When ghd asked me to create the visuals for their AW25 campaign, I had a bit of a pinch-me moment — as a LOYAL ghd girlie,
this was a serious (!!!) career highlight .
Now if I am best known for anything, it would be my neutrals and simplistic styling, so when I got the brief of 'bold colours and futuristic/AI vibes' - I wont lie I was a bit nervous about whether I could pull it off, but it ended up being, by far, one of my favourite projects yet.
Supporting, Not Replacing: How I'm Using AI in Pre-Production
Like many, I’m an absolute Pinterest fiend. I have the world's most organised boards, and usually, it doesn't fail me. However, lately I’ve been feeling a bit bored with it. I’m seeing the same photos come through, moodboard after moodboard, and things are starting to look a little too the same.
Our Milanote board pre-shoot: I chose to combine AI and Pinterest images as AI is still learning, and some things don’t quite translate yet. Real images still have their place, and in this case, were needed to support/showcase how a wide-angle photo could look.
Recently, I’ve been trialling a bit of a hybrid approach to pre-production by combining Pinterest with a couple of different AI tools, and this campaign felt like the most fitting to really lean in.
I used MidJourney and ChatGPT to create scenes that would best reflect what I was envisioning — something unqiue, but punchy. I didn’t want to just pull whatever was trending, I wanted something perfectly tailored to the brief. I experimented with custom prompts that focused mostly on composition and matching colours as closely as possible to the actual tools — since I was being trusted to flex my creative muscles, I wanted there to be little to no room for surprises come gallery delivery.
(If you caught my recent 7 day series ‘What they wanted vs What they got’ over on socials, you’ll get a closer peek at some of the prompts I used).
MidJourney inspo image: although tools are not exact, it gives a visual example of what to expect
Final image
Keeping with my quest for boldness, I also swapped my usual macro lens for a wide-angle lens. I’ve been loving this style and am so keen to use it more in future work! There’s something about the simplicity and the WOW factor it brings. It really gives the product that larger-than-life energy without relying on heavily styled sets.
I combined the wide-angle with crisp lighting, and almost-prop-less scenes to honour the unique colours of the tools (they were the hero, after all) without the images feeling too over-the-top or gimmicky (which could have happened easily with a brief deemed ‘futuristic’).
This project was such a powerful reminder that stepping outside your comfort zone (whether that’s embracing bold colour or experimenting with new tools) is often where the best creative magic happens.
— Got a bold idea brewing for your brand? Let’s bring it to life.
