with their art direction their art direction is is like both minimal but narrative right from their look books to the sets that they build that follow a like the similar pattern as
their look books it's like this mid-century inspired interior right like they have this beautiful wooden wall in the background it's this polished wood wooden paneling and then they have like this deep blue carpet on their you know on the floor where they do all of their look books and they create a lot of like their campaigns in front of right and so it communicates this like this feeling of a timeless brand but the thing is when everybody is doing look books from like this vertical or like overlays where take this concrete table and i put my shirt here and i shoot down when everyone is doing that and then
and i'm consuming for hours it feels like the same brand like there's no differentiation there's no familiarity or recognition because now i'm just winning on the product trying to catch my attention versus you can use the familiarity and the in the recognition from doing something over and over again in like the expectation setting of that to leverage the familiarity in your content or from from your content and so that is key that's a another huge element that's why you know you look behind us and we're building these sets for my content for kinds content is like you're going to see my set
and know that your familiarity and recognition is going to get attached to that once i do it i think you're already kind of doing that with your new style too i think that's if you keep hitting that for a while people will like call out that that's your thing yeah if someone else were to copy it for sure i mean and we talked about this three weeks ago like i got called out for um copying i think joshua neal or not i think like joshua i was just saying i think about his name but like joshua neal on like the very like one specific video right like on how i hit the video and now i got to find my own angle for it
fine we're doing it but um yeah it's just like that is the goal like the goal is to make something so familiar familiar and something that gets recognized so easily that someone would call you call you out for it the third it communicates tone and emotion right if you want someone to uh feel a specific emotion around your product whether that's aspirational whether that's inspiring whether that's um like this this um whether it's happy like sadness etc you can do that through the the color palettes through the lighting all of those different elements like if you have dark saturated or
desaturated tones like you can evoke despair and tension if you have you watched ozarks yeah ozarks entire the entire the entire show yeah is moody it's dark like it never feels like it's it's 12 p.m you know what i'm saying like it kind of always feels like it's blue hour and it always feels like there's constant tension in that show that's that's done intentionally through the art direction of that show like it's it's very very intentional and it works like that is one of the most after episode three it is like hyper hypertension the entire time then another example like you can use bright and high contrast
palettes um and like very very bright and kind of like neon colors to convey optimism or energy someone that does an amazing job of this is salt um sult like i i think you know what i'm talking about drink salt yeah everything is this lime green and and dairy much more you know you look at an element you look at any of these other hydration brands they stay at like where they're all trying to position themselves either as performance or luxury drink salts coming in as like this lifestyle that's full of energy right like for the individual that lives their life to the fullest and and they party but
they also take care of their their health right and they convey that through their art direction by having these fucking very very bright uh colors yeah and it conveys that energy like you can feel it from their text to the carousels etc you can use organic shapes um you can you can use a lot of that to like suggest warm and or humanity etc like when um for tier when we were shooting in the lab specifically like we used a lot of people use a spotlight to represent the sun right um and like the like if you ever watch a dune they'll use a spotlight in there to like literally mimic the sun and mimic energy
we used it differently we used the spotlight in the lab specifically to communicate this desperate need of information and like this like maniacal focus from the scientist right so because of that we didn't use orange we use like that like warmer um or sorry cooler tones like more blues more deep blues etc to communicate like that this scientist is so hyper focused on on this individual that there's a spotlight on them right and so we communicate that emotion of like this guy is desperate to find an answer through the colors the lighting that we used on set that's super key which is number four which goes
into the fourth element of of why you need to pay attention to your art direction and be obsessive about it is like it supports the storytelling and it supports the characters our character for tier specifically was an obsessive maniacal scientist who is when you think about a scientist it's like you know there's like there's the guy who if you watch a lot of running shit like just walking around with a notepad and it's like yeah that's cool but that's not enough that's not what we wanted our scientists to be like we want to differentiate him we want him to be literally crazy he has no he has notes
everywhere he's he's sweating he's intense he's like yelling at the subjects etc like we wanted that feeling and so art direction here gives that narrative context to the environment and the characters so everything for that he was doing was like we used even like the way that we shot things was like if we used a fish eye or a wide angle like very close to his face to like show how how deeply focused he was on something we used a lot of the colors and why in specific kinds of shots to evoke and support that storytelling that character because art direction really deepens world building right it
makes each design choice meaningful rather than or uh ornamental and i think that is like the key line here is like meticulously focus on your art direction every decision you make is meaningful if you are just copying inspiration and you're just trying to do the next best thing then your decisions are ornamental meaning they're there to just be there because you think they should be there versus they need to be there great art direction makes something feel like it it needs to be there because without it the story doesn't come to life and so again my whole plea to you and to anybody listening is that art direction
and in this case as a as a brand is the idea of taking the world that you want to build the story and the perception you want to build and making it in a way where people experience it every single time they consume your content they they read an email they get an sms from you and on my like pay attention to the brands that are doing it in a way that are are extremely one of them they're doing it in a way that if you copy them it's obvious that you're copying them i say the late like the late checkouts is or late check out is an amazing amazing example of a brand doing that because if anybody copied their world
it'd be obvious that they're copied their world from where it takes place to the characters how they roll something out how they talk all of those elements and so my plea for 2026 is not to be hyper focused on art direction from a we need to be cool layer art direction from a i have this dream and a vision for how this world exists i'm going to give a lot of shits about my art direction to make sure that exists how i want it to exist and how i want it to be perceived yeah there's a fundamental difference between the two it's one of those uh things where i think a lot of founders get really lost in like the
revenue side and you're you're really talking about love love of the game type thing yeah you know this is like something that happens in your off time right like it's not it doesn't feel necessarily like work yeah i think you know people are so addicted to the numbers and like what can drive more revenue how can i send better emails how can i run better ads how can i optimize my conversion oh i'm out of inventory i can't like you know i uh i think this is just something that everyone should it's an exercise almost like i think that'd be a cool thing that you could even do as like a giveaway long term would be like hey
here's like a free like worksheet to like go through and identify where you want your art direction to go yeah you know because my guess is a lot of people are gonna hear this and like want to do it and then honestly not be sure where to start which my recommendation would that would be like you gotta like look within and then you're gonna think your first idea is stupid or is not gonna appeal to anyone you know you're gonna think oh like i just like that but it's like as as minimal as like power rangers right like crazy stick with me now you have kids on the way no no but like i don't i feel like power rangers
or pokemon or like all these kind of like nerdy things from our childhood people like really don't necessarily tap into because they're maybe thinking like oh this is like not cool or you know people are gonna think this is whack whatever and at the same time like taking inspiration from things that we all kind of went through as like either 90s kids or like i don't know in the early like there's just so much power in the association air phase um that i wonder like how people could drill into things that they don't even think that would appeal to a lot of folks that they experienced when they're
younger and you know use those associations on their own the last thing i'll say is there's not a top grossing series or movie that doesn't obsess over world uh world building right star wars harry power blue of the rings the godfather etc like these all obsess over the idea of building building a world right and so when you think about that like that art direction is so key to making sure that world exists and people feel like they're part of it so that's a wrap i should i will make something um i got some youtube videos in the chamber that we're loading up and i'll create
fucking playbooks and frameworks etc for them but guys if you haven't we're we have some big changes cool i know we've been we've been talking about it we're going to start building one of them i mean obviously you've seen the office and the difference there but um if you haven't already please like subscribe um help us grow this thing we've we're growing the team around it we're growing partnerships around it etc and so we are going to make a heavy push in i mean the remainder of the year but even in 2026 to make this thing even better with some with more guests more different
formats etc we're about to get zesty with our testing all right we'll catch y'all next week peace