I'm Morgan van Heerden, and Latent State Studio is my product visualization practice.
I spent seven years at Ogilvy Cape Town, working my way from art director to head of art on brands like VW, Castrol, and BP. After that, another thirteen years in advertising and design - in London and back in South Africa. Somewhere along the way, I became obsessed with product rendering and never looked back.
What that background gives me is something most visualization specialists don't have: I don't just make products look accurate. I make them look like something you'd want to buy.
Every product has hundreds of hours of design thinking embedded in it - material choices, engineering decisions, form language - that most people will never notice. My job is to make that work visible. To take the intent behind the design and turn it into an image that tells the story the designer meant to tell. It's a romanticized view, but it's grounded in reality. The details are real. The craftsmanship is real. I just make sure you can actually see it.
I work in KeyShot, which means I can take native CAD files directly - no conversion, no format headaches, no delays. I treat the digital environment the way I'd treat a physical photography studio: real lighting principles, real composition, real atmosphere. The software handles the physics. I handle the storytelling.
I work directly with every client. There's no handoff to a junior, no account manager in between. You talk to me, and I make the images.
Clients include: Vessel Brand, Lift Foils, Bunker Up Firepits