When AI can create anything. Why did Hermès bet on a human?

At the beginning of January 2026, the Hermès homepage turned into an underwater world drawn in pen and ink. One of the strongest luxury brands in the world chose its most digital environment to show the hand of one particular artist. Why now, and what does it say about the future of creativity?

An eel swims next to a watch. A pelican peeks out of a loafer. At the beginning of January 2026, you opened the categories of the Hermès online store through drawings: seahorses, fish and starfish, creatures half of the sky and half of the sea, drawn in pen and ink. Above them a band of underwater life, in them the grain of paper, lines with a slight tremor and colour that fills a shape only partly.

The artist is the Paris illustrator Linda Merad. You can see the whole underwater world in her portfolio. Her drawings appeared at a time when a striking image can be generated within seconds, and that is exactly why design and fashion magazines from Fast Company to Domus wrote about them.

This is where the paradox behind this article begins. The more easily an image is made, the rarer the things behind it become: the idea, the decision and the person who made it.

An image appears in seconds. An idea needs an author

Generative tools can now propose a photograph, an illustration, a video, a logo or a website layout in a short time. The results often look technically clean and balanced. The technically impressive image has become accessible, and with it the question every brand asks is changing. “What will it look like” has a quick answer. The question that matters is “why should it look exactly like this”.

An image is a result. An idea is a reason. An image can come from a description; an idea comes from understanding: who the brand is, who it speaks to and what people should remember about it. Original work therefore lives in the decision that comes before the image, and in the handwriting someone fills it with. When impressive images are abundant, value moves to what can be recognised: a point of view, a language, an identity of one’s own.

N° 01 Authorship

Hermès: an underwater world drawn by hand

Linda Merad is a French illustrator. She studied graphic design at ENSAAMA in Paris, and her pen and ink drawings have been published by The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Since 2021 she has spent time every week in a lithography workshop. Her characters are half human and half animal or plant, drawn in a few simple lines. In her own description, they express familiar emotions in a strange form.

Hermès noticed her handwriting in 2025 and first invited her to Instagram. In September, kissing sandals and swans emerging from handbags appeared there; in October, hats that had grown legs. She received the brief for the January campaign in November, with a deadline in mid-December. The campaign belonged to the theme Hermès chose for 2026: L’appel du large, the call of the open sea. Merad drew in pen and ink on paper. As she told It’s Nice That, the challenge was to carry her style over from stone to paper.

On her website she describes the campaign as the dreamlike journey of a seahorse through an upside-down world, where birds rise from the sea and fish leap out of the clouds. She worked with Hermès art directors Rachel Cazadamont and Jéremy Givord; the drawings were set in motion by animator Quentin Klein and the music was composed by Pascal Armand.

A decision worth noticing

We know the reasons for the collaboration from the artist’s own words. She told Fast Company that the illustrated website was unplanned: the online store team took a liking to her drawings. According to her, the brand wanted it to be visible that the art was made by a person, and she herself was surprised by how much creative freedom the luxury house gave her.

When things are made by hand, you can feel there is a soul behind them.

Linda Merad to Fast Company, paraphrased

She sees charm and humanity in imperfections. The sources do not include a statement from Hermès representatives, so the reading that follows is our editorial view.

For a house whose value rests on craft, a hand on the website is a natural continuation of the workshop. An online store is among the most rational environments in commerce: filters, basket, speed. Illustration brings in a moment when a person stops and smiles. The pelican in the loafer points to the shoe category and stays in memory at the same time. That combination of function and humour carries the emotional value a brand builds over years.

Luxury as time, decision and signature

Luxury can also be read as a relationship with time. A hand-stitched bag carries hours of work. A hand-drawn website carries weeks of drawing and the courage to give an artist a free hand. When images are cheap and fast, luxury becomes whatever requires time, judgement and a particular name. Linda Merad’s drawing works as a signature: recognisable, unmistakable, and carrying a story with it.

What came next is interesting too. According to Creative Boom, in summer 2026 Hermès presented another illustrated campaign on its website and social media, this time by the Paris artist Sarah Martinon, animated by Armand Béraud. Hand drawing thus returns to the digital world of Hermès with another artist and another handwriting.

Four more forms of humanity

Hermès shows authorship. Over the past two years other brands have reached for other forms of humanity, each answering the same era with a question of its own.

N° 02 Imagination: Prada draws a winter tale

At the end of October 2026, Prada presented its holiday campaign Drawing Prada. Photographer and director Glen Luchford shot the actors, among them Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke, and a team of artists led by animator John Pomeroy drew a winter landscape and animals around them by hand. The light and perspective of the photographs are matched to the drawing, so the actors and the drawn world form one story. Pomeroy’s films include The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound and Pocahontas. As Euronews reports, he says he learned the craft with pencil and paper. Prada sums up the campaign with the line “A Prada fantasy, created by hand”, and its press release speaks of a touch that expresses a fundamental idea of humanity. The media read the campaign as an answer to AI; Prada itself speaks of touch and craft.

