Capturing Cannabis Creations: Albert Law Shows the Creative Process Behind Kiaro’s Rebrand

Let’s keep it real. Weed and artistic creativity are inextricably linked. So when a cannabis company like Kiaro asks you to help them reimagine their look — as they did with Carson Ting and Hanna Lee Joshi — you can think outside the box and go crazy with it.

Vancouver-based Albert Law was there to “capture the artists at work in a natural way” as they produced work for the Canadian company.

Will Creative reached out to me as they thought that my ability to document people at work in a natural yet cinematic way would be a good fit for the project. It’s always fun collaborating with the Will team. Their team did the branding for Kiaro on this project and provided the creative direction.

My role was to give them great visual assets to work with. I’ve worked with Carson before on a previous shoot, but it was my first time meeting Hanna. [The shoot] wasn’t overly structured, and I had a lot of creative freedom to do what I felt was best.

Carson and Hanna gave some interesting insight as to their creative processes, which you can see (along with the finished products) on Kiaro’s own blog. For Carson, the idea of creating an abstract piece and “letting the mind wander” was the driving force behind his work. Albert’s task was chronicling Carson’s procedure.

These days, Carson does a lot of his work on his iPad, but we also photographed him doing some drafts on paper as well since he uses both types of media to sketch on before finalizing the artwork on the computer. The goal was to show him working on a variety of media since he also does a lot of hand drawn illustration work.

Carson’s artwork for this project was finalized digitally with Adobe Illustrator. With these photos, the goal was to show this final step and also include a bit of his studio for context and character.

While Carson draws much of his inspiration from “late-night walks through downtown Vancouver,” Hanna’s artwork for Kiaro “captures the freedom, joy, and calm of living life without pain.”

Like with Carson, Albert documented Hanna’s artistic process step-by-step. Her procedure is a bit more technology-based than Carson’s, a difference Albert made sure to spotlight.

They have a similar process, but Hanna does a lot more of her work on the computer, and the sketchbook is only for very rough sketches and ideation.

That’s a Wacom Cintique monitor, which lets you draw directly on it. Her section of the studio with her computer is fairly compact, which limited angles we could work with. But we made it work, and the mirror in the corner added a bit of visual interest as well.

A straightforward but fulfilling project for Albert, who gave Will Creative and Kiaro exactly the visual assets they needed. Working with Carson and Hanna proved to be a breeze — the pair was clearly in its element, which gave Albert ample room to improvise and test out new ideas.  

They’re both very laid back and easy going, so it was super easy to collaborate. With “at work” photos like these, it’s important to photograph the different stages of production, from the ideation on paper to the finalized work on the computer.

Credits:
Creative Direction: Will Creative

Artists: Carson Ting, Hanna Lee Joshi

See more of Albert’s work at albertlaw.ca.

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