For this campaign, I wanted to shoot against an unexpected backdrop - as if the models were walking somewhere in the late Los Angeles sun. Sidewalks, worn and torn posters on construction sites boarded up. After days of searching for a location in Lahore that would meet the requirements and failing, Zain (the creative director) in his textbook breakout fashion went “Ok, then make it upstairs on the roof.”

We ended up making a whole street scene - footpath, tarmac road snippet and full on flyposted backdrop with properly weathered and worn posters. To get the right shots in the end, I had our in-house construction teams model and render lighting by time of day and position of the set. I also wanted to ensure that the posters looked like they were really part of a street scene.

In order to make it as accurate as possible, I also got the construction contractor to experiment with different caustic chemicals to age the sidewalk. I custom made cracks along the path where I stuffed in shrubs and dirt, and we left the set standing in monsoon rain and subsequent heat to really ‘bake’ it all in.

To make them all tongue in cheek though - Zain suggested reinterpretations of old campaign artworks. Studying pictures of streets in many many cities, I decided to make works around art galleries, concerts, books and events around town.

Additionally, in a risky first, I decided to introduce an alternate logo. Our formal, original wordmark is set in Brand Grotesque Medium, and no matter how I tried - it wouldn’t sit well with the grit and ‘street’ look of this campaign. Out of this was borne the alternate wordmark/ logo set in a much denser font within the Akzidenz family, without the historic ‘Lahore’ included.