JD Sports:
Art Direction
& Photographic
Guidelines

Over the period of a year I worked hard to improve the quality and consistancy of the photography used on the JD Sports websites, email campaigns and on social. This is photography which is to be used outside of the main seasonal campaigns, and is more reactive to product drops, weather changes and other seasonal cues.

This process involved simplfying the approach and bringing the focus back to the footwear, developing the King of Trainers trademark style of the side profile trainer for online purposes whilst also to ensure that it doesn’t become to repetitive when posting multiple images and stories per day.

The following images shows how we went about achieving greater consistancy and quality of imagery without making lives difficult for ourselves.

Above is a set of example images from when this process started. Footwear taken out of context with no thought into story telling or adding additional meaning. Moulded football studs in a carpark anyone?

Footwear Documention

Leverage the classic JD trademark shot, the side profile, by leading with this heroic shot where possible. Tell a greater story by documenting the rest of the shoe, its key details and areas other brands/retailers often ignore - in the same straight on manner.

Social

Working with fellow Senior Creative Dan Roughley, we worked on further developing and progressing footwear photography to prevent the formats becoming too formulaic and tedious. Still sticking to the stripped back and simple studio photography styling from above, however with the introduction of plinths, cuts & curls of colorama and even simply the shoeboxes, we created interesting and graphic compositions that could be ownable to specific silhouettes or reference key features.

The Studio

We applied this same approach to photography with models. Square on, clean studio setups and strong confident styling let the product do the talking.

On Location

Again, the principles defined above also can be applied on location and thus creating photography style references that when 
adhered to create bold and impactful imagery which really heroes the product, whatever it maybe and whether the shoot takes place
on location or in the studio.