Shadowing Practice: Art Direction Techniques You Can Use - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Today we're going to talk about art direction ingredients.

Because one of the reasons why art direction can be kind

of tough for us to wrap our heads around is

that there's not a clear tool in the way that a photographer has their tool,

they've got their camera, a painter has a paintbrush, that's their tool.

Even a graphic designer, you think about their tool, you think about their software, maybe Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop.

But what is the art director's tool?

With it being a more conceptual role, Are there repeatable tools we can use over and over again?

And I'd say there are.

I often like to compare art direction to visual orchestration because yes, you are conducting the visuals and that might involve multiple team members,

but it can also be a one -man band where you put on that hat.

You become the photographer or you become the graphic designer as you're mocking up something.

I also like to compare it to being a chef.

The chef might lead a team in the kitchen, but they can also assemble these ingredients themselves and they have frameworks

and tools and principles they can use over and over again to put those ingredients together.

That's what we're gonna talk about today.

And this video is sponsored by Musicbed because music is one of the most important creative ingredients for my content.

I'm gonna share the exact songs I use in my videos, but more on that later.

Now, before we talk about visual ingredients, I need to kind of ground you in some of the principles I use for thinking conceptually.

These are timeless principles that a lot of the best creative agencies in advertising and brand marketing utilize,

and that's thinking big, the big idea.

I visualize it as a big idea pyramid.

And the reason why we need to at least have a brief understanding of the big idea pyramid is before

we get to the ingredients, we need to understand why or what we're making.

What is the purpose of these visuals?

That's what a big idea is.

It's your overarching creative formula that tells you what this project or this campaign is going to do.

We start with an insight that's a revelation or an unspoken human truth.

If you want to understand insights more,

you can dive more into some of my other content or join me for a class or one of my boot camps.

Then the idea is what we do with that truth.

What is our creative formula that will help our audience experience that insight for themselves?

But once we have our idea, some people might consider this the concept.

Once we have our concept, the art director's job is to bring it to life, to actually execute it, to guide the execution visually.

This is where art direction ingredients come in.

It's my way of comparing the different conceptual mechanisms,

the visual devices, the different creatively visual decisions we are making to bring this campaign or this project to life.

It's my way of comparing all of that to ingredients because I like to have a tool.

I want something that feels concrete.

And so imagining execution and the visual decisions we are making as ingredients helps me make this a more repeatable process.

So this is an art direction menu.

Like I said, art direction often involves creative decision making across a lot of different disciplines

and a lot of different visual mediums.

So we don't just have one tool.

We have a lot of ingredients and we might need different tools for utilizing those ingredients,

but all of those ingredients could be used in different ways and accomplish different tasks, making the visuals more sweet or salty,

making the visuals more moody, colorful, etc., etc., depending on what we want to do for that idea.

And I really want to open your mind to the possibilities of what sort of visual decisions

you could make as an art director because even this menu doesn't encompass everything.

This is just to get your brain going with color and lighting.

You know, the different textures you choose, the different depth of field might convey a different message or might have a different feeling.

Even the casting and talent, who you cast.

Is there someone that's familiar that automatically has associations

or do you cast someone with a certain style or a certain look that conveys a different feeling.

And you might even look at the imagery that you choose

and decide to go photography or illustration over CGI or any of those kind of decisions.

But even within those mediums, there are countless other decisions you could make.

There are other ingredients within these categories of ingredients.

Now I really see a spectrum in how these visual ingredients can play a role in bringing your big idea to life.

On the left side of the spectrum, I write visual feeling.

Oftentimes concepts, they just need supporting visual ingredients.

They need visual decisions that help support the message that's already being conveyed.

Sometimes certain campaigns, certain projects have a lot of copy or dialogue or voiceover.

The message is being told, but the visual decisions we make help support or serve that concept.

But on the other side of the spectrum, sometimes it's best to convey that concept through the visuals themselves.

