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RUNWAY 2026 — PRESERVATION ANXIETY
The things we keep.
For over a century, fashion photographed arrival: the new dress, the intact leather, the perfect object.
We almost never photographed what comes after: cleaning, repairing, wrapping, storing, preserving.
RUNWAY 2026 starts from a paradox: inside every luxury object there is something designed to prevent its disappearance. A small silica sachet. A wrapping. An invisible gesture.
Luxury is no longer acquisition. It is the work that stops acquisition from disappearing.
The campaign turns that idea into a physically built visual system. The word RUNWAY was never typed. It was created through gravity, shadow, material behavior and a real chemical reaction, across four connected scenes:
R — ABSORPTION
UN — PROTECTION
WA — CONSERVATION
Y — SATURATION
These are not four independent images. They are a single system.
Because everything we preserve has a limit: the leather, the photograph, the memory, the skin, us.
Perhaps the next luxury is not owning something that lasts forever.
Perhaps it is deciding what deserves to be conserved.
Speculative Editorial Campaign — 2026.
This project summarizes the full process I offer as a service: cultural research, concept, visual system and AI-directed production — from idea to a coherent, publication-ready visual identity.
Creative Direction, Art Direction, Concept, Visual System Design and Directed Production: Vanesa Martinez.
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Here’s how I determined the visuals for this personal project.
Once the theme and moodboard were set, the next thing I thought about was the structure of the video: what do I want to show, and how should each visual connect to the next?
From there, I structured the flow as:
Object → Observation → Deconstruction → Experimentation
This structure was then translated into each shot you see in this motion design video.
For the visual style, I combined digital aesthetics and editorial brutalism through pixel textures, ASCII graphics, glitch, construction grids, data-inspired visuals, and brutalist typography.
This visual approach was heavily inspired by the work of Riccardo Agostinelli & Dan Neuenhaus.
Which shot do you find the most visually satisfying?
Concept, Design & Animation by me
Most luxury brands launch with noise.
For Marvèle, I took the opposite route,quiet, deliberate, and undeniably high-end. Everyday elegance shouldn't depend on chance.
I created two layout variations for this concept:
Option 1: Headline split above and below the imagery.
Option 2: Full headline consolidated below the imagery.
Which direction captures that effortless, understated luxury better for you? Option 1 or 2 👇
Hey, I’m Damilola—Product & Visual Designer. If your brand deserves an aesthetic this deliberate, my inbox is open.
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Option 2
FLORA × Museum Archive challenge
The ask: reimagine one of the public Domain works of art in the Met Museum's archive, using the Flora AI Canvas. The output could be anything - no limits.
The answer: Working with the sculpture, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer by Edgar Degas, the sculpture was modelled 1881
As someone with a personal interest in ballet this sculpture has both intrigued and annoyed me. I love the defiant stance of the young dancer but have also always felt unease, know that the ballet dancers of the period were regarded very lowly, and often exploited, making her young age even more uncomfortable.
Secondly, even though I know that the sculpture depicts a Caucasian girl, I have chosen to make her a girl of colour. Most of all simply because I have always seen her as such because of the bronze but also because women of colour are still struggling to break through in ballet, as don’t fit the ‘traditional’ aesthetics and stereotypical body types still pervading the art. Even such a thing as finding tights or shoes to fit a darker skin tone is still hard, which is why I have chosen to depict my young dancer with her natural skin-tone and no tricot . AI still only offered her light tights (tricot) and shoes, until I specified with emphasis what I wanted for her.
While always being seen as defiant, I reimagined the statue to find freedom and empowerment in her dance, something she still inspires in others.
See the original piece here:
Thanks to FLORA and Contra.
It didn’t think I’d have quite so much fun, but I certainly did! Loving the FLORA canvas and the possibilities it offers. Plus I find watching the live nodes intriguing and somehow poetically meditative.
Also, thanks to The Met museum for making these amazing pieces of art available for us to enjoy.
#FLORAMuseum
Such a strong idea.