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- [00:00]
A
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. And I would say the irony in this is I think we're actually hyper focused on art direction as a whole, like, as just on the content side, right? Like, we went from on one end of the spectrum, things being very unpolished, like, yo, do not shoot on. 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 miss. Right? Like, everybody is focused on just the idea of these elements and. And how they can tell, like, a visual story or how they can represent, whether it's luxury, whether it's representing nostalgia, et cetera. And don't get me wrong, like, art direction is. 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. 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. They don't just see it, they could feel it. They feel like they're a part of it. And for a microsecond or, you know, 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. Like, we want this to feel nostalgic. Like, what is that brand sporting rich? Like they do. Yeah. Like, she does an amazing job of putting people in a. 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 collectively for a brand, like, 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 and Rich. Very similar. That's one way. Number two is campaign driven. It's like 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 kind of what they did for the New York City Marathon. Right. Like they created this. This whole like, dystopian universe for. For the product to. To live within. That's not their standard. It like matched some of the.
- [02:40]
B
New York is dystopian right now though.
- [02:41]
A
It's great. Yeah. Yeah, it is. You still going.
- [02:45]
B
Damn.
- [02:48]
A
And there was still like a lot of the same through lines in, you know, the micro world that they created in their overall, like, brand essence and typical art direction that they do for all of their. Their content or even like day to day content. Then the third is a series or show based in how you can re. You can. 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. I don't want to Harper or like, just get stuck on Brooklyn Coffee Shop, but like, there's a reason, like Brooklyn's Coffee Shop Coffee Shops. Art direction does put you in like this Brooklyn, like, like very creative kind of snobby hipster world. Right. And. And they do that on. On. Go ahead. No, hit him with it.
- [03:37]
B
You know, he's like the. The snobby hipster.
- [03:39]
A
Yeah.
- [03:39]
B
Like not right now in New York.
- [03:41]
A
And so like, if. Oh. Diving through to some of the different elements. But like, you know, if you look at a brand that does it very, very well as a entire whole lake checkout. Right. If you look at their. And we talked about this, where their entire feed. Every campaign feels like it takes place in the Grand Budapest. Budapest Hotel.
- [04:01]
B
Wes Anderson.
- [04:02]
A
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 and color themes. And then like this, like, very meticulous symmetry with how he uses the framing in the composition.
- [04:20]
B
A lot of this is just the continuation of brands as TV and brands as media.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah.
- [04:26]
B
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, 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 feed 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.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah. 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.
- [05:08]
B
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 industries jobs.
- [05:20]
A
Right.
- [05:21]
B
It's like you can create something with Mid Journey that would have cost you $500,000 of 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 rally. 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 skillset go?
- [05:54]
A
Couldn't agree more. And so I, I think about like cinematic and, and the Hollywood esque content will make it so it's 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.
- [06:10]
B
Yeah.
- [06:11]
A
And that's how you're going to kind of get these two, these two worlds blending. 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 this a bit. But like I do see a world too where more brands are going to be hosting 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.
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B
It's crazy. They have the only in theaters is now a actual value prop that movies are starting to articulate.
- [07:00]
A
For sure, for sure. Like BPN put on. I think we talked about it. But like that last man standing race.
- [07:06]
B
Did you see the speed Big Sporting Goods Tom Brady thing? I show speed where he did the NFL combine metrics. Yeah. And then he like one on one versus Stanium and Dola. Like Dick's Sporting Goods sponsored that whole thing.
- [07:19]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I think the triangulation of Ishowspeed is like an emergent creator. Dick's 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 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.
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A
Yeah.
- [07:42]
B
Then they, 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.
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A
Oh, dude. You know what's so funny is you said Hard Knocks.
- [07:55]
B
You said school of Hard Knocks.
- [07:56]
A
Yes, bro. And I was like, really? He narrated. That's very interesting.
- [07:58]
B
But then shout out to James for getting that.
- [08:01]
A
Yeah, for sure. But the actual guy from Hard Knocks, hbo. Right.
- [08:04]
B
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 like kind of bring in sort of like, oh, now he's going to go against the go whatever. Whole thing was a dick sporting grits commercial. So like, how do you even quantify that as a marketing investment? I don't know for sure, but I do think that Survivor Game blurry dude, that sort of three way partnership is so innovative and 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. I mean, but there's so many running influencers. Like maybe like have Matt Choi get smoked by that Kenyan dude that wins every year. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, do something.
- [08:56]
A
Yeah, it's an interesting take, 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 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 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 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 elements are so key, and it's because the art direction is telling us how we should feel about a product. If all of their shit was, like, very messy and very maximalist and very in your face, we wouldn't feel the same way about it. And so art direction is key for describing and defining how we should feel about a product. Bandit running. Again, like, if we're going to use them, 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. For the running, functional 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, and is wearing Bandit. It is like they are fashion forward and they're also like this function. Function meets. Sorry, function meets fashion type of individual. They're like a leveled. They're not the best runner per se, but they're a leveled up runner from a. Yeah, I, I'm communicating that I have money. You know what I'm saying?
