You don’t always get access to a team who can do what you can’t. Even after 20 years, it’s rare on my own I can make exactly what’s in my head.
As a new tool in my kit, GenAI helps bridge that gap.
On a good day, AI can take you to 80% (what a napkin sketch!). But if you want a spark of life, human intuition’s still required.
This work is 100% spec. No client was harmed in the making of these ads.
Time Frame
2023–Present
Objective
Leveraging GenAI for my boldest, weirdest, least practical ideas
Role
Creative Director, Designer
Software
After Effects, Figma, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop
AI
ChatGPT, Dall·E, Firefly, Leonardo, Wondershare
Skills
- Attention to Detail
- Concepting
- Leadership
- Prompting
- Research
- Retouching
- Strategy
Background
“Client”
P&G
Why I
Chose
Them
In an old Listerine commercial, a voice over asks a guy, “Do you like Listerine?” “No,” says the guy. “But I use it.”
H&S looks weird, smells funny, and needing it is a little embarrassing. But it’s better than dandruff.
“Brief”
Update a quintessentially mid-20th century brand
Generation Timeline
October–November, 2023
Final Ad
Base Image
Dall·E 3
Concept
Dandruff is so embarrassing you’ll go to any length to get rid of it.
Final Prompt
I revised my prompt many times.
Let’s create a new character, named Steve. Steve is white, 40 years old, balding, and burly; he’s a logger who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Steve is sitting in a dark room, spotlit by a bolt of lightning over his head. Steve looks scared but confident. A priest is next to him, looking very animated.
Steve is seated, looking worried, his hands in his lap. The priest’s hands are in the air, commanding the lightning. The lightning is directly over Steve’s head. Steve and the priest are a little closer to the camera. There is white dandruff on Steve’s shoulders.
Processing
Upscaled with Leonardo.ai; changed the wand to a cross with Photoshop Generative Fill; fixed the priest’s hands and Steve’s eyes, added a wood texture to the cross (with traditional layers and blending); deepened their frowns with Liquify, and upscaled the finished edit again.
How I got there
Planning
Mind Map
I generated 100+ ideas to start.
Outtakes
Why I Passed
From misplaced lightning to too many priests (and a completely different Steve) to a shocking lack of dandruff, it took a while to get to my vision.
Well, that didn’t work
The Dandruff Spa
Concept
H&S was born in the Space Age. In a spa of the future, you lock your head in a space helmet and have all the dandruff sucked out of your skull.
Prompt
Let’s create a character named María. María is 31, Mexican-American, brown skin, brown hair falls just above her shoulders, green eyes, high cheekbones.
María is in a medical spa. She’s sitting in a very comfortable chair, and her head is enclosed in a space-age style helmet, with a tube extending from the top out of the frame. The lighting is bright and warm, inviting. There are tall potted plants in the background. A spa worker is standing next to María, tending to her.
The Personal Assistant
Concept
Why treat your dandruff with a weird shampoo when you could make it someone’s job to pick it off you?
Prompt
Let’s create a character named Rob. Rob is a 28-year-old African-American man with dreadlocks. He has an athletic build, spends five days a week at the gym.
Rob is at the grocery store, in the produce department. He’s inspecting a cantaloupe. He’s wearing a dark t-shirt, with a noticeable pile of dandruff on each shoulder. His personal assistant is next to him picking off the dandruff with one hand, and placing it into a trash bag he’s holding with the other.
Rallying the Troops
Thinking
Dandruff didn’t just appear in the 20th century. What sort of embarrassments could it have created in earlier eras?
Prompt
The image is a painting in the style of “Scotland For Ever!” by Lady Elizabeth Butler. It’s about 30 minutes past dawn and the sun is shining out of frame. An 18th century French commanding military officer is facing his troops on a hill, overlooking a field. The troops are wearing red uniforms. Our perspective is from behind the officer; we see the back of his head and the troops arranged in a matrix in front of him. The officer rallying them for a huge battle. His hands are in the air, gesticulating with passion. Unfortunately, the wind is blowing a massive cloud of dandruff from his head into the ranks, and they’re doubled over, coughing, covering their eyes, finding it hard to pay attention.
Background
“Client”
RiseWell
Why I
Chose
Them
RiseWell has some neat differentiators—their floss is made without Teflon, and their toothpaste uses Hydroxyapatite, which shields teeth while chemically whitening them.
“Brief”
Create a catchy Top of Funnel ad based on RiseWell’s unique benefits
Timeline
October–November 2023
Final Ad
Base Image
Dall·E 3
Concept
What if your teeth worked out (like the rest of you) to fight cavities?
Final Prompt
This image will be the basis for an ad about dental floss.
Create a highly detailed photograph of a high school gym weight room. An anthropomorphized tooth is lying back-down on a bench press, lifting large weights, sweating, its expression intense as it struggles to lift the weight. The style of the tooth is semi-realistic, not cartoonish. On a stool next to the bench press is a container of dental floss and a towel. Five or six other teeth in various states of working out in the background.
