During the pandemic, when work stopped, at least mine did, I built a small laboratory: Semiosis Creativity. I put my soul into it. I was not looking for “special effects”, but for a way to explore and understand how signs can “speak” before words. That is where I experienced surrealism firsthand: controlled incongruities that do not confuse but open pathways to meaning. I now bring that experience into branding. With generative AI, in particular, I seek not the image that astonishes but the memorable point of tension, reached through iteration, selection and subtraction. The rest is decoration.

My “entry” into surrealism was therefore not academic: it was Semiosis Creativity (https://semiosiscreativity.art), where images coexist with “impossible” elements to generate meaning, not just amazement. Digital art alongside theories, stories, videos and viewpoints: extensions of the same concept.

At some point, I realised that the same mechanism also works in branding: the principles are the same. When you govern the fundamentals of communication between expectation and surprise, sign and meaning, the brand becomes a vehicle for meaning and memory. This is where AI helps: not to replace the idea or concept, but to iterate variations quickly, find the right points of tension and explore new forms of expression.

In this article, I explain how I translated my Semiosis Creativity practice into three principles useful for brand work.

Let us start at the beginning. Surrealism emerged to disrupt habit: images displace objects and meanings from their natural setting, making us look twice. Today the same dynamic is everywhere in our feeds. In an endless stream of content, what gently breaks the rules captures attention. Generative AI makes this lever more accessible through an important practical role: producing variations, juxtaposing elements and suggesting visual and verbal metaphors.

What I learned through Creativity Semiosis – my personal surrealism

• Controlled incongruity.
  The “dream” effect works only when anchored to a clear semantic axis: promise, category or usage ritual. No axis means a special effect, not an identity.
  
  
• Explicit constraints → useful freedom.
  First the guardrails – visual vocabulary, palette, grid, taboos – then creative freedom. Paradoxically, constraints amplify useful originality.
  
  
• Curating > generating.
  AI lets me produce many variations; value emerges through curation: selection, composition, subtraction and rhythm. That is where the brand finds its voice.

Why surrealism speaks to brands today

In communication, surprise works when it serves a clear message. The “surreal” is not an aesthetic trick but a mechanism of defamiliarisation that can make a promise memorable. An object out of context, an impossible scene, a strong visual metaphor: if these anchor meaning in the product, value or benefit, users stop, understand and remember. If it remains a stylistic exercise, it slips away.

The tightrope walker.
A figure in precarious balance between two worlds taught me that tension is an asset. In branding, you build it by balancing stable signs with one unsettling element, just one, that ignites memory.

https://semiosiscreativity.art/blog/27-the-tightrope-walker

The Rat Queen.
A small moral story in images reminds us that narrative is stronger than shock. In branding, AI can generate the “wow”; the story gives it meaning through sequence, connection and outcome.

https://semiosiscreativity.art/blog/74-007

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Through Semiosis, I realised that surrealism is not an aesthetic frame but a way of creating meaningful deviations. AI generates options; my method grounds them: context → constraints → exploration → curation. I do the same in branding. Without governing the deviations, AI gives you only surprising images. Govern them, and you build memorable distinctiveness while aligning creativity and strategy.

From studio to prompt: using AI without losing direction

AI accelerates the workshop stages – sketches, trials, explorations – but direction remains human.

Brief → Prompt. Before opening any tool, clarify values, tone, conceptual palette and limits (for example, no uncanny valley or sensitive allusions). Translate the brief into specific prompts with context, audience, objective and references, and into negative prompts for what to avoid. Fast variations, slow selection. Generate options, then select using a grid:

1. Consistency with identity and positioning,
2. Clarity of the message, understandable in 5″,
3. Distinctiveness relative to competitors.

Ruthlessly discard the “beautiful but useless” options.

Human-in-the-loop. AI suggests; you decide and refine: frames, hierarchies, microcopy, rhythm. A phrase or layout detail can turn an idea from an “exercise” into “this is our brand”.

Ethical and practical reminder: no sensitive data in prompts. Any software integration – chatbots, APIs, automations – is handed over to IT; our focus remains strategy and editorial work.

Three useful applications, not gimmicks

1) Campaign visuals
Use AI to explore visual metaphors quickly: the product in an impossible context, a “lucid dream” effect emphasising a benefit. The key is the semantic anchor: a headline or microcopy that brings everything back to real value (“Looks impossible. It is just simpler.”).

2) Concept copy & naming
Ask AI for lists of lateral associations based on values and audiences. Then prune: remove the obscure and keep what shifts without confusing. The result is not the final text but an ideas workout that gets you there sooner.

3) Moodboards and style frames
When the direction is “surreal but clean”, generate palettes and compositions consistent with the brand. You accelerate the art direction sprint and focus where it matters: rhythm, hierarchies and micro-interactions.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Surrealism for its own sake.
  If it neither explains a benefit nor embodies a value, it is decoration. Start with the promise and ask AI to amplify it, not conceal it.
  
  
• Prompt spree.
  Dozens of identical, unusable “wow” images. Avoid this with a clear pre-brief and a limit on iterations at each step.
  
  
• Inconsistency and accessibility.
  A powerful but illegible visual, with low contrast or invisible copy, does not convert. Apply the fundamentals: mobile legibility, descriptive alt text and balanced type weights.
  
  
• “Letting the machine handle it”.
  No AI truly understands your context. Creative control is yours: choosing and removing is half the work.

In practice – Tri-Lens, a ready-to-use checklist

Operations

1. One-page pre-brief with values, promise, boundaries and examples of on/off-brand work, from which you extract the prompts and negative prompts.
2. Selection matrix with three criteria: consistency, clarity and distinctiveness. Every AI proposal passes through the matrix before entering the layout.

Brand

• Define your brand’s “surrealism”: which metaphors recur, and which never do? Include this in the guidelines: tone, vocabulary and permitted cultural references.

Psychology

• Controlled defamiliarisation: surprise with one element at a time – context, scale or relationship – not everything at once. Surprise works when the brain has a clear anchor.

Conclusion

The point is not only the meeting of human creativity and AI but the construction of a co-creative process. I am beginning to formalise this as the Neogenerative Loop: iterations that enrich meaning like the layers of an artwork.