Merk: Built For The Wild
Designing a complete brand website for a hiking boot, and build a campaign with AI Generative Imagery.This project questions how a machine learns to understand, and how we, as creators, learn to make ourselves understood.AI isn’t replacing us. It’s amplifying what we can do when we learn how to communicate with it.
Client
Personal
DELIVERABLES
Wireframes UI Design Art Direction AI Generative Direction
Year
2025
Role
Art Direction & Creative Prompting
Challenge
This was a fully self-initiated project with no client, built specifically to explore generative AI in imagery and video. The first difficulty was producing consistent, usable imagery for a hiking boot campaign and translating that into a cohesive website.
Another important challenge was pushing the AI-generated visuals to feel authentic and premium, avoiding the generic, artificial look that often gives AI imagery away.
Approach
I built a master prompt system to set the foundation of the project's overall aesthetic and direction, using it to test how the machine interpreted prompts and how that shaped the resulting visual decisions. Building this world first let me define the right direction for the logo, the typography that matched the visuals, and a wireframe system where each section followed a clear grid and hierarchy, answering key questions: what the campaign was for, what was being sold, what the product offered, and who it suited best.
I focused on the layout and on how the campaign imagery could be integrated seamlessly into the site itself.
Outcome
The website included a full campaign presenting the boot to visitors, highlighting its benefits, along with a review system to reinforce the legitimacy and quality of the product. In-depth generated imagery showcased the boot in action, grounding the campaign in something that felt real rather than staged.
Beyond the deliverable, the project reinforced a broader lesson: AI lightens the weight of creativity, letting a designer direct a tool to test what works before fully committing to an idea, and giving both designer and client a way to project themselves into a concept before it's finished.