AzsaWest
CCO, Wieden + Kennedy
Azsa West is a director, artist, and award-winning Chief Creative Officer currently based in Portland, Oregon, at Wieden + Kennedy. Originally from a small, haunted surf town in California, West grew up influenced by the ocean, skaters, and a metaphysical graphic designer who believed in auras and aliens.
West studied photography and illustration at California College of the Arts, the internet at Hyper Island, and was inducted into W+K 12 – a cult disguised as an experimental school – with an emphasis on film, ideation, art direction, and writing. West has exhibited works at the Pompidou in Paris, Art & Science Gallery in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, Brazil, as well as a neighbourhood gay bar in Sydney. A book of their drawings, Nature Study on Lonesome Island, was published in 2011.
Over the course of a decade, West has led creative output across four Wieden + Kennedy offices globally, with a brief detour to Hollywood as an entertainment marketing agent at CAA. From their advertising work to their art to their filmmaking projects, West’s visual style has been described as “spellbinding, insanity-inducing, mind-blowing, and out-of-this-world.” West points to their global travels as a significant influence on such an eclectic body of work. Yet no matter where West calls home – as a queer-identified, Indigenous person of colour – they strive to create not only culturally impactful work but also an environment that promotes authenticity, experimentation, and inclusion.
West’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Vice, Hypebeast, Adbusters, Nowness, Huffington Post, Forbes, Creativity, Ad Age, Girls Like Us, It’s Nice That, Put an Egg on It, CMYK, Good Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company.
Clients include SKIMS, Instagram, Rimowa, Netflix, Amazon, WNBA, Nike, Air Jordan, Heineken, Trolli, DoorDash, Magic Leap, Coke, Google, Disney, Canada Goose, Burberry, Shiseido, Zalando, Sony, l’Occitane, Secret, Old Spice, Target, P&G, Ace Hotel, Laika Studios, Beautiful People, Airbnb, Happy Dance, Lord Jones, Corona, Gopuff, TikTok, Hinge, and MTV.