- [12:12]
B
Like they're also, 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.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And it's fascinating how it's always like a founders 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. But 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.
- [12:55]
A
Agree.
- [12:56]
B
Because you know their, their core demographic will be looking for the next Bandit.
- [13:01]
A
Yeah.
- [13:02]
B
Because everyone else is wearing a Bandit now. So they're cooked. They're chopped. Like me at 30. Like what said they're chopped. Referring to myself as a chopped dunk. But yeah, that's also TikTok brain.
- [13:15]
A
You know, I, I know. I, I feel you. 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.
- [13:26]
B
About like what they're doing at the, at the gym and in Dripping Springs.
- [13:30]
A
She lives out like near me.
- [13:32]
B
Oh, she got a farm too.
- [13:34]
A
She's. Yes. No. And anyway, she was telling how like the, the fourth graders are teaching her new vocabulary. Right. And like when we were growing up, you 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 dude, I was.
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B
No, I love, I love zesty. Like cat, like Carl Anthony Towns Zesty League.
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A
But I Told I was like, no, Zesty is more so, like, if you're clowning 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.
- [14:12]
B
You would never call a. A truly zesty person. You're not going to be like, yo, that was zesty. Yeah. You know, you let him zest.
- [14:19]
A
Let him.
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B
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 going to poke out.
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A
That's why I got the undershirt.
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B
Godspeed.
- [14:29]
A
Amen. All right, the second. Oh, actually to T. 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.
- [14:48]
B
Totally.
- [14:49]
A
And, like, as. As much of a fan as I.
- [14:51]
B
Am, it's just the brand life cycle. Right. I also think, you know, it's happening with 24 7.
- [14:55]
A
Like. Like, represent for sure.
- [14:57]
B
Like, he's not. I mean, they're cool. They're wrong, but 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?
- [15:09]
A
Yeah. 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. And 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 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 lookbooks to the sets that they build that follow like the similar pattern as their lookbooks. It's like this mid century inspired interior, right? Like they have this beautiful wooden wall in the background. It' 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 lookbooks 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's doing lookbooks 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 area from your content. And so that is key. That's another huge element. That's why, you know, you look behind us and we're building these sets for my content, for Ky's content is like, you're going to see my set and know that your, the familiarity and recognition is going to get attached to that once.
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B
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. If someone else were to copy it for sure.
- [17:37]
A
I mean, and we talked about this three weeks ago. Like I got called out for copying. I think Joshua Neal. And 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 gotta find my own angle for it. Fine, we're doing it. But 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 feel a specific emotion around your product, whether that's aspirational, whether that's inspiring, whether that's like this, this, whether it's happy, like sadness, et cetera, 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.
- [18:40]
B
Yeah.
- [18:40]
A
Ozark's entire. The entire show. Yeah. Is moody. It's dark. Like it never feels like it's. It's 12pm you know 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.
- [18:55]
B
That's.
- [18:55]
A
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 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. S U L T. Like I, I think you know what I'm talking about. Drink salt. Like everything's this lime green and. And they're a much more. Know you look at an element, you look at any of these other hydration brands, they stand 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 very, very bright colors.
- [19:55]
B
Yeah.
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A
And it. And it conveys that energy. Like you can feel it from their text to the carousels, etc, you could use organic shapes. You can, you can use a lot of that to like suggest warm and. Or humanity, et cetera. Like when. 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? And like, like if you ever watch a doom, they'll. 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 or sorry, cooler tones, like more blues, more deep blues, et cetera, 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 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 note. He has notes everywhere. He's. He's sweating. He's fucking intense. He's, like, yelling at the subjects, et cetera. 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 fisheye 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 white and specific kinds of shots to evoke in support that storytelling, that character. Because art direction really deepens world building, right? It makes each design choice meaningful rather than or 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 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 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 a SMS from you, and on mine, 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 checkout 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 hyperfocused 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.
- [24:06]
B
Yeah.
- [24:06]
A
There's a fundamental difference between the two.
- [24:09]
B
It's one of those 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.
- [24:19]
A
Yeah.
- [24:19]
B
You know, this is like something that happens in your off time. Right. Like, it's not. It doesn't feel necessarily like work.
- [24:26]
A
Yeah.
- [24:27]
B
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, like, you know, I. 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.
- [24:58]
A
Yeah.
- [24:59]
B
You know, because my guess is a lot of people are going to hear this and, like, want to do it and then honestly not be sure where to start, which my recommendation with them to 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.
- [25:27]
A
Now you have kids on the way.
- [25:28]
B
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 going to 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. That I wonder, like, 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, you know, use those associations on their own.
- [26:11]
A
The last thing I'll say is there's not a top grossing series or movie that doesn't obsess over world, world building, right? Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Godfather, et cetera. 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 a 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 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 if you haven't already, please, like, subscribe. Help us grow this thing. We've, we're growing the team around it, we're growing partnerships around it, et cetera. 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, et cetera, we're about to get zesty with our testing.
- [27:21]
B
All right, we'll catch y' all next week.
- [27:23]
A
Peace.