As the cannabis industry continues to grow, pun intended, more brands are emerging to show support for the business sector valued to reach $20 billion by next year. Lyft is one company that is using cannabis’ newfound mainstream popularity as a marketing tactic. Lyft hired B&A artists to create a humorous campaign for 4/20, a well-known cannabis holiday in the United States that has spread internationally. In their most recent collaboration, Illustrator Serge Seidlitz and animation studio, Radio, came together to create an animation that speaks directly to Lyft’s audience. While certain cannabis brands have been working to elevate the industry’s image, others are embracing the roots of the culture with cartoons, ice cream, pizza, and internet sensations such as psychedelic cats. When Serge received the brief to personify each letter of the Lyft logo with a cannabis theme, he chose the latter route. “I thought of my sixteen-year-old self and how pleased I would be that I would be this far into my career as an artist and drawing stuff that I was pretty much drawing when I was fifteen or sixteen years old,” he said on the process. For Serge, this project was also the result of a more contemporary aspiration–to illustrate for Lyft. Serge cites a visit to New York in October of last year as the introduction to his admiration for the brand’s use of typography in their advertisement. “I saw these Lyft ads everywhere back then, all over the subway, and I thought that’s the kind of thing I would have liked to have done.” Aside from the research into the subject he did as a teenager, Serge drew inspiration for the characters from the shapes of the letters in the Lyft logo and the brief to create a narrative of people getting high. The L, for example, lent itself perfectly to a bong illustration whereas in the Y he saw a mouth. But usually, for his process, he says “I just start drawing and see what happens.” Once Serge had created his sketch, Made by Radio stepped in to do the animation, a process which Serge loves. “Animation takes a special skill,” he said. “I’m not an animator so it’s nice to see something that I’ve drawn come to life. Radio does a really great job. They’re amazing guys, so I was looking forward to seeing how they did it. They made it look like that’s exactly how it should move.”

Brooklyn Beckham is no stranger to the spotlight, but he prefers to be behind the camera. His mother, Victoria Beckham, is an international pop star and designer while his father, David Beckham is known around the globe for his careers in both soccer and modeling. When BMW first approached the aspiring photographer to serve as brand ambassador, he accepted, on the basis that he wouldn’t just model alongside the cars, but that he could shoot them as well. In their latest collaboration for BMW and GQ Magazine, photographer Patrik Giardino captured Brooklyn Beckham in a documentary style photoshoot, centered around the brand ambassador. “The whole concept was to shoot a documentary around Brooklyn,” said Patrik. “That was the whole idea of the shoot. We wanted to keep an Instagram feel to it so it didn’t feel so much like advertising. The story for GQ was a story about him as a photographer but it was a hybrid shoot for BMW as well. The project started as a GQ shoot and then they were like, hey let’s do social media too, so that portion was added on and kept growing from there.” In addition to his role as photographer, Patrik stepped into another role of photography mentor for Brooklyn while on set. “Brooklyn aspires to be a photographer, and he’s done some shoots already,” explained Patrik. “We were chatting about everything, going back and forth. I helped him set up the camera, and was really there through the whole process. He went totally analog for the whole shoot, no iPhone. He likes using old cameras so we had a really good time chatting about that too.” The entire shoot took place over several days. They shot everything in Palm Springs for two days before heading to the race tracks. “It was a thermal race track outside of Palm Springs in the middle of the desert out there. BMW let him drive some of their race cars there, and they were going fast, like 150mph each -  they were flying!” Like all photo shoots, there were challenges. “The funniest part of the whole shoot is that we couldn’t drive the car. The day before the shoot, we found out as we were pulling into the hotel. It was just a prototype car, so it was not functional, and you cannot drive more than a couple of minutes. That was a little challenging because we had to think and move around with the car, and we had to throw a lot of ideas out the window,” explained Patrik. “When we went to the race track, they gave him other cars to drive around, so he went a little crazy. Donuts and crazy stuff, Brooklyn had a blast!”