Hand animation works here as a narrator. It gives fashion photography rhythm and an imagination viewers associate with films where someone sat over every frame. Prada joins the technical precision of photography with the talent of its artists, and from that union comes a world that belongs to it alone. A hand-drawn film takes time the viewer can see in every frame, and time now feels like the rarest material of all. Story is a load-bearing part of the brand here, as we wrote in our article on the power of storytelling.

N° 03 Experience: Polaroid and life beyond the screen

While Prada draws us into a world of fantasy, Polaroid calls us back to the real one. In July 2025 it launched The Camera for an Analog Life, a campaign for the Polaroid Flip camera. Billboards in New York and London, some right next to Apple stores and Google offices, carried lines such as “Real stories. Not stories & reels.” In Paris, Tokyo and London the brand invited people on walks without a phone, with only a camera in hand.

We are analog beings, made to connect through our senses.

Patricia Varella, Polaroid’s brand and creative director, in the press release, paraphrased

The Flip is, for all that, a technically advanced device with sonar autofocus. Polaroid uses technology in the service of experience: it helps a person put the screen down and hold a photograph they can send by post. It turned its own heritage of instant photography into a cultural message: some moments can only be fully lived in the real world. There is a nice irony in it: instant photography was once a technological novelty. Today the same invention is a reminder of the value of a moment remembered with both eyes and hands.

N° 04 Value: Dove and the promise of real beauty

Dove turns humanity into a commitment. In April 2024, for the twentieth anniversary of its Real Beauty initiative, the brand pledged never to use AI to represent real women in its advertising. The accompanying film The Code explores how artificial intelligence takes over ideas of beauty. For those who work with generative tools, Dove also published guidelines for creating images closer to real beauty. The pledge concerns precisely the representation of real people in advertising.

Real Beauty began in 2004 as a commitment to show real women. Generative images can smooth beauty into perfection without a particular face, which gives Dove’s decision a clear logic: it protects exactly what the brand built its identity on. Strong identity shows here in a value the brand has stayed true to for twenty years. Technology changes, the promise stays.

N° 05 Humour: Heineken and a social network since 1873

In October 2025, New York was talking about an advertisement for a pendant with an AI friend. Heineken and the agency LePub New York answered with their own “wearable technology”: a necklace that is in fact a bottle opener, and posters with the line “Heineken: Social networking since 1873”. The campaign belongs to the long-running #SocialOffSocials communication, which invites people to put the phone down and meet in person.

The creative strategy is simple and witty: it turns a technology trend into a story about friendship. In it, “social networking” once again means people around one table. Humour does heavy work lightly here: it catches attention and carries a value the brand has spoken about for years.

How the value of creative work is changing

For designers, illustrators, photographers, strategists and creative directors, the centre of gravity of the work is shifting. AI in design speeds up the production of images, and with it grows the value of everything that comes before production and steers it: understanding the brand, cultural context, sensitivity to people, the ability to recognise a good idea and the courage to choose one out of a thousand.

An illustrator brings handwriting people remember. A photographer brings a real moment. A strategist brings a reason. A creative director holds the direction when it is possible to go every way at once. Experience, intuition, empathy and cultural understanding are the tools that turn a fast image into a brand. And the combination of a person with AI brings results that only come about together: the tool offers a hundred paths, the person knows which of them leads to the brand.

People create meaning. Technology expands the possibilities

This is how we think about it at ReVisual too. We work with modern digital tools and with artificial intelligence, and they are part of our creative process. They help us work faster, try further directions and discover visual solutions that would otherwise take us longer to reach. We wrote about how AI changes the way companies work in our article on AI in companies.

Every branding project of ours begins with questions a person answers. Why does the brand exist? Who does it speak to? What does it bring into their lives? What emotions should it evoke? What sets it apart? What should people remember about it? The answers give the direction. Then comes work in which judgement decides: assessing quality, keeping a consistent direction, recognising an authentic idea and refining the result so that it represents this brand and no other. We connect branding, web, technology and marketing, and in each of these disciplines the decision stays with a person.

“Technology now lets us create almost anything. Real creativity, however, begins much earlier: with the ability to understand a brand, see its potential and give it a character of its own that cannot be mistaken for any other.”

Rebeka Ďurišová, Founder & Creative Director of ReVisual

What stays in memory

Creation will be available to almost everyone. An image can now be generated by many people who are able to describe what they want to see. The advantage will be the ability to see things differently, connect them in new contexts, decide with sensitivity and understand what holds value for people.

Design with an identity of its own builds trust, creates a relationship and stays in memory. Technology changes the way we create. Human creativity gives our work its meaning.

Looking for a handwriting of your own for your brand? See how we work on branding and logo design, or write to us and we will talk about what your brand should say.