Luna Naseh: From Illustration to Production Design

Working across commercial and cultural commissions, her illustrations have been created for international brands, musicians, and organizations including UNICEF and Tehran Municipality, while her artwork has appeared on public billboards in New York City's Times Square, Seoul during Frieze Art Week, Iran, Ghent, and Brussels. In addition to her commissioned work, her personal artwork has been exhibited in more than a dozen exhibitions and galleries around the world.

Instead of treating illustration as a separate discipline, Naseh views it as the foundation of everything she creates. Each drawing becomes an exercise in world-building: considering not only composition and color, but also the history, mood, and character of a place. That way of thinking would eventually guide every stage of her career, from illustration to theatre and film, where the same questions are simply explored at a different scale.

Her projects range from dramas to historical films and speculative dystopian worlds. Instead of repeating the same visual approach, Luna Naseh is drawn to projects that require building a completely different environment, with every detail influenced by the people, culture, and circumstances of that world.

Among her most ambitious set builds is an eighteenth-century Louisiana tavern and adjoining storeroom, recreated through extensive historical research, architectural detailing, scenic painting, and custom fabrication.

In striking contrast, another of Luna's full-scale set builds was for the short film Kill(H)er. It transported audiences into a retro-futuristic motel within a dystopian society where violence has become a form of escape. Premiering at the TCL Chinese Theatre as part of the Golden State Film Festival, the short film challenged Luna to build a world that balanced beauty with unease. Rich color palettes, vintage-inspired interiors, and playful geometric motifs created an atmosphere of elegance and nostalgia, while subtle visual cues gradually revealed the motel's far more disturbing purpose.

Some of Luna's production design projects explore themes of migration, identity, memory, family, and belonging. For her, production design is an opportunity to give physical form to deeply human experiences, creating environments that reinforce the emotional core of a story.

One such project is Whispers of Home, a short film that has been selected for multiple U.S. film festivals, including a screening at the TCL Chinese Theatre as part of the Beverly Hills Film Festival. Centered on themes of displacement, nostalgia, and cultural identity, the film required transforming a Los Angeles residence into a home that felt Iranian.

To achieve that authenticity, Luna undertook extensive visual research, carefully sourcing furniture, textiles, artwork, and everyday household objects through contacts in Iran, Los Angeles prop houses, and local thrift stores. The location was further transformed with custom paint treatments, stained-glass details, and bespoke wallpaper designed specifically for the production, allowing every room to reflect the history, culture, and lived experience of the family at the center of the story.

Instead of simply recreating an interior, the design sought to evoke the feeling of home itself, using architecture, color, and carefully chosen objects to communicate memory, identity, and belonging.

Over the course of her career, Naseh has reached audiences through international exhibitions, public art installations, commercial collaborations, theatrical productions, and film festival screenings.

She has contributed to major studio productions while also continuing her work in illustration, theatre, and independent film.

Working with ink, paint, wood, theatre, or film, Naseh is always interested in creating worlds that feel like they existed long before anyone arrived.