Still Painting
Format
Social · Ambient OOH
Location
London
Disciplines
Illustration · Art Direction · Editorial Design · Print Production
Role
Creative Strategist · Illustrator · Art Director · Producer
Context
Still Painting is where Magritti's way of looking is worked out by hand. Most digital content is made to suit its medium, smoothed and sharpened for the phone and the feed. This project moves the other way. Each flower is painted slowly, in the manner of a gallery oil painting, and then put back into the places screens usually rule: printed onto paper and taken into the street, but also set as a phone wallpaper or posted straight into the feed. The studio trusts that something a little uneven and handmade carries a warmth that a polished image loses. The point is to keep that warmth, on paper and on screen.
The subject follows from the same belief. A flower blooming beside a pavement is close at hand, and most people pass it without looking. Over more than a year, flowers seen this way in France, the UK, the US, Morocco, South Korea and Denmark were painted one at a time. Each was printed, carried back into the city, and photographed on location, so that a brand built on looking could become part of everyday life rather than sit above it.
Strategy
Paint each flower by hand rather than produce it, and place it back into daily life on both sides of the screen, in the street and in the feed.
Execution
Painting — Flowers seen across six countries, painted by hand in digital oil and conte crayon.
Layout — Each piece built on the same masthead and collection note, arranged differently each time.
Placement — Prints pasted, held and staged into scenes across ten cities, then photographed on location.
Social — The photographs posted to Instagram as the studio's most frequent output.
Series — More than a year of paintings, one city to the next.
Context
Still Painting is where Magritti's way of looking is worked out by hand. Most digital content is made to suit its medium, smoothed and sharpened for the phone and the feed. This project moves the other way. Each flower is painted slowly, in the manner of a gallery oil painting, and then put back into the places screens usually rule: printed onto paper and taken into the street, but also set as a phone wallpaper or posted straight into the feed. The studio trusts that something a little uneven and handmade carries a warmth that a polished image loses. The point is to keep that warmth, on paper and on screen.
The subject follows from the same belief. A flower blooming beside a pavement is close at hand, and most people pass it without looking. Over more than a year, flowers seen this way in France, the UK, the US, Morocco, South Korea and Denmark were painted one at a time. Each was printed, carried back into the city, and photographed on location, so that a brand built on looking could become part of everyday life rather than sit above it.
Strategy
Paint each flower by hand rather than produce it, and place it back into daily life on both sides of the screen, in the street and in the feed.
Execution
Painting — Flowers seen across six countries, painted by hand in digital oil and conte crayon.
Layout — Each piece built on the same masthead and collection note, arranged differently each time.
Placement — Prints pasted, held and staged into scenes across ten cities, then photographed on location.
Social — The photographs posted to Instagram as the studio's most frequent output.
Series — More than a year of paintings, one city to the next.
Context
Still Painting is where Magritti's way of looking is worked out by hand. Most digital content is made to suit its medium, smoothed and sharpened for the phone and the feed. This project moves the other way. Each flower is painted slowly, in the manner of a gallery oil painting, and then put back into the places screens usually rule: printed onto paper and taken into the street, but also set as a phone wallpaper or posted straight into the feed. The studio trusts that something a little uneven and handmade carries a warmth that a polished image loses. The point is to keep that warmth, on paper and on screen.
The subject follows from the same belief. A flower blooming beside a pavement is close at hand, and most people pass it without looking. Over more than a year, flowers seen this way in France, the UK, the US, Morocco, South Korea and Denmark were painted one at a time. Each was printed, carried back into the city, and photographed on location, so that a brand built on looking could become part of everyday life rather than sit above it.
Strategy
Paint each flower by hand rather than produce it, and place it back into daily life on both sides of the screen, in the street and in the feed.
Execution
Painting — Flowers seen across six countries, painted by hand in digital oil and conte crayon.
Layout — Each piece built on the same masthead and collection note, arranged differently each time.
Placement — Prints pasted, held and staged into scenes across ten cities, then photographed on location.
Social — The photographs posted to Instagram as the studio's most frequent output.
Series — More than a year of paintings, one city to the next.
Impact
Targeted distribution
The works were turned into social content made for Instagram. Six were run as campaigns through a Meta Business account, each targeted by location. The audiences began broad and were narrowed to the cities that responded most to botanical content, with London held as the base and campaigns extended to Seoul, Madrid, Paris and Copenhagen.
A Paris-aimed campaign reached 100% within Île-de-France, and a Madrid-aimed campaign reached 95.2% within Comunidad de Madrid.
Managed performance
The six campaigns returned 892 profile visits, at a cost as low as £0.17 each.
Meta Ads Manager.
41K+
Reach across six campaigns
