Summit
Building a Brand with AI
Work / Summit
Sectors
Automotive
AI / Creative Tech
Project
Internal R&D
Year
2025
Our Roles
AI Art Direction
Brand Design
Visual Development
Prototyping
When designing a marketing automation tool for auto dealerships, we needed realistic vehicle imagery without using existing brand photography.
The solution? Create an entirely new car brand using AI—one realistic enough to be believable, but generic enough to avoid trademark issues.
The Challenge
Real-looking cars without the real brands
The notoriously wasteful world of auto dealerships needed a marketing automation tool. Our team required high-quality vehicle images to showcase the tool's features, but using real brand-specific photography was not an option due to licensing restrictions and trademark concerns.
The Process
Defining Visual Identity
Before generating images, we established a cohesive design language. Summit vehicles needed to look modern and refined with a premium feel—authentic enough to be believable while maintaining a distinct brand style across all images.
Iterative Refinement
Midjourney interprets natural language prompts to generate images, but achieving specificity is iterative. We started broad and gradually refined based on outputs, using existing photos for reference to improve outcomes.
Our Approach
Constructing the Summit vehicle fleet
Using Midjourney, we generated a fleet of visually consistent vehicles that looked authentic and modern while maintaining a distinct brand style.
Detailed design elements like rear light bars and wheel designs
Environment settings for uniformity across urban and studio shots
Signature grille and cohesive design language across vehicle types
Post-processing in Photoshop to refine AI-generated results
Premium wheels and modern lighting for authenticity
Cinematic compositions for marketing materials
Prompt Engineering
The art of AI direction
Achieving consistent, realistic results required precise prompting and iterative refinement.
"Summit SUV, signature grille, cohesive design language, cinematic side profile, premium wheels, modern lighting, high detail, studio photography, soft reflections."
This refined approach helped Midjourney generate vehicles that felt cohesive as part of the same lineup. However, some inconsistencies remained, requiring manual adjustments in Photoshop.
The Impact
90%
Time saved vs. traditional illustration
$0
Stock photography licensing fees
100%
Visual consistency across fleet
AI-generated imagery provided a fast, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to traditional methods.
Finding suitable stock photography is often tedious with limited results that never maintain visual consistency. Manually designing vehicles in Photoshop would be incredibly time-consuming. Hiring an illustrator would be costly with extensive revisions. Summit solved all of these problems.
Project
Internal R&D / Lab
Tools
Midjourney
Adobe Photoshop
Sector
Automotive
AI / Creative Tech
Team
Chris Kerr
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