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AI for the masses, craft for the rich. What do you think about this? 👀
When anyone can generate “perfect” in seconds, the human touch becomes the distinctive thing.
Is AI becoming the look of mass market, while craft becomes the new luxury? 🤔
Thank you! 😊 As you can read on the post, these are references from the linked brands, not my work. Curious what you think about the AI vs hand drawn debate though?
Thank you so much for clarifying! That makes sense. In my opinion, both have their own value. AI is great for quick ideas and inspiration, but hand drawn work has real emotion and personal touch that AI cannot copy. I think the best work comes when we use AI for ideas and hand skills for final creativity.
The Dior and Prada hand-drawn work feels different because the frame budget lets the studio keep revising by hand, and that revision rhythm is what viewers actually read. When a brand like Coca Cola moves to AI for a holiday campaign it is buying speed at the cost of a...
Maybe over time craft really will go that way, which is really sad :(
Time has always been money, and with all the layoffs and everything going on, it's hard not to get caught up in "doing more in less time". I just hope we don't stop caring about quality and the strategy...
I saw a lot of posts from illustrators and other creatives on IG today showing that the Dior campaign is AI-generated, not real work. For me, that’s not a problem, because I use AI too. It can really create cool things (remember, it’s just a tool: your eye and your art direction...
I think you're onto something. When polish becomes cheap, visible effort becomes the signal. AI will probably raise the floor, but craft is what people will pay a premium to feel.
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BRED FOR. is a fictional dog brand built on one idea: every breed was bred for a job, and the instinct never left. Collies herded sheep, poodles retrieved ducks, Yorkies hunted rats, Dalmatians ran beside fire carriages, so each product turns a breed's original work into an everyday object.
Style 01 is built from Japanese and Korean folk art found at the Cleveland Museum of Art, The Met, LACMA and the Rijksmuseum, and designs the products as soft, deadpan designer objects.
Style 02 is built from early colour autochromes and a 1914 lithographic poster from the Rijksmuseum and the Albertina, and turns every scene into a modern fashion campaign with an archival feel.
The two Styles were chained with Edit image: Style 01 products placed into Style 02 scenes, every headline rewritten in the brand's dry, deadpan voice. The strongest images were selected, upscaled and finished with a logo made in Recraft Logo Maker.
Style 01 (products): https://www.recraft.ai/styles/b8e1a6b6-ae61-49db-907d-74229530b596
Style 02 (campaign): https://www.recraft.ai/styles/7f2a89de-d69a-4fad-aa0d-ba6302c9a2f3
The Modern Bestiary — Old monsters, new curses
I found Anton Seder's Das Thier in der decorativen Kunst (Vienna, 1896) on the Internet Archive, in a public-domain scan by the Getty Research Institute: dragons and sea serpents engraved like a naturalist's specimens and framed in gold ornament. I cut five of Seder's dragons into a Recraft V4 Style that draws the creature and the engraving, then built two more Styles from the same archives (Doré's storm hatching, Harry Clarke's white line on black, Seder's own damask and gold) to repaint each plate in two or three inks over black. Chained together, they make The Modern Bestiary: six folklore creatures whose legendary power has become a modern curse.
The basilisk now petrifies you through your phone, the sphinx makes you prove you are human, and Baba Yaga's hut only turns round for the exact password.
Every creature became a full-art trading card. The deck comes with a back, a booster pack, cardboard mockups and a pack-opening film, all made in Recraft Studio; the card frame and text are typeset on top.
🗂 Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/bbf6a9a5-fbd2-4dd7-a384-1365fe3f0d53
🎨 Styles (anyone with the link can use them):
I · Seder 1896 — https://www.recraft.ai/styles/2ff8402f-d4ad-4fda-a445-12f3f4c6fffa
II · Night inks — https://www.recraft.ai/styles/ed34b145-e226-4098-8b21-1fff449b4b10
III · Lacquer inks — https://www.recraft.ai/styles/e1b93a4a-5277-4d1f-b82b-d19d60bbb8b4
📜 Archive: https://archive.org/details/gri_33125013920190 (full list of 10 references in the first reply)
📣 Social post: https://x.com/builtbykern/status/2116669432323842378
Stunning
Great work