Strength Development is a program focusing on weight lifting. I worked as Art Director to develop the look and feel of the program, the desired list of content outputs, styling, talent scouting, location scouting, video shooting and editing, video production, campaign design layouts, billboard templates, and messaging to go out to consumers.

Les Mills has created multiple short-form classes that exist only for a short period of time to gauge as tests. Strength Development was the second class to be created as a part of Les Mills seasonal programming exercise. 

Although gyms have plenty of strength based equipment and an emphasis on building mass, Les Mills like many group training programs doesn’t offer a tailored strength workout. There’s a few that touch on the concept, but none that are built on it. Strength Development was to be the heavy lifting class that many members had asked for. 

We moved through many ideas and concepts quickly to get the shoot off the ground. The shoot landed us back in the retail space we used for PT - a relatable, common space that allowed for some connection to other content. The grey walls mean that people pop in front of them, while giving off a certain level of grit. 

I wanted to focus on this concept of movement without moving.  Given many of the moves used in Strength Development are slow, it’s hard to show any form of movement in a video, let alone a still shot on a billboard. This meant chopping images in half. I wanted to hone in on a gritty close-up nature that showed many different parts of the body, parts of the movement, and a way to give framing to movement without there actually being any.

Together I worked with Adam Abernethy on stills and myself on video. The goal was to create the easiest shoot ever - both stills and video shot at the same time, with an end video goal in mind to shoot towards. We finished the video at 330pm, headed back to the studio to start grading. The final video was out and released the following week. 

This art direction would then lead to the next campaign Strength Lab, a program created to follow on from the success of Strength Development.

Design Director: Zoe Ikin
Art Director/Videographer/Video Editor: Chris Smith
Designer: Madison Ford