Type
Product, branding, communication design
client
Personal Projects
role
CREATIVE DIRECTION
year
The brief
Design a luxury botanical wellness brand from zero and produce a campaign-quality hero image using only AI generation and compositing — no photographer, no studio, no product sample.
Strategy
Luxury product photography lives or dies on material specificity. Most AI product work reads as generic because the prompts are generic.
The approach here was to reverse-engineer what makes high-end product photography feel expensive — underwater entry dynamics, caustic light refractions, embossed typography, gradient backgrounds — and source each element from a specific real-world reference before writing a single line of prompt.
Creative Execution
The typographic treatment references Eath's architectural serif weight, translated into raised embossed white lettering directly on glass. The underwater environment references Saatde's below-surface camera angle and warm blush background tone, combined with the rich dark-to-peach gradient from Eath's backdrop. Each source reference was documented before generation. Label compositing handled in Photoshop to maintain text accuracy the model cannot guarantee.
Results A campaign-ready hero image demonstrating AI art direction as a discipline distinct from AI generation — knowing what to reference, why, and how to close the gap between output and intent in post.