Our concept might have a message that we want to get across, but that message could be seen and read through the visuals,

through the symbols and how those visuals are communicated versus us reading or hearing the message and the visuals just serving.

There is no right or wrong.

And I'm going to show you a couple examples.

I go a lot deeper in my bootcamp, but I've pulled out a bunch of examples

that I think illustrate this the clearest and how different ingredients might support in terms of creating the feeling.

Sometimes we call this the look and feel and create a vibe that helps us understand this idea.

But in other ways, we could communicate the idea through a visual device, through a visual solution.

One of my favorite recent examples was from Polaroid.

Polaroid.

They released this campaign that was all about the camera for an analog life.

And if we look at this, this campaign, you'll see that there is already messaging that is conveying what the campaign is all about.

You read the headlines and you get what they want you to understand.

You start to feel the insight of this campaign.

AI can't generate sand between your toes.

How much of your camera roll do you really remember?

Honestly, do we even need the visuals?

We would argue that yes, this wouldn't land without the visuals.

So it's a little bit more on that left side of the spectrum, the visual feeling.

But even though this is copy driven, the visuals are doing a lot with helping us feel the concept.

So what are those ingredients?

What are the ingredients they're using?

Well, there's two big ones that stand out.

There's the photography.

It's specifically the product, the Polaroid photography, and they're capturing these specific moments.

So there's a lot of decision making about the images they're choosing and the actual photography.

But then there's one other really important ingredient here that's helping me feel this message.

And that's the handwritten ballpoint pen.

And I love how you could imagine this just being, you know, Helvetica typeface or, you know, whatever other font you want to choose.

And yes, we would get the same message, but we wouldn't feel it in the same way as this art direction feels.

Another example from Oatly, I often like to point out that they are so copy driven,

but a lot of the visual decisions they use help us feel

that copy and help us recall and remember this brand in a better way.

It creates a feeling and it's not necessarily the visuals aren't the solution themselves.

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But as we read this text with its big blocky font, you almost associate it with Oatly and associate it with oat milk.

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This old diesel campaign, Enjoy Before Returning, is interesting because they're specifically using a certain photography ingredient

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that makes you feel the audience and the target market who buy their jeans.

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They're using this flash photography that almost makes me think of like the college parties, the college basement or high school basement parties

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that I might have gone to with the old disposable cameras and all of that.

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So the choice of flash photography is one ingredient here.

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They're like super good looking, not normal models, but they're in like a normal -ish high school setting.

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There's some contrast there.

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You can really feel how these ingredients work together.

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You will need to read the messaging in order to understand the complete idea.

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But for this campaign, not everyone will have to read all of the body copy.

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They may also just want their product to be shown

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and for you to feel what the idea of this campaign is all about.

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Now, music is one of the most important creative ingredients, and it's not even visual.

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I treat my own creative direction the same way I'd treat a global brand campaign.

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I want an insight behind the content, and I think about my series and pillars like ad campaigns.

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So everything's unified instead of starting from scratch every post.

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But the topic today is what creative ingredients actually serve the idea, what helps you feel and experience the insight for yourself,

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and nothing does that better than music.

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And I'll tell you the exact songs I use from our sponsor, Musicbed.

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I teach timeless art direction principles.

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So I look for timeless music, maybe a little nostalgic.

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I'm wanting to immerse your senses in the world I'm building, build memory, trigger emotion because emotion sticks more than information.

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And one of the artists on Musicbed I keep going back to over and over is Makeup and Vanity Set.

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They have that nostalgic, it's maybe 70s cinematic feel.

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For example, this song Solaris is quirky, almost mystical.

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It sounds like a question plot on the other hand feels a little more urgent still has

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that driving curiosity though

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and then there's dogs has a bit more oomph like i'm about to get into it we need to lock in

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and i love how you can you can hear the grainy noise there's obviously different purposes for each song

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but they're kind of pulling from that same world

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and i switched to music bed because i to see music as an investment in my creative direction.

