Design Army creates surrealist campaign for Morphe's new collection

Ahead of the Chinese New Year—the Year of the Green Snake—Design Army created a wild and wonderful campaign for Morphe's Forbidden Collection, fusing AI-enhanced surrealism with high-fashion art direction.

The idea behind the campaign was to turn beauty into temptation, transforming the brand's latest range of eye shadows, glossy lip oils, and dramatic pigments into the ultimate forbidden fruit. The arresting visuals reimagine the Garden of Eden, replacing innocence with fierce, dramatic self-expression, resulting in a lush, mixed-reality paradise where Eve and her Serpentine companion wield Morphe's intoxicating pigments like weapons of transformation.

For Pum Lefebure, chief creative officer and co-founder of Design Army, the campaign was an opportunity to push beauty storytelling to the max, fusing reality, AI, and rich visual influences to create a new world of temptation.

Morphe's audience is young, bold, and hyper-creative, so this campaign had to do more than just look good—it needed to transport and entice.

"The campaign is designed for the younger generation—so we intentionally used AI to capture their imagination," Lefebure explains. "We imagined this whole new world that's quasi-futuristic, lush, and paradisiacal. Yet, we wanted it to be believable, so we combined it with real elements.

"The result is a cool, unique mixed reality with bold visuals. It's definitely not the usual beauty campaign."

With AI-generated elements layered over real-life photography, custom-designed typography, and hyper-detailed props, the campaign creates a hallucinatory yet grounded aesthetic, like stepping into a dream world where beauty is seductive, supernatural, and just a little dangerous.

The reimagined Garden of Eden is at the heart of the campaign, a place where temptation isn't about restraint but indulgence.

"Mashing real and AI images, we dreamed up a surrealist world to wow viewers' imagination," says Lefebure. "We started with a photoshoot featuring real props, models, and Morphe's products. Every crazy detail was considered in art direction, including actual fruit and custom-created 'Forbidden' typography spiked with thorns."

To heighten the mythical, hypnotic quality, the team drew inspiration from nature's most surreal landscapes, taking cues from the snow-capped Himalayas, flowing Chinese rivers, and Icelandic rolling moss. As a result, the campaign illustrates a painterly, ethereal world where forbidden beauty unfolds in layers of shimmer, gloss, and saturated colour.

At the core of the campaign is a seductive, empowered Eve, who is positioned as a beauty lover lured not by sin but by self-expression. Alongside her is an equally dramatic Serpentine companion.

"In this lush, imaginative paradise, a baddie Eve and a dramatic Serpentine companion explore an array of sumptuous makeup and vibrant, juicy fruits—both exuding a fierce, captivating allure," Lefebure reveals. "As the Serpentine is seducing Eve, they both unveil the transformative power of the Forbidden Collection."

From lips lacquered like ripe fruit to eyes that shimmer with liquid light, the campaign positions makeup as pure alchemy and a tool to unleash rather than conceal.

The campaign's colour story is as decadent as its concept–—think luminous purples, fiery oranges, and deep, sultry reds, all spiked with metallics and high-shine gloss.

Lefebure says: "Because the product itself is so creative with over-the-top shimmery shades, we wanted to celebrate its fantastical, seductive appeal and encourage makeup lovers to express themselves.

"We transformed the models' nails and hair to look crazy serpentine-like, which is just so fun. We also used the actual product to make the lips look like real fruit. Everything is glistening, glossy, dripping, and sparkling to the max. Just like the makeup."

That saturated, hyper-glossed aesthetic extends beyond the campaign visuals to packaging design, where juicy, fruit-drenched hues mirror the irresistible richness of the products themselves. Even the shade names play into the theme, with cheeky, tempting titles like Forbidden Honey, Pulp Fantasy, Love Bite, and Lust Potion.

Morphe has never been a play-it-safe brand, and this campaign cements its position as a disruptor, both in beauty marketing and in the way AI is integrated into high-fashion storytelling.

For Design Army, it was an opportunity to craft something visually groundbreaking through a high-concept, maximalist campaign that pushes the boundaries of AI, fantasy, and luxury beauty aesthetics. It's bold, seductive, and unapologetically extra, just like the makeup lovers it was designed for.