Neurons to Nirvana: Understanding Psychedelic Medicines

created for: Mangusta Productions

art direction | design | key art

Another project with Mangu.tv, a creative production company that develops films striving to challenge the status quo and shape the future. After completing the promotional package for 2012:Time for Change, I was asked to create the key art and promotional materials, posters and DVD for this new feature documentary about the resurgence of psychedelics as medicine.

Through interviews with the world’s foremost researchers, writers, psychologists and pioneers in psychedelic psychotherapy, the film explores five powerful psychedelic substances (LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, Ayahuasca and Cannabis) and their previously established medicinal and psychotherapeutic potential. Use of these drugs is not presented as harmful or self-indulgent, but as a rational and valuable addition to therapeutic practice and instrumental in a quest for transformation, mental health, creativity, intellectual and spiritual enhancement and insight.

The filmmakers were extremely interested in presenting a scientific approach toward the subject as this film touches on controversial territory. This logical and rigorous intention became the inspiration for the key art. As the film focused on the medicinal properties of these drugs, the artwork took its cues from this scientific outlook, highlighting the electrical signal between two single neurons. The singular focus on this glowing synapse creates a dramatic contrast against the dark background of scintillating orbs which symbolize other microscopic cells in the neural network, or perhaps the expansive cosmos.

Directed by:
Oliver Hockenhull & Mikki Willis

Release Date: October 2013
theaters nationwide

Now available on iTunes & Netflix.

More information check Mangu.tv