Dr Martens
Tough As You AW19 Campaign

We were challenged with disrupting the formula that Dr Martens had developed over their previous campaigns. We developed a campaign concept called Tough As You, focusing on four subjects that have been through resilient moments, embracing the DIY punk spirit, just like the product. This idea of toughness through subjects and product, informed our visual approach, and our whole art direction aesthetic embraced imperfections and errors. Unpolished and raw. Imagery that expressed resilience and character.

We used a photography technique called redscale, in which film is loaded into the camera backwards and exposed on the ‘wrong’ side, creating an unpredictable effect of colour to the imagery, incapsulating the punk DIY spirit, and embracing errors and imperfections.  We literally made everything by hand. The images were shot on film, the marks and textures were made with paint using boot parts and the logo was created using a photocopier and distressing multiple versions and scanning.

The campaign ran global across print, social and digital. With a full roll-out across OOH station takeovers and billboards worldwide.