What would your campaign look like with no limits?
A product in a world that doesn’t exist, a location no crew could reach, light no studio could set. A few years ago that took a film crew, a location and a million-dollar budget. Today a brand can show any world it imagines with AI, in a few days.
But beautiful images are everywhere now, and people remember the brands they feel. I’m Vera Ilina, a journalist, designer and AI artist at HSE ART AND DESIGN SCHOOL. I turn a brand’s boldest idea into a visual story the audience feels, from research to final images and video.
How I build a story
I plan the structure before I generate a single image. Every project gets one message, a conflict and a turning point, and only then a visual style. These seven rules keep a story on track, even in ten frames.
Memory Tesseract
Short AI film. Finalist of HSE CREATIVE OPEN’26 in Visual Storytelling with AI Tools. Midjourney, Kling 3.0.
Task. Some memories are locked away rather than forgotten. The task was to make the viewer feel that state in a short clip: something personal and hard to talk about.
Idea. Memory becomes a physical object: a 30-centimetre black cube in a sterile white room. Inside, it is vast. Locked feelings live there as figures that have changed in isolation. The cube cannot be broken. It opens only when the heroine embraces what is inside.
Inside the cube: thirty centimetres across, and a whole world inside.
Narrative. The film follows the hero’s journey in miniature. The heroine leaves the ordinary world, a white room, and goes into the cube. She meets what she has locked away. The turning point comes when she stops resisting and embraces it. The ending mirrors the opening: the same white room and the same cube, now splitting open with light.
Solution. I built the visual language before generating any frames: biomechanical bodies, glass walls, a cold palette of black, deep blue and white. Warm colour appears only twice, in the light from the cracks at the start and in the grass at the end, so colour carries the emotional arc.
Models. Midjourney generated the world and the frames, Kling 3.0 turned them into video. Each prompt fixed the scene, the light and the camera position, so separate generations join into one sequence.
Result. The film reached the final of HSE CREATIVE OPEN’26 in the AI visual storytelling category. The same method works for a product: find the one feeling, turn it into a metaphor and lead the viewer from tension to relief. The full film is on the project page.
May 31
AI illustration series, 10 images. Midjourney.
Task. Turn one shared feeling into a series: the last day of school, when the classrooms go quiet and summer is about to begin. Almost everyone remembers this moment, and it is hard to show.
Idea. There are no people in the frames, only the building seen through a pupil’s eyes. Classrooms and corridors that were noisy a minute ago stand empty. The empty space leaves room for the viewer’s own memories.
Narrative. Nothing happens in the frames, and that is the plot: waiting for what comes next. The camera takes the pupil’s point of view, so every viewer steps into that role. The low evening sun tells the time: the end of the day and of the school year.
Solution. One visual system runs through all ten frames: light-green walls, low orange sun, bright spring greenery outside, three-quarter angles without symmetry.
The last bell has rung. The rooms are still warm.
Models. One prompt formula in Midjourney with a fixed 3:2 frame. It works as a visual bible, so new images can follow it at any time.
Result. A series about anticipation in a warm, light palette. For a brand, it shows how to bring back a shared memory without a product in the frame, which is the core of a nostalgia campaign.
Aura
Concept rebrand of a spa centre for the Prompt Branding competition. Midjourney, Ideogram.
Task. Rebrand a spa centre that works with chakras and colour therapy. The identity had to feel calm and premium and explain an unusual offer: each treatment is chosen by colour, depending on what the guest needs.
Idea. The treatments are already divided by colour, so the palette became the brand. The identity is built on six warm shades, from peach to plum, the colours of the aura.
Narrative. The brand story follows the guest. They choose a colour for their request, and the same colour meets them at every step, from the business card to the towels and the treatment room.
Solution. I built the system piece by piece with AI: palette, logo, stationery, business cards, towels, a T-shirt, a shopper, posters and the interior. After generating the logo, I identified its typeface so the name can be set in real layouts.
Models. Midjourney for the palette, logo, mock-ups and interiors. Ideogram for posters with lettering.
Result. A concept identity that runs from a business card to the space itself. For a brand, it shows the whole path from one idea to everyday touchpoints, tested with AI before anything goes into production.
Why a visual story sells
A campaign earns money when people notice it, remember it and choose the brand later. Emotion drives all three, and a story is the most reliable way to create emotion on purpose. For a business, a visual narrative does four practical jobs.Attention. In a feed full of similar AI images, a frame with a question makes people stop. Memory Tesseract opens with a strange black cube, and the viewer wants to know what is inside. Memory. Viewers rarely remember specs, but they remember how an ad made them feel. May 31 has no product in the frame, yet almost everyone recognises the last day of school. Value. A story makes a product feel worth more, so the brand competes on meaning instead of price. Scale. One idea and one visual system feed the whole campaign: key visual, video, social posts and packaging. In Aura, six colours run from a business card to the interior.How a project runs
I handle all five stages myself, so nothing gets lost between a copywriter, an art director and a production team. Research and narrative take about a week. You see a story concept and key frames before production starts. Production takes one to two weeks, depending on the format.
Models I work with
I choose the model for each task. In a separate project I fine-tuned Stable Diffusion XL on Tiepolo’s frescoes. The same method can keep a brand’s style consistent across a whole campaign.
