When Eli Russell Linnetz, the Los Angeles-based designer, filmmaker, and founder of ERL, turned his creative energy toward the NEO robot by 1X Technologies, the result wasn’t a typical tech rollout. It was a cultural moment—a convergence of art, design, and artificial intelligence framed through the lens of lifestyle. His campaign for NEO approached robotics not as machinery, but as companionship, situating the robot in the quiet poetry of everyday life.

Where most technology brands showcase precision and performance, Linnetz sought to reveal personality. He envisioned NEO as an emotional object—part functional assistant, part aesthetic presence, a being that shares space with us rather than simply operating in it.

flow

Eli Russell Linnetz’s creative range has always blurred boundaries. Before founding his Venice-based brand ERL, he directed music videos, designed fashion collections, and photographed icons. His work is steeped in nostalgia and irony yet obsessed with futurism—qualities that make his collaboration with 1X both surprising and inevitable.

In the NEO campaign, Linnetz brought cinematic storytelling and fashion aesthetics to a world dominated by tech demos and sterile presentations. He treated NEO as a protagonist, not a prototype. The robot isn’t framed as a marvel of mechanics; it’s shown as a new member of domestic life—sitting in kitchens, folding laundry, gazing at sunlight through windows.

The shift is profound. It turns robotics from spectacle into story, from innovation into intimacy.

design

1X’s mission was to humanize automation. Linnetz’s response was to craft a campaign that captured not what NEO does, but what it feels like to live with it. He imagined the robot not in a laboratory, but in an apartment filled with light and texture—a serene world of wood, fabric, and quiet movement.

The result is a series of stills and short films where NEO operates less like an appliance and more like a companion. There’s a sense of tenderness in the imagery. In one moment, the robot pauses mid-task, as though contemplating its surroundings; in another, it seems to blend seamlessly into the environment, its matte finish and soft lines mirroring the materials of the home.

Through these scenes, Linnetz translates industrial design into emotional narrative.

lifestyle

The NEO campaign’s visual identity is minimalist yet intimate. The design principles guiding Linnetz’s world-building are rooted in human context:

Tone and palette. The visuals lean into neutral hues—sand, graphite, pearl, and soft white—tones more associated with architecture and interior design than tech labs. This decision embeds the robot into the texture of modern living.

Form and gesture. NEO is captured mid-motion, bending, reaching, pausing. These gestures are slow and deliberate, creating rhythm rather than efficiency. They remind the viewer that machines can have a kind of grace.

Human proximity. The campaign places NEO near people, never towering above them. It shares tables, hallways, and light sources. The framing evokes empathy rather than awe.

Clothing and materiality. The robot’s design—complete with soft coverings and a knit-like surface—resonates with Linnetz’s ERL sensibility: familiar, tactile, quietly futuristic.

The result feels more like a home editorial than a tech advertisement. The camera lingers on light and skin, on texture and stillness, as if documenting a shared existence rather than selling a gadget.

arch

Linnetz’s most striking achievement lies in the emotional infrastructure he builds around NEO. By focusing on domestic rituals—morning coffee, sunlight through curtains, quiet chores—he transforms robotics from spectacle into subtlety.

The campaign reframes the question of automation. Instead of asking “what can it do?” Linnetz asks “how does it change how we live?” His vision positions technology as something that enhances the human ritual of time, space, and care.

There’s a conceptual softness here: a belief that future machines don’t need to overwhelm us with precision or dominance. They can share our pace, our clutter, our imperfections. NEO becomes an emblem of balance—a mechanical presence that restores, rather than disrupts, the rhythm of home.

time, ritual, and memory

Across the visuals and short narratives, Linnetz constructs a timeline of human experience mirrored through robotics. Morning routines, work hours, evenings of rest—moments that define our daily rhythm. NEO is present throughout, not as servant but as silent collaborator.

This design of temporality connects deeply to Linnetz’s broader creative philosophy. His fashion work often uses color and texture to express memory; his NEO campaign does the same through tone and gesture. The robot’s interactions suggest continuity—learning, adapting, remembering.

It is this idea of memory, both mechanical and emotional, that animates the project. In NEO’s quiet gaze, there’s the suggestion of something ancient—the impulse to care, to assist, to coexist.

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The partnership between Linnetz and 1X marks a new phase in creative direction where technology companies borrow from fashion’s playbook. Linnetz understood that to normalize robotics in homes, the machines needed to feel designed—not engineered.

His approach collapses boundaries between technical and tactile. He fuses the ergonomics of robotics with the sensuality of interior design. The campaign includes references to furniture, light, and architecture—signifiers of human taste rather than industrial scale.

By inviting a creative mind from fashion into robotics, 1X acknowledges that emotional design will shape our acceptance of AI more than algorithms ever could.

the redefine

The concept of companionship is central to Linnetz’s vision. His imagery suggests that the NEO robot is not merely reactive but relational. When positioned next to a person, it mirrors posture and attention; when alone, it occupies space gently, as though aware of its surroundings.

This shift mirrors larger cultural movements: the rise of “empathetic AI,” machines designed to read and respond to human emotion. Linnetz visualizes this dynamic in physical form—the robot’s subtle tilt of the head, its balanced stance, the glint of light that makes it seem almost alive.

The campaign thus becomes an experiment in empathy. Rather than selling performance, it sells presence.

aesthetic

What Linnetz ultimately achieves is the articulation of a new aesthetic category: domestic futurism.

In his hands, technology becomes soft, emotional, and designed for interiors. The campaign reflects the same energy as contemporary architectural photography or boutique fashion lookbooks—images that convey serenity, not spectacle. This is the future as comfort, not conquest.

Where most visions of robotics still echo science fiction’s cold efficiency, Linnetz’s world feels warm, tangible, and profoundly human.

critique

The success of Linnetz’s vision lies not only in beauty but in cultural timing. As the public grows weary of impersonal technology and endless screens, his depiction of a robot that quietly blends into home life offers relief. It suggests that the next evolution of technology may be invisible, intuitive, and emotionally fluent.

Still, this romanticization raises questions. Can machines truly inhabit our emotional worlds, or are we projecting empathy onto design? By humanizing NEO so vividly, Linnetz may have created an ideal that reality can’t yet match. The technology’s limitations—mobility, dexterity, cost—remain, but the imagery transcends them.

In that tension lies the campaign’s brilliance. It doesn’t depict the robot we have; it visualizes the one we want.

impression

Eli Russell Linnetz’s vision for the NEO robot represents a defining intersection between creativity and technology. He transforms robotics from a field of mechanics into one of meaning. His campaign for 1X speaks softly yet profoundly, showing that the true future of AI may not be about dominance, but domesticity.

Through his lens, NEO becomes more than a machine—it becomes a mirror. It reflects not the precision of code, but the poetry of coexistence. By treating a robot like a subject of portraiture, Linnetz redefines how we imagine life with technology: not colder, but closer.

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