Vans Holiday Campaign 2022

For the 22 Holiday season, Vans wanted to show up in a unique and authentic way. After years in lockdown, we all started to value our nearest and dearest more. We realized that the intimacy we saw in our friendships wasn’t necessarily reflected by mainstream festive-season messaging.

The result? This Ties Us Together, a 360 campaign that included films featuring three unique family groups representing the brand’s pillars (skate, art, and music), a striking design system and a suite of ecomm assets, and Vans’ first-ever AR storefront.

Role: Art Director & Design Lead

Awards: FWA of the Day

Meet the Families

To sell in our concept of chosen family, we cast 3 diverse family groups in the brand’s home turf—Southern California. With our director, Camila Cornelson, we shot docustyle films that spoke to the Vans’ DIY roots. We brought their stories to live with a bold design system that could accomodate the uniqueness of each family while maintaining cohesion.

Bottomfeeder

A queer skate ensemble in Los Angeles, Bottomfeeder is known for their Holiday themed skate-drag shows. Year after year, they’ve created safe places for queer youth to celebrate festive season, often dressing up as Christmas villains such as Krampus.

Bob Baker Marionette Theatre

Bob Baker Marionette Theatre is the oldest Children’s theatre in Los Angeles, and is renowned for it’s annual Christmas puppet show. They also were some of the original contributors to early Disneyland set design. Since the 1960s, it’s been a place for weirdos of all kinds to gather.

MUNA

Up and coming alternative rock trio Muna found family in eachother when they first met in the dorms in the mid 2000s. Since then, they’ve been rocking out and re-inventing tradition around the world.

In-Store

Our bright designs attracted numbers in mall environments saturated with holiday themed promotions.

In-Store AR Experience

We collaborated with Tool of North America to create Vans’ first-ever AR storefront window. Passersby were invited to scan QR codes, allowing them to “unwrap” different gifts. Users would scratch their screen to “unwrap,” which caused a virtual explosion resulting in three unique experiences, each representing one of our families. The experience wrapped up by sharing these family’s films and, gave fans a shot at a year’s supply of vans for them and whomever they call family.

Roblox World

We brought our custom patterns and design system into the Vans Roblox Universe as a custom skatepark—where Gen Alpha gathers digitally and is learning to love the sport most strongly affiliated with Vans.