Labiran Mayowa: ‘As art director, i let story’s core emotion dictate palette, texture’

With a portfolio ranging from daily soaps like Tinsel to film-noir style projects like Oloibiri, Labiran Mayowa has designed her working approach to match the varied emotional tones of these projects.

She lets the story’s core emotion dictate the palette, texture, and lighting. “For Tinsel, I lean into bright, high-key, clean aesthetics to support its energetic, everyday drama while in Oloibiri, I shift to desaturated tones, deep shadows, and gritty textures to amplify tension and melancholy. The design becomes a silent translator—warm and open for soap, cold and constrained for dark, dramatic storytelling,” Labiran Mayowa muses.

Her work on Wura brought a distinct, luxurious aesthetic to the screen. What was the core visual concept she wanted to establish, and how did she execute it?
“The core concept was “wealth as a mask.” I wanted every room to feel desirable but cold—like you’d love to live there but sense something’s wrong. I executed it by pairing warm, rich materialswith hard, sharp lighting and slightly oversized furniture. The space doesn’t hug you; it judges you,” she reveals.

Hotel Majestic and Hush were intense drama series, and she tried to maintain a consistent visual language over hundreds of episodes. “I create a visual rulebook that everyone breathes. Fixed colour families for each character, a short list of approved textures, and strict prop categories. Then I assign “keepers” on set whose only job is continuity. After episode 50, memory fails—systems don’t.”

Colore is a French series. How did art directing for an international audience differ from your experience with Nigerian TV and film?
“The biggest difference was pacing of visual information. French audiences are comfortable with stillness and negative space. Nigerian storytelling often wants energy in every frame. I had to learn to hold back—to let one meaningful object sit alone and breathe. That was harder than adding more. Still I let the Nigerian in me come out once in a while,” she quips.

With films such as Kambili and Alakada (comedies) versus Zero Hour (thriller), she changed her design process to create a good visual language. She says, “for comedy, I ask “what can go slightly wrong in the background?” A tilted picture, a clashing pattern, a prop that shouldn’t be there. For drama, I ask “what’s hidden?” My color palette expands for comedy and contracts for drama. Comedy is generous; drama is withholding.”

Oloibiri required a specific gritty, authentic look. Mayowa had to make decay earned, not decorated. “You can’t just throw dirt on new walls. We had to layer grime—water stains, rust, smoke damage—in a specific order that told time. The hardest part was stopping myself from over-doing it. Authentic grit has restraint,” she says.

Mayowa always tries to reflect a character’s inner life. In Conversations in Transit and This Lady Called Life, her characters feel intimate. She shrinks the world using minimal objects.

“Fewer objects, softer edges, and everything placed within arm’s reach of the character. If she’s lonely, her space has one chair, one cup, one light. If she’s hiding, there are layers—curtains, half-open doors, things stored away. The set becomes her subconscious, she says.

Her most rewarding challenge, and why?
“Mystic River was my most rewarding challenge, because we built the entire set in a forest and had to turn limited living space into sets nature itself was our set The story is heavy—grief, suspicion, quiet rage—and the temptation was to make the sets feel as dark as the emotions. But I learned that true tension lives in what you “don’t”show. I designed spaces that felt almost too normal: warm kitchens, tidy living rooms, ordinary streets.

The horror wasn’t in the walls—it was in how those normal spaces suddenly felt wrong when a character walked through them carrying a secret. The challenge was trusting the audience to feel the unease without me painting it onto every surface. That project taught me that less isn’t just more—sometimes less is everything.”

She doesn’t research from a distance. She travels, sits and listens. She hires local advisors who laugh when she gets it wrong. “And I build a “never” list—patterns, colors, objects that would never appear in that real-world context. Authenticity isn’t accuracy; it’s avoiding the fake note,” Mayowa reflects.

In Tauranin Zamani, she led the team to meet the deadline. “We built the set in a hotel reception we had limited time and we had to make sure nothing was damaged I stripped every non-essential, pre-built modular walls we could reconfigure, and had the team paint while assembling. It was tough but it turned out really good.”