This was not Joey’s first time in India. The seasoned lensman has traveled to the area many times before and cites India as one of his favorite places to shoot. In his latest overseas project, photographer Joey L traveled to Kerala, India to capture specific scenes from those inspiring places throughout the state that are worth the trip. “I was hired by the state of Kerala, they have an advertising agency,” explained Joey. “They had me shoot a tourism campaign to convey the five different lands that travelers frequent. Each of the pictures of the five main ads represents the different environments that tourists enjoy visiting. I’ve been to India in the past for personal projects but this is the first time I’ve gone there to do client work. India is one of my favorite places to shoot and this time I was hired by an Indian client and worked with Indian production.” Joey and the team were on-site in India for two weeks. The first week was spent scouting, where they found locals to be the faces for the concept. “Even though its a tourism campaign, there are real travelers in the ads, they're just in the background,” said Joey. “We used real people from the actual environments.” Joey started shooting as they circled back from scouting and completed the project over that second week. “There was a full casting, we choose every single person. The group shots are really elaborate; there’s a lot going on. Every single thing was constructed. For example, for the seashore scene, the main hero subjects were the fisherman. We went there and saw the fisherman pulling in their boats and we chased people we thought would be good for the advertisement. They weren’t Indian actors or models or something, they're all street casted.” “The locations are very spread out because they wanted to show a large, encompassing look at the state they belong to. Each environment is pretty famous for Kerala. One is the backwaters, there’s an image on the streets, one outside of a temple. Each one is a place they’d like travelers to visit. If you look in the backgrounds, you can see tourists traveling. They are ads for tourism, so it makes sense to see travelers. But most people who come to Kerala are a little adventurous, and would rather see local people than other travelers so they are there, but not super prominent.” In addition to this experience being his first time working on commissioned work in India, the project itself was unique. In lieu of a traditional shot list that contains a series of image suggestions in words, the client had developed detailed sketches to serve as inspiration for each of the 5 images they intended to create. While there was a general understanding throughout the team that the sketches were provided as a starting point, the final product ended up being a close match. “My favorite location was the backwaters, that’s the girl in the boat. The reason why is that the first sketch and the final execution are almost a perfect match. My favorite moment was when we had all that moving pieces in front of us and it just became real. It wasn’t exactly what they had drawn but we made it come true in a different medium that wasn’t just a pencil on a paper sketch. Even the light, the time of the day, early in the morning, it all came together and made the perfect shot.”

Illustrators and architects both draw to create imagery. Unique in their skill sets, both artists detail their designs in very different ways. In his latest collaboration with Ikea, Illustrator Dave Homer married these techniques in his depictions for Ikea's Kama Sutra campaign - a fun and practical guide to help Ikea fans find their own bedroom nirvana. Ikea asked Dave to illustrate the title cards, borders, and bedrooms for the Ikea bedroom guide based on actual three-dimensional room set-ups. “Initially when I first got the brief, I thought that I would only be doing the title page and the borders because the room itself would be a photograph,” explained Dave. “Instead of it just being the decaling and typography, they wanted the entire room illustrated.” Each bedroom illustrated by Dave was pre-designed and curated by the in-house team using furnishings from the Ikea catalog. “It was a bit daunting,” he said. “I’m not an architectural perspective illustrator. That sort of stuff is not in my wheelhouse normally, getting perspective right, so I worked a lot with one of the Ikea artists to get the angles correct.” He was up for the challenge. “It was fun because I got to work with the CAD drawings, and it was exciting to push what I normally do a little bit. Most of my work is usually typography based. So it was a nice challenge to do something that is really technical but not have it look like a technical drawing.” Finding it exciting and innovating, the Kama Sutra theme itself pushed Dave out of his comfort zone. Although he did not have a hand in creating the room names, he definitely had fun with them. “I thought it was a pretty edgy idea to do something like that. Some of the room names are kind of raunchy and fun. The Doggy Style and the double entendre in the video are pretty hilarious.”

