by.U x Isyana Sarasvati

Isyana Sarasvati has a very specific public identity. Classically trained, vocally precise, the kind of artist whose stage presence reads as composed even when the music is anything but. She is, by most measures, elegant. That's the word that follows her.

By.U did not want elegant.

They wanted loud. Saturated. A campaign soaked in their own brand palette. Greens that shout, oranges that demand attention, the kind of color story that doesn't whisper anything. Three layouts, three scenarios, each one leaning further into the absurd warmth that the Boooleh TaU! campaign carried as its entire personality. A mudik selfie with family. A pre-dawn video call, pajama-clad and wide-eyed. A gaming duo caught mid-brag. All of it played for maximum expressiveness, minimum restraint.

And Isyana: orange wig, colour-blocked outfits, reactions dialled to eleven — was completely, entirely in it.

That's the thing about working with performers of her calibre: range isn't just about what they can do with their voice. She understood immediately that this wasn't about abandoning who she is, but about accessing a different register. The comedy landed because she committed. The expressions, the mock-shock, the gleeful chaos, read as genuine because she wasn't performing reluctance. She was having fun, and the camera knew it.

My job, photographically, was to hold all of that energy without letting the frame collapse under the weight of it. When everything is loud (the wardrobe, the set, the talent, the brief) composition becomes the only thing keeping the image from becoming noise. Each layout needed a visual hierarchy that could survive the colour assault and still point the eye where it needed to go: to Isyana, then to the product, then to the message.

Working across nearly every major telecommunications provider in Indonesia over the years has taught me that each brand has its own visual language, its own tolerance for chaos. By.U lives at the far end of that spectrum. Controlled mayhem, executed with precision.

With Isyana in the frame, precision was the easy part.

- Arza Nursatya, advertising photographer, HIRA Imaji, Jakarta