The Best Midjourney Prompts for Print Design Guide
Generative AI tools have been a sensation since last year, starting with OpenAI’s ChatGPT for generating text, analysis, and more. But that’s not all that GenAI tools can offer; they can also create video, images, illustrations, and 3D animations. Midjourney, in particular, has been one of the landmarks of GenAI image generation due to the power of its engine and has seen immense growth since its launch.
There is no telling what the future holds for tools like Midjourney. One thing is certain: they have and will continue to shape creative industries. One of the most recent applications that generated use cases with positive results is for Print design.
When we think about print design, we can be as general as crafting posters, as specific as designing business cards, or as liquid as conceptualizing a magazine layout. In this guide, we’ll explore how you can leverage Midjourney by prompting engineering for print design and achieving the best results possible. We’ll also explore when and where it may be the most valuable to use these tools and when the effort becomes less rewardful.
What is Midjourney, and How Does it Work?
Midjourney is an AI-powered platform that generates images from text prompts. The tech behind it involves advanced machine learning models, large language models (LLMs), and diffusion models. From the initial text, the model deciphers the contextual clues, then generates noise, refines it based on training data, and then outputs the image. The image can, then, be refined by the user with certain functionalities such as upscaling.
Since the platform is able to create professional looking images from a text prompt, it can help designers and non-designers come up with ideas, concepts, and even develop the full design from scratch.
From classic art styles to futuristic trends, it offers vast customization through modifiers, weighting elements, color blending, and more.
1. Starting with Basic Prompts for Print Design
Instead of trying to get all of the aspects of prompt engineering for Midjourney from their comprehensive wiki, which can be a daunting task, let’s start out by building prompts and designs, while we work our way through basic to more advanced prompting.
The most important aspect to get right at the start is clarity, while complex prompts have their place in the workflow, we’ll begin with simple prompts to help with ideating.
- Poster design for an EDM event: “Vibrant DJ event poster, neon colors, futuristic typography, electric aesthetic”
- Flyers for a festival: “Abstract festival poster, featuring a tropical beach scene, bright colors, playful font, beautiful people dancing”
- Business cards: “Minimalist business card design, centralized logo, muted tones, clean layout, modern sans-serif font, Bauhaus-inspired.”
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The key is to direct the AI towards the output you need, whether it’s emphasizing typography, color schemes, or certain elements like logo placement, or other key aspects to the design such as background and forefront.
2. Using Style Modifiers for Precision
Midjourney’s vast training data allows for you to control the style and composition of the image using stylistic modifiers. These are keywords or phrases that shape the aesthetic.
For print design, style consistency is crucial, and modifiers help maintain that. Midjourney is also making headway on features that make it possible for an easier and more consistent image creation process such as creating characters that will maintain the same identity across multiple styles.
But for simply creating a stylistic modifier, let’s try with the following prompts:
- Vintage: “Retro 1950s magazine ad style,halftone textures and pastel colors.”
- Minimalist: “Minimalist book cover design, clean lines, a monochrome palette, and modern sans-serif typography.”
- Abstract: “Abstract t-shirt print design, bold geometric shapes, vibrant primary colors, and irregular forms.”
As you go through these prompts you can see how incorporating color palettes, and historical artistic movements style guides will make your design align more with the feel you’re looking for, whether it be for a particular ad, design, or just making brand-focused content.
3. Advanced Techniques: Using Midjourney’s Weighted Prompts
Now, onto the more advanced techniques you may try out when using Midjourney. When we think about print design, the hierarchy of elements is important. We talked about background and foreground previously, but what if you need to highlight elements within the background, or in the main object of your design?
Midjourney allows you to assign weight to design elements, so you can guide the design creation for what aspects should dominate the composition.
For instance:
- Typography-focused: “Typographic poster design::3 with vintage fonts::2, pastel colors::1, and minimalistic layout.”
