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For this project, I explored the beauty of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print art and reimagined it through modern everyday life. I created a custom Recraft V4 Style inspired by vintage Japanese illustrations, combining antique textures, intricate linework, and muted indigo and terracotta colors. Using this historical aesthetic, I illustrated modern concepts such as bicycle food delivery, smartphones, headphones, and electric scooters. My goal was to create a visual connection between traditional Japanese art and the modern world, giving an old artistic style a fresh new story.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
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7:30 a.m. First coffee. Same ritual, every single day.
Some people have a sweet tooth. I have a coffee tooth. And while the kettle boils, I usually catch myself daydreaming about the same place: Japan, a trip I’ve wanted to take for years.
For this challenge, I brought the two together. Digging through public domain archives, I found Japanese woodblock prints with rolling waves, round windows, cherry blossoms and graceful women drawn in a few calm, confident lines. I turned them into a custom Recraft Style and gave it a brief no Edo-era print shop could have imagined: a modern café, with takeaway cups, delivery bags, loyalty cards and an ordering app.
The café is called Mado, “window” in Japanese: a small window to slow down in a busy day. Its barista, also Mado, wears an indigo wave apron, a round-window hairpin and wireless earbuds. She remembers your oat milk order, protects the window seats from video calls, and believes every laptop should close when the cake arrives.
Old prints, new rituals. My entry for the Contra × Recraft Archive Style Challenge.
This is beautiful Sofiia! Love how you turned your daily coffee ritual + Japan daydream into a full brand concept. The MADO packaging with that Japanese illustration style is so warm and nostalgic. Coffee tooth is real! ☕️ Hope you get to Japan soon!
What if the Old Masters designed sportswear?
While taking part in the Recraft contest, I started thinking about how to mix classical painting with modern brands. I experimented with 18th–19th-century oil painting aesthetics and thought: why not take this idea further and create an entire sportswear brand around it?
Classic art, modern athletes, contemporary fashion. A little unexpected? Maybe. But that's what makes it fun! So, I created a sportswear brand concept that brings these two worlds together. The result is right below 👇
Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/ae17a521-566c-457e-9482-d4b94157111f
Archive references:
Sick art direction
Nocturnes of 2126✨
What if Van Gogh and Whistler had painted the night of 2126? 🌙 Nine nocturnes of a future city (robot hounds, rainy delivery bots, air ferries, a tree wired with light), painted with a custom Recraft style built from public-domain paintings at The Met and the Smithsonian.
I went digging through the open-access collections of The Met and the Smithsonian looking for the night. I found Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 Saint-Rémy paintings (Cypresses, Wheat Field with Cypresses, Olive Trees, Irises) for their swirling impasto, and James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturnes (Bognor, Valparaiso) for their deep blue darkness lit by small points of gold. I blended the two into a Recraft style, then chained a second style from its results to lock in a cobalt-and-amber night palette. Nocturnes of 2126 uses that 1889 brush to paint a future neither artist could imagine: robot hounds, delivery bots in the rain, silent air ferries, AR lenses and glass houses with solar roofs, all at blue hour.
The style is public, so try it yourself 👇
day by the day work you are doing is outstanding man.