Collaborations and Pop Culture Crossovers (2013–2017)

By the mid-2010s, the FriendsWithYou collective had evolved from art-world darlings into bona fide pop culture contributors. Their Los Angeles studio (to which they moved their base from Miami) became a hub for multimedia projects that reached audiences far beyond galleries and museums. A defining moment of this period was the release of We Are FriendsWithYou (Rizzoli, 2014), a lavish monograph spanning their first 12 years of work. The book, as colorful and whimsical as the art itself, featured an introduction by museum curator Peter Doroshenko and contributions from some of the duo's high-profile admirers – notably the legendary surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, and pop musician Pharrell Williams. Jodorowsky's involvement underlined the spiritual dimension of FriendsWithYou (he, like them, believes in the transformative power of ritual and imagination), while Pharrell's contribution signaled how deeply their aesthetic had permeated contemporary culture. Pharrell had long been a supporter – he co-curated an exhibit of art toys and sculpture in 2014 where FriendsWithYou pieces were shown alongside KAWS and Murakami, and he often publicly touted the duo's joyous vision. In the Rizzoli book, Pharrell wrote about how FriendsWithYou's world made him feel “childlike wonder” and how their work exemplified the idea that art can be for everyone, not just the elite. With this publication, the artists essentially codified their alternate universe where candy colors, childlike wonder and sheer joy reign supreme, a universe now documented for all to see, in glossy pages filled with smiling clouds and friendly blobs.

Around this same time, FriendsWithYou were increasingly working in animation and digital media, extending their reach into film and television. They created several animated short videos (like the aforementioned Cloudy) that distilled their messages into bite-sized, meditative cartoons. Cloudy (2012) is only a few minutes long, but in it a parade of cheerful clouds and raindrops dance in the sky, singing in harmony, conveying a pure feeling of peace. “The purpose of the piece is to transcend the viewer to a peaceful and joyous state,” the artists explained, highlighting how even a YouTube video could serve as a mini spiritual retreat. This exploration of moving images set the stage for their most ambitious media project: “True and the Rainbow Kingdom.” In 2017, True and the Rainbow Kingdom, an animated children's series, premiered on Netflix, bringing FriendsWithYou's aesthetic and ethos to a global family audience. Developed in partnership with fine animation studios (Guru Studio and Home Plate Entertainment) and executive-produced by Pharrell Williams via his i am OTHER venture, the series is explicitly based on the past works and characters of FriendsWithYou. It's as if the duo's universe of smiling clouds and magical creatures had finally taken on a life of its own in narrative form. The show follows a young girl named True and her cat friend Bartleby in the whimsical Rainbow Kingdom – a place that could easily be a cousin of Rainbow City. Many of the show's characters and settings are direct descendants of FriendsWithYou art: there are bouncing geometric beings, living clouds and stars, and an overarching theme of empathy and problem-solving through friendship. Borkson and Sandoval worked on the development and production of the show, ensuring that their philosophy of kindness, animism, and play infused each episode. The result is a children's program that, unlike the typical toy-commercial cartoons, carries a gentle spiritual undertone. True is not a proselytizing show by any means, but in its stories one can sense the idea that everything around us, from the humble little Wishing Sprites to the big Rainbow King, deserves respect and care. For FriendsWithYou, this leap into children's media was a natural extension of their art-as-healing mission. They often speak of wanting to influence not just art collectors or museum-goers, but actual communities and future generations. By co-creating a Netflix series, they managed to place their ideas in living rooms worldwide, effectively merging contemporary art with children's entertainment. It recalls how Jim Henson (with Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock) or Walt Disney in earlier eras imbued entertainment with deeper messages of tolerance and joy – except here the visuals came straight from the language of installation art and designer toys.

Another crossover moment came through the realm of music and events. Pop superstar Pharrell Williams incorporated FriendsWithYou's designs into some of his projects, and he wasn't alone in the music world. In 2015, the band Light & Space collaborated with Borkson and Sandoval to create a trippy music video that looked like a FriendsWithYou painting come to life – swirling rainbows and floating characters synchronized to melody. The collective also began exploring stage design, providing bespoke inflatable sculptures for concerts and DJ festivals, turning stages into three-dimensional cartoons. Their friendship with Pharrell led to co-branded merchandise where Pharrell's iconic optimism (“Happy”, anyone?) met FriendsWithYou's iconography. These collaborations illustrate an important aspect of FriendsWithYou's practice: they have never drawn a hard line between fine art and pop culture. Instead, they intentionally surf the wave between the two. “Accessibility is central to everything we've ever done,” Sandoval noted, “We're excited to see our work join the ranks of the Grinch and SpongeBob… We couldn't be more excited to see it in pop culture.”​ That quote came as the duo prepared one of their most visible pop culture entries – designing a balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

On Thanksgiving morning in 2018, millions of Americans watching TV saw a giant white Little Cloud with a sweet smile floating down 6th Avenue in Manhattan, flanked by two costumed raindrops and a vibrant rainbow arch. This was FriendsWithYou's Little Cloud character making its debut in the storied Macy's Parade, a dream Borkson and Sandoval had harbored since admiring the parade in their youth. The Little Cloud balloon measured 30 feet wide and 22 feet tall, a scaled-up embodiment of a figure that had recurred in the duo's work for years (Little Cloud had appeared in prints, sculptures, even as a phone-case design beloved by Ariana Grande). Now it floated among pop-culture icons like Pikachu and SpongeBob. The parade's producer noted, “Their cloud is very cute and whimsical. And what better balloon to create than a cloud?”​. For FriendsWithYou, this moment was the ultimate validation of their approach – they had entered an American cultural tradition historically reserved for big entertainment brands and given it a dose of pure art-meets-spirit. Borkson called the Little Cloud balloon “almost positive propaganda… beyond art for us, it's like world activism and world love.”​ As they walked below the bobbing cloud that day, hand-in-hand with the rainbow streamer, the artists felt they were quite literally sharing their message with the whole world. And in a sense, they were: an estimated 3.5 million people saw the balloon in person, and over 50 million watched from their screens. The sight of the wide-eyed cloud drifting over skyscrapers was brief, but for many it brought a smile. In the era's charged political climate, FriendsWithYou framed that smile as a small victory against negativity. “We just want to give people hope and some type of relief from our crazy world,” they said, noting that even if they wouldn't label the cloud political, it was certainly “battling the dark forces” by offering an alternative vision of kindness.