- Logo Emphasis: “Business card::2 with centralized large blue and white logo::3, minimalistic background::1, and gold foil accents::1.”
By adjusting the weighting, you can ensure that Midjourney understands the hierarchy of design elements. Also Midjourney allows for multiple of the previous techniques to be added to the prompt, so let’s say you want a particular focal length, or aperture, and a vintage Polaroid picture style with a bauhaus-inspired frame, and the model should show as in a medium close-up shot. You can do that.
But here’s the pro tip: start off simple, and add more details to the prompts as you see fit. If you start out with overly complex prompting, you may find yourself spending more time figuring out what went wrong than using this powerful tool to help you get more done. It’s also important to explore another powerful feature of the tool, to use sourced images as reference points, to drive your creative vision to the desired destination.
4. How to use Midjourney for Print Design
Now that you know some of the best prompts for print design and how Midjourney works from our previous overview, let’s talk specifics. For now, a lot of AI-powered tools are giving us ways to minimize manual efforts to automate tasks, or at least get them done with less attrition.
Understanding how to actually leverage these tools in your workflow is the biggest challenge, so here are some ways you can start using Midjourney for your print design efforts, whether you are a print designer or business owner.
- Ideation: Midjourney is a tool that can generate high-quality images in a few seconds. Although they may not be ready to go straight into production, if you master prompting with Midjourney you will be able to cut a lot of time searching for inspiration on photo libraries across the web.
- Communication: It can help you as a business owner or department heads to communicate with your design team by showing them what your expectations are, instead of using phrases like “it needs more color”, “make it pop”, and other abstract directions.
- Assets creation: Here’s where Midjourney can really help speed up your design process. Suppose you need to create 3D-like texture paints from scratch, you already know the composition and the color palette, with Midjourney this process can take a few seconds to a few minutes, while creating it from scratch could take hours.
- Upscaling images: As we know, print design requires a better resolution than what you can get away with for instance on the web. Midjourney has features for upscaling created images, and the assets we just mentioned, in just a few seconds.
- Combine human editing with AI: What if you created a beautiful image in Midjourney, but you can only really use the background or a model, or just a particular color in the pallet? Well, you can simply get that image, open it on your favorite editor, and compose your own design. An AI-powered design with your unique human touch.
- Specific layouts and print projects: When prompting, make sure to use specific layouts and common print design projects to ensure that Midjourney will reliably create designs that make sense for the medium you’re exploring. And for even better results, use reference images to boost the power of your design.
Generative AI is amazing, but…
Midjourney and other GenAI tools are really powerful for designers and business owners who are looking to innovate and push new boundaries with AI-driven creativity and the crux of the matter is: AI is not going anywhere. But…
Awesomic believes in the power of technology to drive human creativity and help build better things, but let’s also keep in mind the human element at play. Powerful tools will come and go, but human connection, the most powerful of all tools, is the one that will always be a constant.
When you can master prompting, and you open yourself to new experiments with weights, styles, and industry-specific design, you can transform your work process, absorb new perspectives to create more visually stunning images, and even print-ready assets that resonate with your audience.
Think about adding prompting as an aspect of your creative composition, it’s your input, your decision to choose the images, and your expertise on how to leverage them. The examples in this small guide are but a starting point. Refine them to match your unique design needs.
Mastering Midjourney which is one of the most complete tools for AI content creation can help make your ideas come to life. As you see in this article even with great prompts and using reference images, sometimes the tool will create inconsistent designs of different qualities.
You’ll eventually need the human touch and design expertise to make the absolute best use of this tool.
Awesomic for print design
Awesomic AI-matches companies with top talent from all over the world, we offer tools for easy design tasks creation and by mastering Midjourney you can ask for more consistent and visually unique designs to be used as reference. Our designers will bring in the human touch, and expertise to turn your machine-created designs into real compositions tailored to your audience’s emotions.
Sign up for a demo, and we’ll walk you through the process and figure out how to best leverage your designs for your particular business needs.