When she receives a script, she first thinks of the scene inside a character’s home. How do they live when no one’s watching? That single tells me their relationship with comfort, control, and truth. Everything else flows from there.”

To translate a writer’s words into a detailed mood board for the director and DOP, she finds four anchors: one for colour, one for texture, one for light quality, and one for emotional temperature. “Then I find real-world photographs—never other films. I present no more than 15 images. If they don’t see it by then, I haven’t understood them yet,” she says confidently.

For colour grading of the sets, particularly when creating a signature look, as she did did for Wura, she paints 2×2 foot boards in candidate colours and bring them to the actual location under the actual lighting plan. Then she shifts them in-camera with the DOP before building.

“For Wura, we landed on a gold that reads warm on skin but cool on walls—luxury without sleepiness.”

To balance aesthetics with functionality—ensuring a set looks good, and also allows for camera movement and actor comfort, she physically walks every camera path and actor mark.

“If a lens hits a wall or an actor can’t sit naturally, the design fails. I’ve learned to love negative space—emptiness looks like intention, not budget.”

On props, she assign every one a job: reveal character, advance plot, or create mood. “If it doesn’t do at least one, it’s out. Then I remove one more. A cluttered set tells me the designer was insecure.”

Early on, she thought more detail meant more realism. Now she knowd that what you leave out is just as loud as what you put in. “I used to decorate. Now I edit.”

She incorporates sustainable or cost-effective practices into her set construction such that she rentsneverything that isn’t nailed down. She builds sets to break flat and store small. She keeps warehouse inventory of reusable walls and dressings.”

“I’ve become ruthless about asking “do we need to build this, or can we find it?”
She often asks.

She admires Stuart Craig who showed her that nothing is impossible; locally, Pat Nebo showed her that Nigerian stories deserve global craft. “ I don’t copy them,” she says, “I steal their questions.”

In an era of digital enhancement, how does she decide between physical set construction and computer-generated imagery? She answers, “If an actor touches it, breathes on it, or leans against it—build it. If it’s background, sky, or impossible scale—CGI. But I fight for practical every time. Actors act better in real rooms. Physics matters.”

A ‘self-motivated professional,’ she keeps her creative passion high when working on back-to-back, high-pressure projects. “I protect one small thing per project that’s just for me—a hidden detail, a color no one else notices. That secret keeps me curious. Also, I eat Lol. Burnout or hungary isn’t a badge of honour,” she laughs.

How does she manage the art department team—props, set designers, painters—to ensure everyone adheres to the design concept? Mayowa smiles, she suddenly breathes: “Morning huddles, written briefs with reference images, and a wall of “approved vs rejected.” I also make sure everyone knows the story, not just their task. When a painter knows why a wall is sad, they paint differently.”

At a time she had to manage a significant budget cut without compromising the visual quality of the project. She notes, “we lost 40 per cent of building budget three days into building . I swapped two custom rooms for one versatile set dressed three ways, used lighting to hide cheaper materials, and begged a rental house for last-minute favours. The director never knew. The audience saw nothing missing.”

On building a strong, trusting relationship with a new director or Director of Photography, she has this to say, “I ask them to show me their favorite frame from any film and tell me why. Then I build a small test set based on that conversation—no words, just work. Trust isn’t talked into existence; it’s built in miniature.”

How does she handle creative differences when the director’s vision clashes with hers?
She answers: “I build their version first—quickly, cheaply. Nine times out of ten, they see the problem themselves. On the tenth time, I ask “what’s the story need, not what do we prefer?” The story is the boss.”

With a goal to ‘contribute effectively to corporate objectives, she aligns her creative vision with the production’s overall financial goals. She asks questions before she designs anything.

And to debunk the most common misconception about an art director, she says, “we’re just nicer decorators. No—we’re storytellers who work in three dimensions. A writer uses words; we use walls. A bad art director makes pretty rooms. A good art director makes you feel something before anyone speaks.”

On her experience working on Wura, she confesses, Wura is the first time she had to make evil feel like a promotion. “Every design choice asked: “What would power look like if it never had to apologize?” The gold, the scale, the stillness—it all said “I’ve won.” That was thrilling and uncomfortable. I loved every second the hardest fun I have ever had.”