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I don't want anything that feels generic or interchangeable.

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I want songs from real artists, real humans who put the same intention into their craft that I'm putting into the visuals.

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If you want to use these exact songs yourself, check the link in the description for a 14 -day free trial of Musicbed.

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Now that's ingredients that help support or serve the message, but sometimes when you pair the right ingredients together,

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they can become the message itself.

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This is where I've got examples of some visual solutions.

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Sometimes I like to call them visual devices, where the symbols and the pairing of certain images together become the message.

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You don't need any supporting copy at all.

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Or if you do have some supporting copy, it might just be a tagline or a sort of button,

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the punchline, to help us ensure they understand what we want them to understand.

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These Lego ads are one of my favorite examples of a visual device that just has endless possibilities.

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That's when it feels more like a visual device to me, when there are endless subjects you could slot in.

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And what are the ingredients we've got here?

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You've got the product, which for Lego is really great.

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And you're pairing that with the shadow of that product and playing with how the shadows don't match.

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And obviously the concept here is that the simplest building blocks can unlock the most vivid imaginations in a child.

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That might be the concept or the idea we're trying to get across.

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But we don't have to say that.

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All we need are just these visual ingredients.

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You see the shadow coming off and you see that, oh, just these two blocks are a boat or those two blocks are a dinosaur.

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It's a really powerful visual idea

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because they've even evolved

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it to not just showing the possibilities of the imagination of a child in the shadow of the product,

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but using the product itself, building the possibilities of each of these children as they're building

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their own future with Lego wanting to be a part of building the future for children.

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This is a really simple visual device.

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It's not the most conceptually big idea, but all they wanted to get across was that this knife is sharper than you think.

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And this is a pretty powerful visual device because just the pairing of those two ingredients, the different vegetables that you want to put in here,

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it could be an endless list of food or different things you want to cut.

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And then the fact that it's cutting through the cutting board, just those two things help us understand, oh, this is a really sharp knife.

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Now, yes, they've got some copy at the bottom to just really drive home the message.

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Maybe this intrigues us so much that we want to read a little bit more, but it's totally not necessary.

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Another great visual device before

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Twitter was X.

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They had this fantastic campaign that didn't need to say anything because, again, the visuals said all they needed to say.

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And what are the two ingredients they've got here?

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They've got the hashtag symbol,

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which at the time really became synonymous with the topics of conversation that were happening in culture and in society.

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And all they needed to do was pair that with whatever icon,

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person, image that represented a subject or a cultural topic.

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And immediately from those two pairings, we understand, oh, Twitter is where the most important conversations are happening.

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Now, you've heard me a couple times now say they've got like two to maybe three standout ingredients.

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And going back to my chef metaphor, I like to compare our direction to a chef a lot because you can think about great dishes,

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great food, and even those ingredients.

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Yes, there might be a lot of ingredients to make a dish, but there's usually like two to three standout flavors, standout ingredients.

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You might notice the saltiness or you notice the sweetness or, you know, whatever.

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I'm not a chef.

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You need to have some restraint.

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Yes, within the imagery, there's a lot of creative decision making.

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being made in order to make sure the images are cohesive.

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But the standout ingredients are the image and the symbol.

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I wanna show you a couple of my students

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and how much they were able to learn and apply into their own spec campaigns from understanding this concept of ingredients.

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Here, we'll do this in only 30 days.

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This is Connor, and he wanted to do a campaign for Arcteryx.

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Now again, we always start with an insight and a big idea

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so that we've got a guiding creative formula for all of the different executions.

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The insight for his Arcteryx campaign was as we age, we experience more bad weather, but become worse at handling it.

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There's a funny contradiction there.

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So the more we avoid discomfort, the more sensitive to it we become.

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So his idea, which I always describe as the verb, what are we going to do with that insight?

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Let's reframe the elements, reframe the elements or weather as a playdate with the outside world.