Generative AI tools have been a sensation since last year, starting with OpenAI’s ChatGPT for generating text, analysis, and more. But that’s not all that GenAI tools can offer; they can also create video, images, illustrations, and 3D animations. Midjourney, in particular, has been one of the landmarks of GenAI image generation due to the power of its engine and has seen immense growth since its launch.
There is no telling what the future holds for tools like Midjourney. One thing is certain: they have and will continue to shape creative industries. One of the most recent applications that generated use cases with positive results is for Print design.
When we think about print design, we can be as general as crafting posters, as specific as designing business cards, or as liquid as conceptualizing a magazine layout. In this guide, we’ll explore how you can leverage Midjourney by prompting engineering for print design and achieving the best results possible. We’ll also explore when and where it may be the most valuable to use these tools and when the effort becomes less rewardful.
What is Midjourney, and How Does it Work?
Midjourney is an AI-powered platform that generates images from text prompts. The tech behind it involves advanced machine learning models, large language models (LLMs), and diffusion models. From the initial text, the model deciphers the contextual clues, then generates noise, refines it based on training data, and then outputs the image. The image can, then, be refined by the user with certain functionalities such as upscaling.
Since the platform is able to create professional looking images from a text prompt, it can help designers and non-designers come up with ideas, concepts, and even develop the full design from scratch.
From classic art styles to futuristic trends, it offers vast customization through modifiers, weighting elements, color blending, and more.
1. Starting with Basic Prompts for Print Design
Instead of trying to get all of the aspects of prompt engineering for Midjourney from their comprehensive wiki, which can be a daunting task, let’s start out by building prompts and designs, while we work our way through basic to more advanced prompting.
The most important aspect to get right at the start is clarity, while complex prompts have their place in the workflow, we’ll begin with simple prompts to help with ideating.
- Poster design for an EDM event: “Vibrant DJ event poster, neon colors, futuristic typography, electric aesthetic”
- Flyers for a festival: “Abstract festival poster, featuring a tropical beach scene, bright colors, playful font, beautiful people dancing”
- Business cards: “Minimalist business card design, centralized logo, muted tones, clean layout, modern sans-serif font, Bauhaus-inspired.”
The key is to direct the AI towards the output you need, whether it’s emphasizing typography, color schemes, or certain elements like logo placement, or other key aspects to the design such as background and forefront.
2. Using Style Modifiers for Precision
Midjourney’s vast training data allows for you to control the style and composition of the image using stylistic modifiers. These are keywords or phrases that shape the aesthetic.
For print design, style consistency is crucial, and modifiers help maintain that. Midjourney is also making headway on features that make it possible for an easier and more consistent image creation process such as creating characters that will maintain the same identity across multiple styles.
But for simply creating a stylistic modifier, let’s try with the following prompts:
- Vintage: “Retro 1950s magazine ad style,halftone textures and pastel colors.”
- Minimalist: “Minimalist book cover design, clean lines, a monochrome palette, and modern sans-serif typography.”
- Abstract: “Abstract t-shirt print design, bold geometric shapes, vibrant primary colors, and irregular forms.”
As you go through these prompts you can see how incorporating color palettes, and historical artistic movements style guides will make your design align more with the feel you’re looking for, whether it be for a particular ad, design, or just making brand-focused content.
3. Advanced Techniques: Using Midjourney’s Weighted Prompts
Now, onto the more advanced techniques you may try out when using Midjourney. When we think about print design, the hierarchy of elements is important. We talked about background and foreground previously, but what if you need to highlight elements within the background, or in the main object of your design?
Midjourney allows you to assign weight to design elements, so you can guide the design creation for what aspects should dominate the composition.
For instance:
- Typography-focused: “Typographic poster design::3 with vintage fonts::2, pastel colors::1, and minimalistic layout.”
- Logo Emphasis: “Business card::2 with centralized large blue and white logo::3, minimalistic background::1, and gold foil accents::1.”
