When The North Face called us, the only possible answer was to go. Five days in Iceland, in the middle of winter, with temperatures below zero and wind that showed no mercy. The brief was simple: show what it really means to explore.
It was November 2024 when the Thirtyfive Studios team loaded gear, energy, and a generous amount of recklessness onto a flight to Reykjavik. The project: build a visual campaign for The North Face’s new winter outdoor line, with a concept that was clear from the start. No artificial sets, no comfort, no control. Just authentic landscapes, real light, and an athlete in the middle of the most unforgiving nature in Europe.
The Concept: Not an Ad. A Travel Document.
The original brief talked about “performance in extreme conditions.” But from the very first scouting trip, we understood that Iceland does not lend itself to a conventional advertising format. The island sets its own pace. The northern lights appear when they want to, storms form within an hour, and the light, when it shows up at all, lasts just a few minutes and is worth everything.
We decided to embrace that logic rather than fight it. Every location was chosen not for its logistical convenience, but for its emotional weight. Reynisfjara, the black sand beach where Atlantic waves crash against basalt columns as if trying to swallow the world whole. The rusted wreck of a DC-3 at Solheimasandur, abandoned on a plain of volcanic sand. The Vatnajokull glacier, where ancient ice fractures into shapes no art director could ever invent.
The Production: Three Days of Storm, One Perfect Dawn.
The week on location was a constant exercise in adapting. On the first day, winds hitting 80 km/h on the south coast forced the team to delay the shoot by two hours, waiting for a brief window where the gusts would ease enough to let the athlete move without being thrown off balance.
The red jacket became the visual thread running through the entire campaign. A single point of bright color against landscapes dominated by grey, black, and white. It was not an accident. The North Face wanted the product to be recognizable, but we wanted that recognition to come from the contrast with the environment, not despite it. The red reads almost like a survival signal, a human presence asserted with intention in a deeply hostile place.
The night at Mount Kirkjufell, the one that produced the northern lights shot, stayed with everyone on the team. Three hours waiting in the cold, with the wind chill sitting around minus fifteen, and then that green light filled the sky in minutes and turned the mountain into something almost impossible to believe. We could not have planned it better.
“Iceland does not let itself be photographed. It allows you to photograph it, if you are willing to play by its rules.” Thirtyfive Studios, Creative Direction
The Result: Images That Speak for Themselves.
The final campaign includes sixteen selected shots out of more than two thousand frames produced over those five days. The North Face chose to use them across all channels, from the international print campaign to digital formats for Europe and North America, with an editorial approach that lets the images breathe without overloading them with copy or graphics.
The message “Never Stop Exploring,” which has always been the core of the brand’s identity, is not simply stated here. It is embodied in every frame. Not by models posing, but by a real human being running, looking, enduring. The gear is there, but it does not shout. It works, and you can see that it works. That is the difference between a catalog and a campaign.
For us at Thirtyfive Studios, this project stands as one of the most intense and meaningful collaborations of recent years. Not because it was the most technically demanding work, but because it asked us to be genuinely present at every moment of the shoot. When you work in conditions this extreme, there is no room for distraction. Every shot is a decision.
