"If you visit the Hermès website in search of a scarf or a handbag, you'll be greeted by a collection of whimsical sea creatures swimming across the screen. To navigate to the watch section, you'll click on an image of a watch flanked by an eel. To locate shoes, you'll click on a loafer with a pelican sitting inside it as if it were riding a boat."
"These sea horses and fish and eels and star fish are intriguing to the eye. While digitally-rendered images are hyper smooth, symmetrical, and flawless, these pictures bear all the imperfections of a hand-drawn illustration. We see the texture of the paper grain in the background, a slight irregularity in the lines, unevenness in the coloring. In a world of AI-generated images, these pictures feel special, perhaps even luxurious."
"Hermès, which unveiled a new website this week, partnered with the French artist Linda Merad to create these images. Merad, whose pen and ink illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic, specializes in hand-drawn images. It was her old-fashioned, analog process that appealed to the brand. "They wanted t create the impression that the art was made by a human," Merad explains. "They wanted the viewer to feel the materiality of the drawing.""
Hermès launched a redesigned website featuring whimsical, hand-drawn imagery—sea creatures and product icons—that guide navigation. The illustrations display paper grain, irregular lines, and uneven coloring, emphasizing a tactile, human-made quality distinct from hyper-smooth digital images. Hermès collaborated with French artist Linda Merad, whose pen-and-ink work appears in major publications, because her analog process conveyed materiality. Hermès emphasizes handcrafted production and artisan-made goods in European factories and has invited artists via Instagram to reinterpret brand motifs such as horses and product pieces. Merad answered a call six months ago and illustrated Hermès hats in a fantastical style.
Read at Fast Company
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