ABOUT
Led by
PATRICK MCHUGH
Fresh out of art college in New York City, I started my career at twenty as an assistant on editorial shoots for French Vogue.
Two weeks later I was on a plane to Bermuda with a Brides magazine production — the Minister for Tourism met us at the gate, such was the weight a major editorial shoot carried for a small island economy. A few months after that I was in Las Vegas, working on the opening of the Mirage hotel, chatting with Buster Douglas in the lobby the week he beat Mike Tyson. I was barely old enough to be there.That was the beginning. What followed was thirty years working across the highest levels of fashion, advertising and editorial — in New York, London, Barcelona and Dublin. International magazines. Global advertising agencies. Fashion designers. National press. Brands that worked to a world-class standard.
But somewhere along the way, I started noticing a pattern that nobody was talking about.
The brands investing the most in visuals were often getting the least return. Beautiful photography. Polished video. Carefully designed websites. And nothing connecting. Nothing converting. The work looked right and felt empty. Because the story was never built. The strategy was never set. The visuals were being made in a vacuum.
I spent years doing what most visual people do — delivering the brief, moving on to the next job. But I kept being pulled into the conversation that should have happened before the camera came out. What are we saying? Who are we saying it to? What do we actually stand for?
Eventually I stopped waiting to be asked. I built a methodology around it.