Is it just us or are CG products having a moment? We asked CG sorceress Haruko Hayakawa to weigh in

If you stumble across Haruko Hayakawa’s work on your feed, it’s impossible to scroll past it swiftly. Exquisitely choreographed, each of her compositions are pretty hard to look away from. Whether it’s a jar of Blueland hand soap levitating over a field of spring blooms, a glinting bottle of Casa Malka’s tequila set amidst a lush desert landscape, or a bowl of slurpy noodles – topped with Fly By Jing’s Chengdu Crunch hot sauce – sitting in a bamboo forest, Hayakawa’s digital trompe l’oeils take notes from the reality of the physical world around us, and then push things a bit further. From SKKN, Bon Appétit to The Telegraph, the Brooklyn-based CG artist and creative director has worked with a wide range of clients, helping brands tell their stories through her fantastical compositions. As we kept a close eye on Hayakawa’s growing body of work over the past years, we also noticed a shift in the larger industry – the world of branding now seems to be swimming in CG products. Whether it’s Milk Makeup sending tubes of their viral Jelly Tint flying to the sky for its launch campaign, or Hermès tapping into 3D animation to highlight the craftsmanship of their throw blankets, CG is helping brands go to a place they couldn’t reach before. And as the tide swells, the job of a CG product artist also seems to be on the rise. While it may be in demand, the skills required to master the painstaking wizardry of CG calls for extensive experience, and really, just a whole lot of resilience. Take, for example, the story of Hayakawa, whose journey to her current hi-def portfolio began at the age of 13, when she stumbled upon a 3D landscaping program called Bryce, and began fumbling her way through creating “what was called ‘3D abstract art’ in the early 2000’s,” she says. Her creative path, since then, has been anything but straightforward. As her career evolved, she worked as a graphic designer, creative director, and also got pulled deep into the realm of food styling and photography – an experience that colours her work to date. But the big push into CG happened only in 2020, when Hayakawa quit her job at a creative agency and was working on a packaging project riddled by the production delays due to the pandemic. With no samples at hand, she mocked up the product in CG, and that sent her down a “3D rabbit hole,” as she describes. “Perhaps it is part of living in a place like NYC, but throughout my 20s, I felt a go-go-go sense of urgency to move forward in my career and the pandemic completely shut down that feeling,” says Hayakawa. The lull of the pandemic allowed her to take a pause and freely experiment with CG. “I spent all of 2020 creating a body of work that was reflective of where I wanted my career to go and what I wanted to be hired for.”