# Style: Surreal Experimentalism

**Trend confidence:** ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Confirmed across LTX Studio, Branding Journal, Medium (Jan 2026)
**Also known as:** Y3K Hyperfuturism (futuristic variant), Dream Realism
**Mood:** Scroll-stopping, strange, joyful, memorable — signals AI-native creative confidence

---

## Core Prompt Fragment

```
surreal experimental photography, photorealistic base with impossible scenario,
dreamlike environment, familiar subject in fantastical setting,
reality blurred with imagination, bold impossible colors in context,
visually surprising yet grounded, conceptual and emotionally resonant
```

## Environment Variants

**Product in Impossible World:**
```
product or concept object floating in surreal macro environment,
photorealistic product textures against impossible dreamlike background,
scale distortion, color world disconnected from reality
```

**Grounded Surreal (Preferred for B2B):**
```
realistic business environment with one impossible dreamlike element,
logical scene with a single surreal visual disruption,
grounded but otherworldly — familiar enough to understand, strange enough to stop scroll
```

**Y3K / Hyperfuturism:**
```
ultra-futuristic environment, advanced digital aesthetic, chromatic dreamscape,
beyond Y2K — year 3000 visual language, impossible architecture or environment,
electric and dimensional
```

## Lighting Recipe

```
cinematic quality base lighting, then color-graded into impossible palette,
single dominant light source in surreal color (violet, electric blue, coral pink),
sharp subject clarity against dreamlike softened background
```

## Negative Prompt (Always Include)

```
stock photo, generic, boring, predictable, realistic and mundane,
flat composition, no visual surprise, corporate standard, over-explained,
busy without intent, random without concept
```

## Color Guidance

- **Base:** Photorealistic neutral grounding (real surface, real subject)
- **Surreal layer:** One impossible color environment — electric lavender, deep coral, impossible cyan, void black
- **Accent:** Contrasting impossible highlight — the thing that makes you do a double-take
- **Avoid:** Trying to be surreal in every element simultaneously — one anchor of reality is required for this style to land

## B2B Application Note

For Symph products, use surreal experimentalism for:
- High-concept campaign lead imagery (with human direction in Midjourney)
- Vector campaign — "shipping into a world where momentum is visible"
- ContentVane — "content that emerges from the chaos of information"
- Social scroll-stop content where the concept IS the message
- Any product launch imagery that needs to break pattern
