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.”

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.”

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.”

Kai and Sunny recently completed a mural at our very own Great Bowery office in New York City. The project was commissioned by Nutrafol, a hair wellness company, and unveiled during a launch party for the product. When asked about their inspiration and process in creating the mural, Kai admits that they designed for the job in mind and that they were focused on trying to capture dynamic movement. However, like all of their work, their process is holistic and informed by their environment, so the final piece is up for interpretation. “I think society is shifting right now and everything seems to be fighting,” Kai explains on the direction of the project. “We try to navigate through that. The idea of change is a good thing, it’s not that hard to explain but it’s an abstract piece. People can take what they want from it, but I wanted to get the idea across of shifting and moving and some kind of change.” The style of the piece is in fact juxtaposed with the method they used to create it. When speaking about their process, Kai described a process that is “quite methodic and thought-through.” He further explains that their process does not include free form, it’s focused on planned design. Their piece, which is painted with acrylics, includes 10 different colors. “We work through our colors, so we work from the lightest up to the darkest,” Kai adds. “Very slow, very methodic and start to finish, so we know what we’re doing.” Kai and Sunny are not new to this process of collaborative creation. Their style evolved organically through the partnership. “We’ve been working for 15 years, and together, 16 maybe. It’s just been a natural process of chipping away, and extracting, and deconstructing, and building it up again.” Kai and Sunny’s use of a methodic process to create an image that captures fluidity is a paradox, but it informs their interpretation of the final product. While their work is open to interpretation, they value the consistent symbolism of constructing large pieces out of thin lines and the detail of how many tiny, delicate parts make up an impressive whole. “We liked this idea that a single line is very fragile, with the lines in the beginning. You get a group of lines together, hundreds of lines, or even a thousand lines, and it has the strength and the structure, to create an image. There is something quite nice in a line, somewhere, very fragile, but with a thousand lines you got strength and power and color and movement,” Kai explains.       Kai and Sunny’s work is a wholesome collaboration between process and message. While their process is deliberate and focuses on precision, the message is one of change and progress. Kai explains that what attracts him to making this type of art is that “going back to the one line, fragile, hundreds of lines, makes something interesting, makes something powerful. If we all come together, we can make change.”

Before realizing his love of creating images, photographer Jason Schmidt originally saw himself as an aspiring architect. Growing up in New York, he idolized the iconic Twin Towers and later found his ideal aesthetic with Brutalist architecture. In his latest cover story for T Magazine’s annual design issue, Jason marries his creative interests in a series of photo shoots focused on the six Brutalist leaning Chilean structures which he refers to as a “dream assignment.” “It was kind of amazing,” Jason explained. “There was a local producer and architect who knew most of the architects that designed these six different homes, and he was our guide. We drove about four hours to get to the first house and we shot till sunset which was about 10pm and we were able to actually sleep in the first house. And then we got the sunrise and then we hit the road again. It was six houses in six days and six nights. And the itinerary was over a thousand miles. I had never been there before and the landscape there is incredible, quite extreme and it made for these incredible setting for these rather generally extreme homes.” Traveling to six homes in six days from northern Chile to more southern areas of the country is no small feat. Jason traveled light, bringing just his camera and a tripod. “Interiors were not the primary focus, otherwise I would have had to bring some lights but in this case, I knew I wanted it to just be the daylight. A big part of shooting architecture is that invariably end of day and beginning of day are going to have the best light. Midday can be too flat or too harsh. You have to figure out exactly what the right type of angle is,” Jason stated on his process once on location. “Where I want to stand for a certain definitive view of the structure, or a certain elevation, or a certain facade. But then I’ll come back and revisit that same view or that same spot with my camera and tripod back multiple times throughout an afternoon or morning because sometimes the light radically changes the way the house is rendered dimensionally, as well as the mood. Sometimes the editing process is pretty interesting because I have to compare the same picture and see how it works.” Although this project with T Magazine is architecture and structure focused, Jason is inspired by people and artists. “My portraits are pictures of people in a room and I sort of frame the space and put the person in there. I like organizing how I see things in a sort of architectural way.” In his photography work today, Jason still thinks about the lines and proportions of architecture that originally inspired him in his images every day.