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In our Arcteric's jackets, we'll reclaim the childlike instinct to jump into puddles instead of dodging them.

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That's his goal.

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That's his creative formula.

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We're going to reframe going out into the elements as more of a playdate.

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So check out his campaign and what he was able to create.

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You've got these awesome ads, playdate with rain, a playdate with wind, a playdate with the mud,

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the way that Arcteryx makes feeling like you can go out and do the elements and it's more fun.

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It's more of a, you almost have a little bit more of that childlike joy.

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I think he just really crushed this campaign, really explored the different elements and how the photography could play with that.

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But notice this ingredients concept that we're talking about, this principle of using ingredients.

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What are the two to three ingredients he's using in his ads?

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In terms of that spectrum, this is more on the visual feeling side of the spectrum.

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We still are reading the message that, you know, with Arcteryx, you get to do a play date with the rain.

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But we really feel it because of the choice of lettering, the choice of hand coloring and making it feel like,

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you know, the sort of black and white outlines of a kid's drawing.

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But even though it's on the visual feeling side of the spectrum, he really helps us feel this message, the play date with the rain,

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because of the ingredient of using like kids drawings, the kids coloring templates and stencils.

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And there's other ingredients.

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There's other visual decisions he's making.

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He's like sort of laying out the letters so they're not perfect.

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The choice of photography, he's using really close up imagery so that we can really see their smiles.

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And it's a little bit more blurred around because the focus is on their emotion and their happiness, the joy in that moment.

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But despite, you know, us having a lot of ingredients to create this dish,

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there is one standout ingredient that is the sort of saltiness of this dish.

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And that is the way he cut out those letters

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and the way it makes it feel hand put together and like almost, you know, collage together like a child.

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You feel that play date -ness of the ad.

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Really awesome work from Connor.

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Yeah, he just put a lot of work into this

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and it's crazy how much he was able to do in just 30 days.

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And I think that is just the power of he's got the skills.

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He's already a graphic designer, but understanding this tool, he started with an insight and idea in his review.

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I remember he mentioned like that was the most important part for him was the first two weeks of just really, you know,

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internalizing what is the big idea before executing

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but I'd also say he's just really done a good job of choosing ingredients to help us feel

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that idea starting with a novel idea

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but then you know making novel decisions I'll show you one more student Jaya is an architect a designer

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but she's worked in in years as an architect working in architecture I don't know anything about

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that realm but it's so funny I actually get a lot of architecture students

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or architects asking me whether they could become art directors

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and maybe there's something about they've got all the same visual skills

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but it's being applied to buildings and infrastructure

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and maybe they want to go more into a brand

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or pop culture route and that feels more creatively fulfilling I don't know

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so her concept her campaign is for EF tours education first is what I think it stands for travel

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and her insight is we wait for the perfect time to live the life

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we want believing there will always be more time later we all do this is a really universal truth

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and she's using this insight for travel so her idea is let's reveal the hidden cost of waiting speaking.

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by making the passage of time impossible to ignore.

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That's what she wants to convey and bring to life in her campaign.

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So notice how she does that, how she's bringing that idea to life.

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I'd almost say it's somewhere in between creating the feeling, but also the medium itself.

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She's using plane tickets or train tickets, boarding passes as a way to deliver the message.

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So she's replaced the text on it.

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After I have a family, that's when we're going to eventually travel.

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After I retire.

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She's sharing all the excuses we use for, oh, later we're going to travel.

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I'm going to travel when we're ready, when it's a better time.

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After I make more money.

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Once I've found people to go with.

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I don't want to travel alone.

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After I graduate, et cetera, et cetera.

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And there's really just one clear ingredient here.

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She has decided the best way to convey this message is what if the message is told through these travel plane tickets.

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Art Direction's tough, right?

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Like Art Direction has an endless list of ingredients.

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There's an endless menu of visual decisions you could make.