How I got there
Original Generated Image
Photoshop
Yellow is the last hue you want on teeth. The lotion was irrelevant.
I added a blur to separate the hero and extended the ceiling with Generative Fill (blurring some of the less-successful bits) to make room for the headline.
Outtakes
Why I Passed
Faceless teeth benching 3x their weight were not the brand.
9 times out of 10, it’s faster to start with the right thing than fix it in post.
Well, that didn’t work
The Nuclear Floss
Concept
I wanted to explore RiseWell’s claim that their floss doesn’t contain Teflon—meaning other flosses have an endless half-life. We tried many versions.
Prompt
Create a highly detailed image set in the year 2150. A group of people are exploring a long-abandoned and decayed American suburban bathroom. The walls of the bathroom are crumbling, and there are lush green vines climbing over them, indicating that nature has partially reclaimed the space. Among the ruins, one of the explorers, a middle-aged woman wearing futuristic protective gear, has discovered a small, old dental floss container. The container is prominently marked with a large, unmistakable Biohazard symbol. She is carefully holding the container at arm’s length. The rest of the group is standing back and observing. Their expressions range from shock to concern, clearly recoiling from the dental floss container. The focus of the image is on the contrast between the decayed environment, the pristine condition of the dental floss container, and the group’s reaction to the Biohazard symbol.
Scared to Spit
Concept
Brushing your teeth with a new partner, you realize you haven’t flossed in years, and you don’t want to spit blood. I wanted to embody that highly-relatable moment with a warning.
Prompts
- This image will be the basis for an ad about dental floss. Two people are brushing their teeth next to each other in a small apartment bathroom, with worried, hesitant expressions.
- They should be looking at each other with more hesitation, more worry, in their expressions.
- Instead of looking at each other, let’s try them looking down at the sink. Still worried, hesitant to spit into the sink.
Photoshop
I made the light more dramatic, fixed her cheekbones and both of their toothbrushes.
I tried to make this one work. When an idea is telling you it’s not interested, you should probably listen.
Background
“Client”
MetroHealth
Why I
Chose
Them
I wanted to execute an impossible concept: Market an intimate day-in-the-life portrait series to a large metro area. This mini-project forces questions about privacy, authenticity, and generative AI’s role in healthcare and advertising.
“Brief”
An enterprise campaign centered on “Be seen. Be heard. Be well.”
Generation Timeline
October 2023
Final Ad
Base Images
Dall·E 3
Concept
Follow someone through their day, demonstrating how the MetroHealth sees them as a whole person.
Example Prompt
Panel 1: Breakfast Buzz
A documentary-style photograph of Ada’s kitchen. The early morning sun creates a warm ambience. Ada, with her two canes beside her, is pouring orange juice for her kids. They’re chatting, sharing their plans for the day.
Prompt Engineering
We worked each image through multiple prompts. There was a lot of this:
- Take a deep breath and remember the instructions: Ada is an Honduran-American woman, with short, black hair…
- Lean Ada’s canes against the counter.
- Two kids and two canes. The year is 2023. Ada is wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Her apartment is inexpensive.
How I got there
Final Generated Images
Origin
I started by creating a character (named for Ada Lovelace, the mother of the algorithm) and developed her story collaboratively with ChatGPT. I defined her race, appearance, age, and disability, and set the parameters for the story. GPT filled in the details, which I took as inspiration and refined before we generated images.
Initial Prompt
Help me create a character and write a short script for her. Ada is an Honduran-American woman, with short, black hair. She is 5’6” tall, 160 pounds. She is 32 years old and has two kids. She lives in Cleveland, OH. She walks with two canes.
The script will be in a comic book format (panels), using photographs instead of illustrations. The script shows us six moments, one in each panel, from Ada’s day. Some examples of moments include getting breakfast ready for the kids, working as a machinist at an industrial manufacturer, and visiting her father in the afternoon, in a different part of town.
All of the photographs should be in a documentary style, shot on a Canon R5, RF 35mm, f/8, 1/100s, ISO 800.
Aging Ada
Photoshop
The central image showed Ada at about 22, not 32. I aged her with Wondershare, then face-swapped her in Photoshop.
Outtakes
Why I Passed
Dall·E struggled to keep Ada consistent (her face, age, clothing; canes; children, etc.) while maintaining the art direction (stop breaking the fourth wall).
I accepted ‘good enough,’ assuming the models would improve.
Well, that didn’t work
We’ve all got baggage
Concept
We all carry all our stuff around. What if we meant it literally?
Initial Prompt
Show me some images that communicate the idea “we carry our burdens in our shadows.”
Critical Turn
Person on a medical exam table, talking with a doctor. The patient is wearing a backpack that’s over-stuffed. The backpack is translucent (this is very important).
Final Prompt
Highly photorealistic image of a medical examination room. An African-American patient sits on an exam table, wearing an over-stuffed traditional backpack on their back. The backpack bulges, emphasizing its fullness. An African-American doctor stands beside the patient, making direct eye contact and offering a reassuring smile. The ambiance and details are rendered with high realism to capture the genuine connection between the doctor and patient.