By adjusting the weighting, you can ensure that Midjourney understands the hierarchy of design elements. Also Midjourney allows for multiple of the previous techniques to be added to the prompt, so let’s say you want a particular focal length, or aperture, and a vintage Polaroid picture style with a bauhaus-inspired frame, and the model should show as in a medium close-up shot. You can do that.
But here’s the pro tip: start off simple, and add more details to the prompts as you see fit. If you start out with overly complex prompting, you may find yourself spending more time figuring out what went wrong than using this powerful tool to help you get more done. It’s also important to explore another powerful feature of the tool, to use sourced images as reference points, to drive your creative vision to the desired destination.
4. How to use Midjourney for Print Design
Now that you know some of the best prompts for print design and how Midjourney works from our previous overview, let’s talk specifics. For now, a lot of AI-powered tools are giving us ways to minimize manual efforts to automate tasks, or at least get them done with less attrition.
Understanding how to actually leverage these tools in your workflow is the biggest challenge, so here are some ways you can start using Midjourney for your print design efforts, whether you are a print designer or business owner.
- Ideation: Midjourney is a tool that can generate high-quality images in a few seconds. Although they may not be ready to go straight into production, if you master prompting with Midjourney you will be able to cut a lot of time searching for inspiration on photo libraries across the web.
- Communication: It can help you as a business owner or department heads to communicate with your design team by showing them what your expectations are, instead of using phrases like “it needs more color”, “make it pop”, and other abstract directions.
- Assets creation: Here’s where Midjourney can really help speed up your design process. Suppose you need to create 3D-like texture paints from scratch, you already know the composition and the color palette, with Midjourney this process can take a few seconds to a few minutes, while creating it from scratch could take hours.
- Upscaling images: As we know, print design requires a better resolution than what you can get away with for instance on the web. Midjourney has features for upscaling created images, and the assets we just mentioned, in just a few seconds.
- Combine human editing with AI: What if you created a beautiful image in Midjourney, but you can only really use the background or a model, or just a particular color in the pallet? Well, you can simply get that image, open it on your favorite editor, and compose your own design. An AI-powered design with your unique human touch.
- Specific layouts and print projects: When prompting, make sure to use specific layouts and common print design projects to ensure that Midjourney will reliably create designs that make sense for the medium you’re exploring. And for even better results, use reference images to boost the power of your design.
Generative AI is amazing, but…
Midjourney and other GenAI tools are really powerful for designers and business owners who are looking to innovate and push new boundaries with AI-driven creativity and the crux of the matter is: AI is not going anywhere. But…
Awesomic believes in the power of technology to drive human creativity and help build better things, but let’s also keep in mind the human element at play. Powerful tools will come and go, but human connection, the most powerful of all tools, is the one that will always be a constant.
When you can master prompting, and you open yourself to new experiments with weights, styles, and industry-specific design, you can transform your work process, absorb new perspectives to create more visually stunning images, and even print-ready assets that resonate with your audience.
Think about adding prompting as an aspect of your creative composition, it’s your input, your decision to choose the images, and your expertise on how to leverage them. The examples in this small guide are but a starting point. Refine them to match your unique design needs.
Mastering Midjourney which is one of the most complete tools for AI content creation can help make your ideas come to life. As you see in this article even with great prompts and using reference images, sometimes the tool will create inconsistent designs of different qualities.
You’ll eventually need the human touch and design expertise to make the absolute best use of this tool.
Awesomic for print design
Awesomic AI-matches companies with top talent from all over the world, we offer tools for easy design tasks creation and by mastering Midjourney you can ask for more consistent and visually unique designs to be used as reference. Our designers will bring in the human touch, and expertise to turn your machine-created designs into real compositions tailored to your audience’s emotions.
Sign up for a demo, and we’ll walk you through the process and figure out how to best leverage your designs for your particular business needs.