In our digital world, human connection isn’t hard to find. There are phone apps, websites, and even ride-share programs that help bring us together. In his latest project with Fiverr, photographer Jason Madara showcases the beauty of bringing creatives together. The campaign focused on the unique collaboration process offered through the Fiverr platform. “You have the buyer on one side and the freelancer on the other side. My task was: how do you merge these two and make it show that they need each other?” Jason worked with the graphic black and white aesthetic to develop a concept that illustrates the partnership. “The subjects are all real people that you and I walk by every day on the street. They're all real freelancers that actually work within the Fiverr community. We had twelve talent per day, and we had to do two outfit changes: twelve in black and twelve in white, so really I had twenty-four shots to do each day,” explained Jason. “I had a key light on each side, one person facing the right one person the left so I made sure I was lit for each side so I could switch back and forth easily. I really don’t get too much into the technical things, it’s more about connecting with each person. On the day of the shoot, my main objective is to spend time with each person, as much as I can. I like to get to know each person, talk to each person, try to connect with them on some level so that when they get in front of the camera, they aren’t nervous, and so we just continue the conversation that we started having. The camera is a small element, it’s really about what we’re talking about and then the camera comes up and I take pictures.” Like all of his work, Jason’s passion for human connection shone through the shoot. “When you photograph everyday people: designers and illustrators, like with Fiverr, I don’t approach it differently. I’m trying to connect with people. Every shoot is an opportunity to celebrate the human story.”

Anna Wintour has been editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine since 1988. A cultural icon and aesthetic expert, Anna is credited with forging and shaping America’s relationship with fashion into the new millenium. Artist The Selby directed and illustrated the hit social series Go Ask Anna in his latest collaboration with Vogue and Anna Wintour herself. “People on the street ask questions, and then Anna answers them,” The Selby explained. “I do an interview where I’ll ask follow up questions and have a conversation with her. Then I do some watercolor drawings that go along with the video; it adds that bit of fun and funk and it helps illustrate what she’s saying.” The entire process is a collaboration, with The Selby at its core as director. The questions come from curious fashion lovers around the country. Vogue gathered some questions straight from the streets of New York, and The Selby was able to collect some unanswered thoughts in both Texas and LA. It wasn’t the first time The Selby managed a project that included taking his interviews to the streets. “When we approach people that know who Anna is, they start freaking out. It’s like going up to a Catholic and saying ‘We’re going to show this to the Pope,’” Selby said. “Tourists might not know Anna or might be suspicious of me. They ask me for a business card; it’s an interesting thing. When I started my career, I used to work a lot for NY Mag. I did a lot of “hundred person polls” where I would grab people on the street and interview them. I like that random element of grabbing people and talking to them, but it’s gotten much harder now. Everyone’s on their phone, and you’re distracting them. I remember when the iPod came out with the earpods. It changed everything.” Once all of the in-camera elements were shot and complete, Selby found space for his sketches to playfully illustrate Anna’s thoughts. “Once we lock the final edit, I think about a moment where it would be fun to show something happening. I’m trying to use myself as the audience, doing things I like that could be interesting. Anna only told me to take out one drawing, out of hundreds of hundreds of items. I got the AWOK. This thing with Anna is called ‘AWOK.’ It means the ‘Anna Wintour OK.’ There’s this whole thing at Vogue, you don’t have anything if you don’t have AWOK. It’s a huge deal in the world of fashion,” Selby explains. “That’s why all the stuff is like floating around her head. I think it's a representation of Anna’s world and what she does. That’s something I always do with my work. I try to document and represent someone’s world by also adding my own creativity to it.” In this project with Anna, The Selby has the unique opportunity to pull back the curtain and giving the world a few moments to see into her brain and thought process. “I think it’s really fascinating to see how her mind works. She’s like this wizard of fashion so just seeing her process and listening to how she’s seeing these different things, I’ve learned a lot. Anna has this incredible knowledge of fashion and all sorts of things around fashion, and I think what’s really interesting is that she only looks forward, you know, which I found the same thing with Karl Lagerfeld. They are always looking forward, that is the thing, and I found that really compelling. It’s a mark of powerful people, visionaries look forward, they know the history, but they're looking at the future.”