September is the first edition I changed in the very last minute.
When I first planned the annual palette in February, this edition was a beautiful editorial purple. The sort of colour you’d expect on the backdrop of a fashion shoot.
It was gorgeous. It just wasn’t Wild. As every month has passed, I have grown stronger in my conviction that WILD is a feeling. She isn’t just a colour. She’s a fucking personality.
Every edition carries its own energy, and by the time September came around, I knew she’d never survive in the colour I’d originally chosen.
So I ordered more samples, changed the plan. reshot the main images, started again. One day, I’ll use that original purple. She deserves her moment. But September wasn’t it.
September marks that strange in-between season. Summer hasn’t quite finished, but you can feel it beginning to loosen its grip. The evenings change, the grass is tired, the children head back to school, and September needs to be marked.
For the campaign, I thought of the last few days of play. I basically smashed the playground with chalk. More accurately, we grated sticks of chalk like Parmesan. I had a vision of little puffs of colourful clouds.
Reality had other ideas. My imagination is more capable than I am. If only I were an octopus ( something I often say to my kids). It's funny, filming and blowing chalk at the same time is surprisingly difficult, so we mostly ended up launching handfuls of it into the air while my children and my seventy-year-old mum looked on, wondering what exactly I’d lost. Not to mention, I only realised halfway through the shoot I hadn't reshot the main website stills, and these were my only two copies. You need to watch this video to truly understand the fucking chaos.
By the end of the day, I had chalk in my eyelashes, everywhere else imaginable, and absolutely no dignity left.
The Wild edition proudly wore a perfect badge, the Minimal edition wore the prefect one. The campaign wasn’t perfect, its a running theme, none of them ever are.
However, that’s become one of my favourite parts of building The Anti Diary.
Every campaign leaves behind a story, and every story reminds my boys that brands don’t appear overnight. They are built, one colour, one idea, one ridiculous photoshoot and one very messy day at a time.
0 comments