James Wilde - HN Digital Campaigns

What I worked on:

Digital Assets, Motion, Social, Email, Template Systems, Retouching.

As Harvey Nichols’ principal designer for emails and organic social, I work across a broad variety of seasonal, editorial and commercial campaigns, translating them into engaging content in these digital channels. I build and maintain all social and email templates, enabling the design team to easily create seamless content to slot onto the channels. Through up-to-date research and close collaboration with the digital teams, I have been able to implement innovative design solutions rooted in data, resulting in fantastic boosts to engagement and conversion.

Email hero gif for HN Kidswear.

I was briefed to create a graphics-based identity for kidswear, relieving the need to shoot or source still-life imagery. Childish 3D shapes are elevated to a luxury aesthetic through a black-and-white palette, then given life in motion through a popcorn animation. Initially created for social, this identity spread to represent kidswear across channels, including advertising in print.

Social stories for Kidswear, featuring the popcorn animation.

A print ad for HN Kidswear in the 2024 Tatler Schools Guide.

Harvey Nichols’ 2023 Christmas campaign saw the creative department pulling together to deliver the All the Fun of the Fair theme. In addition to artworking the main cross-channel brief in-line with the campaign identity, I created supporting animation, retouched product imagery, print collateral, and more. The end result is a delightfully-eccentric campaign to run through the festive period.

Images retouched by me from ecommerce packshots in line with the campaign look-and-feel. Food packaging: Design Bridge

Prize cards for the instore hook-a-duck and claw machine games.

Roll Up, Roll Up lockup added to video content. Videographer: Alistair Redding

A compelling 2023 Party digital campaign was created, weaving together images from our still-life shoots with retouched ecommerce shots. A palette of blacks, blues, and silver helps these assets stand out from the more vibrant simultaneously-running Christmas campaign. Close crops show details of the products in all their glittery glory.

Social stories for AW23 Party campaign. Styling: Sammiey Hughes, Photography: Sophia Cliffe

Social stories for AW23 Party campaign. Styling: Sammiey Hughes and Jaclyn Basile, Photography: Sophia Cliffe

Email hero, and animation of the process of editing from the original ecommerce packshot. These edited assets supplement the images shot by the still-life team.

Commerciality is a key function of Harvey Nichols’ organic social and email channels. With New In product among our most commercial categories, I saw a missed opportunity in the lack of a cross-channel identity to highlight them. After receiving stakeholder’s support, I created a strikingly simple identity to traverse channels and formats. With no complex images or copy required, the assets can be rolled out very quickly, giving channel owners greater flexibility and easing pressure on the in-house studio.

Social stories (left and right) and mobile email (centre) for New In.

New In email hero and general lockup.

Another top-performing category for Harvey Nichols is men’s trainers. Capitalising on this, I was asked by the social media team to create an identity calling out the latest drops. The identity I created uses animation to show the products literally "dropping", against a cool-toned black background. This was translated onto email and other channels through still collages, with retouching suggestive of motion.

Social stories for New Kicks at Nics.

Email hero showing the identity in still.