From childhood, Vaishnavi Thankam was hooked on cinema and fashion, spending hours watching what played on screen and then recreating it in her own way through building miniatures, painting watercolours, and styling looks with her mother’s saris. That instinct to remake what she saw stayed with her as she grew older.
While earning a BA in Economics, she often found herself helping friends with art history projects, a habit that did more than fill a few late nights and quietly rerouted her path. Learning Photoshop and other Adobe tools followed naturally, pulling her toward graphic design and illustration and eventually toward production design, where her early impulse for building and visual storytelling resurfaced.
That pull led her to the Savannah College of Art and Design, where weekends were spent on film sets and weekdays in the scenic shop building sets for SCAD produced shows. Now based in New York, she works across commercials, editorials, and film with clients including ODDA Magazine, MetroPlusHealth, and Dossier Perfumes.