At the turn of the 20th century, technical progress in the field of mechanics and rail transport resulted in a renaissance of advertising images. Speed and exceptionalism were perfectly suited for experimenting with color and design, with increasingly original and contrasting shapes and ever more attractive motives.

In this example, a car manufactured by Automobiles Brasier is scenically emerging from a colourful tornado. The driver wears racing glasses and is avoiding the head wind, the passengers at his side is hanging onto a hat, afraid it will fly off with the sheer speed of the car.

This scenario is the work of Leonetto Cappiello (1875 – 1942), a leading poster artist who was famous for his rather spectacular posters and is often considered as the father of modern advertising. Cappiello who mainly lived and worked in Paris, generally used colors to create his effects, but most often than not, something bizarre creates these effects rather than perfectly harmonious colors. So promoting a fashionable car means using a car traveling at a high speed, driving straight at us in a rainbow of colored dust.

I am curious what impact AI and the descriptive nature of LLMs and image generating tools will have on advertising images in the near and midterm future, over 100 years after the poster art emerged in the early years of the 20th century. Are we approaching another fundamental renaissance of advertising images?