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But what I think is just so fascinating about her project is

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that when you do land on the ingredient you want to use to deliver your message,

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utilizing the plane tickets, the boarding passes as the medium, all of a sudden it feels so simple.

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It's like, oh, why didn't I come up with that?

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Maybe others have come up with something similar, but I just think it's so novel the way she used that.

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And then as an art director,

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you're using that same creative formula from your big idea and you're executing it across as many touch points as possible.

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The same visual ingredients, how that comes up in maybe a pop -up in an activation, whether that's social ads or billboards,

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out of home ads, it's all utilizing the same formula you'll try to find an ingredient

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that can be threaded across these channels ideally an ingredient

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that can live in an out -of -home ad

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and within an actual in -person IRL pop -up

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or some sort of activation but anyway kudos to Jaya

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and Connor for creating projects spec campaigns in their portfolio

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that I shared it with some of my friends I wish I had in my own portfolio

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and some of my friend said the same thing like man I wish I had made a campaign like that

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when I was a student of art direction trying to build my portfolio even

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now it's like I wish I wish I was thinking

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that creatively so I hope the biggest takeaway of this video is

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that you've broadened your idea of what art direction is and what's possible with the visual decisions you make there are

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universal principles and tools that a lot of the best creative agencies in the world utilize

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And there is also an endless list of visual ingredients and visual decisions that you can utilize in your own work.

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If you want to dive deeper into any of these concepts, check out some of my other videos.

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I'm more than happy to welcome you into one of my courses or a live boot camp.

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But always want to make sure there's free content

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you can check out first in case you want to go down this path on your own.

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Let me know in the comments if you found this video helpful

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or if you have any questions that you want me to try to cover in a future video.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Art Direction Techniques You Can Use”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: ingredient, visual, campaign, message, decision. This video has 288 sentences and 3948 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:17. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
ingredient noun	/ɪnˈɡɹiːdi.ənt/	One of the substances present in a mixture, especially food.
insight noun	/ˈɪnsaɪ̯t/	A sight or view of the interior of anything; a deep inspection or view; introspection; frequently used with into.
photography noun	/fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/	The art and technology of producing images on photosensitive surfaces, and its digital counterpart.
spectrum noun	/ˈspɛktɹəm/	A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes.
convey verb	/kənˈveɪ/	To move (something) from one place to another.
formula noun	/ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/	Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically.
principle noun	/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/	A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief.
endless adjective	/ˈɛndlɪs/	Having no end.
utilize verb	/ˈjuː.tɪ.laɪz/	US, Canada, and Oxford British English standard spelling of utilise.
compare verb	/kəmˈpɛɚ/	To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it…
chef noun	/ʃɛf/	The presiding cook in the kitchen of a large household.
shadow noun	/ˈʃædəʊ̯/	A dark image projected onto a surface where light (or other radiation) is blocked by the shade of an object.
designer noun	/dɪˈzaɪnɚ/	A person who designs something, or who designs things as a profession.
symbol noun	/ˈsɪmbəl/	A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.
dish noun	/dɪʃ/	A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
get across verb		To cross; to move from one side (of something) to the other, literally or figuratively.
come up with verb		To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
close up verb	/kləʊzˈʌp/	To close (remove a gap) completely or fully.
come off verb		To become detached.
cut out verb		To refrain from (doing something, using something etc.), to stop or cease (doing something).
cut through verb		To take a shortcut through.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Today we're going to talk about art direction ingredients.
That's what we're gonna talk about today.
AI can't generate sand between your toes.
Honestly, do we even need the visuals?
It's like, oh, why didn't I come up with that?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is sponsored · could be used · being conveyed
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've pulled · they've even evolved · you've heard

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 76 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: chef /ʃɛf/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, dish /dɪʃ/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, flash /flæʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: ingredient /ɪnˈɡɹiːdi.ənt/, photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/, portfolio /pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like ingredient, insight, photography.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Art Direction Techniques You Can Use - Learn English Speaking with Video

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