They started in a shared studio in Miami's Little Haiti, drawn to the spectacle of vibrant colour pouring out of Haitian export businesses — bales of discarded clothing sorted and piled in improbable rainbows. Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz began collecting what others threw away. Then they started building worlds from it.

Fabian De La Flor works a full-time job at The Miami Herald, raises a family, and makes emotionally charged drawings of city landscapes that read like a personal timeline — each figure a photograph from his own life. He did a mural in Wynwood. The V&A hasn't called yet, but the Museo de Arte de El Salvador has. This is the conversation.

Zakee Shariff has always had one aim — to touch people through her work. Since founding her studio in 1998, that hasn't changed, even as the practice has expanded from fashion and textiles into spiritually guided painting, coaching, and collaborative projects from Chicago to Tokyo. The V&A bought one of her prints. She has drawn on walls with Cody Hudson and talked life and the universe with Futura 2000 at 2am in Japan. This is her story.

Erni Vales began painting subway cars in the mid-1980s. In 1993 he introduced 3D graffiti to the world — not a stylistic development but a dimensional one. He has since painted 500 club murals, built sets for David LaChapelle shoots with Madonna and Elton John, designed a bar in Moscow, painted a sculpture for Mercury Records, completed 169 paintings in 13 months, and currently runs EVLworld Studio in Miami. His favourite artist is Chuck Close. Jackie 60 at Mother was the last really great New York club.

Kristian Schmidt was born in New York, raised in Paris, spent summers in Sweden, then packed his bags for Tokyo. His stepmother was Ingrid Bergman. His first wildlife gallery show sold out in one night. He has since photographed whale sharks in deep ocean with models in red ballgowns, shot Manta rays at midnight in 40 feet of dark water, and collaborated with WildAid on work that makes it impossible, once seen, to look away from what is being destroyed. He is living the dream. He has something up his sleeve that no one has ever seen before.

He started with a spray can and a tag called Ozon. He ended up at TypeMedia in The Hague. Along the way: graffiti crews in Bogotá, a Rubén Fontana workshop that introduced him to Fontographer, Type@Cooper in New York, and a typeface called Salvaje that became one of the most recognised releases to come out of Colombia. The name was always there: Type + Ozon = Typozon. Bought the domain in 2005. Still using it now, except now it is a studio, a foundry, and a broader point of view on design shaped by collaborators on two continents