When Workflow Becomes Art: How VISBOOM Rekindled Our Creative Spark

Wiki Article

Each creative endeavor has a point at which the miraculous element of artistic design becomes the ordinary element of the same process – for our company's creative team, this was recently recognized during our production of a mid-season lookbook. Our desks had been littered with stack upon stack of vibrant color swatches, sheet after sheet of layout proofs, and countless amounts of unedited, RAW files up until this time, each of the photographs that we had in the lookbook were correctly exposed from a technical standpoint, and posed in an acceptable manner; however, there was no longer any life or excitement in the photos. The creative end of the lookbook process had been replaced with monotony and repetition through sheer mechanical means.

As our company continues its global growth and expansion to additional markets worldwide, the pressure on our team continues to mount. By adding additional product lines, campaigns and other forms of media to support these initiatives, however, the amount of time that we are able to spend breathing, dreaming and building an imagination through our creative process grows thinner. Creativity is becoming less of a travel experience and more of a set of "check-in" destinations – and the systems we have developed to assist in creating an environment that promotes further growth, have begun sapping the energy that we require in order to succeed.

 One day, the breaking point came in the way of a junior designer on the creative design team; she introduced to the whole team an application called VISBOOM. It enables designers to easily create numerous visual mockups for an individual piece of a garment in less than 15 minutes. Each visual mockup can contain its own complete story; each scene is presented with its own specific lighting, tone and emotion. The overall quality of the images that the junior designer produced was astonishing! Initially, I felt more astonished than excited, followed by curiosity and relief. I wanted to know if we could truly rediscover the joy of creative freedom that we had lost along the way.

Using VISBOOM, I took several sample images of basic product pictures which are basically flat in display with no style applied to them, and in seconds, the system created environments for each of the product images. For example, I took an ivory blazer, and within seconds, I had multiple stories; an ocean front suite on a beach that looked very warm, a contemporary loft type space with smooth edges and lines, and a corridor of a rooftop that was filled with sunlight coming in. Each of these stories represented the emotion of the brand clearly. Not only did VISBOOM move products to new environments, but it also anticipated the meaning of the products by creating an image of each product's visual identity into every story frame created.

With VISBOOM, we started to develop a new way of thinking about the creative process within the Marketing Department. The Stylists began to explore colours and textures long before they were actually able to receive samples of products; Copywriters could immediately see what their narrative themes would look like in a photograph; and our E-commerce team could continue to present products in a consistent manner while continuing to maintain various selections. Tasks that traditionally took hours or days to accomplish were being completed in a matter of minutes, and the time saved could then be allocated to designing creative projects instead of just repeating the same task over and over again.

There was a moment when we viewed our work for a future seasonal outerwear launch, that moment allowed us to bring to life our visuals for our collection in a new and different way. As opposed to shooting across multiple shoots, such as shooting in an urban environment, shooting at the beach, shooting interiors of a house (which typically required multiple shoots), we were able to create 3 separate and distinct stories associated with each coat in an afternoon using VISBOOM. We created fully developed narratives for each coat based on its use in an environment unique to the coat: cool tone colours to depict an urban city environment, warm tones depicting late afternoon sunlight for domestic usage, and colours depicting outdoor use during a golden hour. Each product representation had a sense of emotional connection and authenticity to the coat's brand story.

The ability to use VISBOOM extended beyond the images created. Rather than having meetings that were about determining a next step or just a checklist of to-do's, our meetings became concept generating sessions of collaboration. Designers who once held their concepts close to their chests now share completed images and visual explorations of their designs at the earliest stages. Our senior creative team were allowed the opportunity to continue to explore and create before commitments were made and level of confidence in the work increased. By allowing for the creative process and returning the joy of creating to our creative process, VISBOOM has allowed us to regain efficiency.

Definitely not taking away from the photographic process nor the abilities and expertise of our team members, VISBOOM removed barriers for us as we created. It accelerated our ideations and added the element of fun and curiosity to our creative process. With VISBOOM we were able to reclaim creative space and add it back into our creative process. Instead of maintaining our creative workflow, we were now creating our creative workflow based on discovery.

Today, our visual identity flows seamlessly across regions, our stories are clear, and our images resonate with life. VISBOOM has become more than a tool—it is a catalyst for imagination, a bridge between intent and expression, and a partner in keeping the art in our work alive. Our team is no longer just maintaining systems; we are building worlds again.