2023 Workwear Bottoms

  • Key Art Design

  • Campaign Design

  • Art Direction

  • Campaign Design

  • Video editing & resizing

  • Motion Graphics

Role

  • Creative Director: Matt Lambert

  • Senior Art Director: Ryan Stephens

  • Photographer: Issac Torres

  • Video: Ryan Stephens

  • Copywriter: Alex Chavez

  • Production: Tyler Arrivillaga

  • Typography:

  • Design Director: John Klopping

Crew

The Set Up

Workwear Bottoms was the first project I was assigned when joining Dickies in 2023. The team was already in the preproduction process. The crew was heading to Phoenix to shoot a group of mechanics that create/build beautiful low riders in what spare time they have. This was the perfect story to showcase the people who already wear Dickies on the daily. They live and work in the Dickies Uniform: 874 pant with the obligatory work shirt or standard cotton pocket tee.

The objective was to shoot them in their night hobby of building these classic cars into works of genuine art. Traditionally this is celebrated in Mexican-American culture as a form of cultural expression and resistance against segregation. Ultimately, we reached out to Creative Director & Typographer Hector Ramirez, based in Mexico City to assist us with the type design. The type was inspired by the lettering of painted signs on the store fronts in Latin cities and communities. Hiring Hector was one of the ways we could keep this as authentic as possible. Authenticity is the core value of the Dickies brand and the workers we celebrate.

Additionally, we wanted this to be through the eye of someone who is more editorial than the typical product photographer. The story would show the product regardless of how we shoot. This is more about the people and what they do. Issac Torres was the perfect choice by our production team.

Additionally, the crew all carried cameras loaded with film. Ryan is great at the use of traditional photography and vintage Super8. This really stands out among the clean and over produced work that most apparel brands produce. Dickies is a staple of Americana heritage. Shooting and producing in a less than technical way is intrinsic to the brand and the cultures that choose it

Exploration

Like a lowrider, slow was the approach to the process. I was able to take some time to play with light animation and go through our collection of 8mm film to make this it’s own moment. I built lock ups for the Denim, Duck and Twill categories that also included some pinstriping to add a slight embellishment matching the vibe of the photos.

Additionally to this, we were starting an exploration of what product education could look like for us. We started some thing new in another campaign I was working on that borrowed from our vintage collection of assets. We added technical callouts to our emails and started to make them more editorial rather than transactional.

Checkout some of this in this Figma presentation of the campaign

Various exploration using the type. What we found is the we needed to use the type in an outline to get the look we wanted. I played with a variety of textures, animations and color combinations, but it didn’t have the appearance we hoped for. The duo tone drop type gave us what we were looking for. It also played well with the the IBM Plex Mono we currently used