AI art prompts for graphic designers.

Graphic design is an artistic practice — and it’s also a job. You’re navigating tight budgets and challenging deadlines, all while trying to make aesthetic designs that communicate. But finding ways to play, experiment and surprise yourself are just as important as hitting deadlines — they’re how you evolve as an artist and stay engaged with your craft.

Enter AI art generators like Adobe Firefly. Adobe Firefly can help you to achieve high-quality outputs to kickstart the creative process and to use in your graphic design work. But to get those high-quality results, you first need to learn how to write, fine-tune and experiment with prompts — the words that make the artwork.

Prompts are bits of text that describe what you want the AI tool to generate. Like any creative tool, artificial intelligence doesn’t work without the direct input of a human creator. A paintbrush doesn’t create a masterpiece on its own and similarly, AI won’t do a thing without your input.

For example, to generate images for a menu mockup for a new pasta spot, you could try “large plate of spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce on a white plate.” The AI then receives your request and generates something that looks like what you've written. Generative AI prompts for graphic design can do a lot more than just generate new images — you can use them to expand images, create vector artwork, generate new colour palettes and more.

It's rare that any design is perfect on the first pass. There are always rounds of iterating, feedback and fine-tuning. The same is true for graphic design prompts. Trying out the same prompt written a few different ways can provide myriad different outcomes that spark your imagination.

Introducing generative AI into your design practice isn’t just a potential time-saver and creative boost — it’s quickly becoming an essential part of all design processes and understanding how it works is as important as understanding design software and analogue techniques.

Whether you're a seasoned graphic designer or just beginning, you can use AI prompts in your workflow. Understanding how to use generative AI prompts in your practice is important — and it’s easy to get started straightaway. You can begin experimenting with generative AI tools in many Adobe apps — like Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop — or try crafting prompts in the Adobe Firefly web app, which is free to use with an Adobe log in.

The easiest way to learn how to craft effective prompts is to simply start writing them. Like any practice, you’ll learn to refine your approach with time. There’s an art to writing good prompts, as well as an art to knowing what to do with the generated images, including curating and editing them. Anyone can type a few words — it takes expertise to use generated art successfully.

Text to image is one of the best-known uses of generative AI and a powerful way to quickly create images for graphic design projects. Prompts can be as short or as long as you want, but if you have a specific idea in mind, try describing in simple but descriptive terms, like “busy city street scene at night with blurred reflections of buildings in the rain.” Words like “busy,” “blurred” and even “at night” help inform the algorithm about what kind of street scene to assemble.

Examples

• minimalist office space with large windows and potted plants

• colourful tropical bird parrot sitting on yellow exotic flower branch in wildlife; green watercolour background

• colourful tropical bird parrot sitting on yellow exotic flower branch in wildlife; green watercolour background

Text to image

You can use generative AI to efficiently edit images. For instance, if you have the perfect image of a person walking through a winter scene but want to up the cosiness factor with a pullover, you can use Generative Fill to brush out the existing garment and then type in an AI prompt such as “chunky knit pullover.” You can also use Generative Fill to add in all new objects such as “piece of birthday cake with a bite out of it.” Descriptive words like “chunky” and “birthday” will provide you with more specific outcomes.

Examples

• Black top hat with gold band

• Small white dog with curly hair

• Large blueberry muffin with a crumble topping

Generative Fill

Creating icons, logos and illustrations is a key part of graphic design work. Text to Vector Graphic in Adobe Illustrator allows you to quickly convert AI prompts into bold, fully editable graphics. You can create in four modes, Subject, Icon, Scene and Pattern, so you don’t have to describe your output as part of your prompt. Focus instead on describing the artwork. For instance, if you are creating a logo for a new donut shop, try “pink frosted donut with rainbow sprinkles flat design style.” Using style designations will get you different results — try words like 3D, maximalist and retro. This is a great way to quickly generate design direction options for a client.

Examples

• Cute octopus holding balloons pink red white

• Minimalist pencil with eraser yellow

• Kitchen tools, food and ingredients, corporate Memphis style

Text to Vector Graphic

Kickstart the layout design process with the Text to Template feature in Adobe Express, which combines text and images based on your prompt. For this use case, specifying the format of the design as well as the subject or event is key to getting useful results. Try “a flier for a contemporary gallery opening” for example or “a poster for a dog show.” All the results are editable, so once you get a few designs that resonate, you can adjust the imagery and text to your needs.

Examples

• Invitation baby birthday playful

• Rave flyer y2k neon

• Poster for vintage sale retro

Text to Template

It's easy to explore new colorways for your designs using Generative Recolor in Illustrator. Simply create or open a design in Illustrator, open the Generative Recolor panel (Edit > Edit colours > Generative Recolor) and then type in a prompt describing a colour palette. You can simply describe colours and tones such as “warm orange yellow red” or you can get a bit more eclectic and describe a theme, mood or emotion such as “happy neon” or “winter day.”

Examples

• Tropical rain forest bright

• Muted blues and greys

• Stormy night

Generative recolor

Well-crafted prompts combined with the versatile capabilities of Adobe Firefly — including text to image, text to vector graphic and more — can open new possibilities for efficiency and creativity within your graphic design practice. But perhaps most importantly they can re-introduce a sense of play and wonder into your practice so you can keep pushing your creative limits. Try Adobe Firefly today and see what you can create.