alt Hacker NewsThis is very true and after rendering 100 prompts twice for https://john.hartnup.uk/poster-prompts/ I realised that the prompts could be improved by asking for much less clutter. The best examples on there pick out one main visual subject, but many of them are too fussy.
I may do a V2 one of these days.
Clutter comes with the territory to some extent though. I was recently asked to do a real world PTA fayre poster, and the client (my wife) very firmly wanted 12+ attractions mentioned on the poster. Tombola, hook a duck, bar, BBQ, blah, blah, blah as well as date, location, sponsor, ...
To get a really clean design, you need to edit it down to the essentials. I don't know what pro designers do - convince the client to say less?
Unless the prompt says otherwise, AI will try to get a visual element in for every single word too.
Replies
There is very often a certain softness to the fonts in generated images. Why is that and is there a name for it?
Thinking more, I thinking the softness is actually inconsistency. Because the letters are generated, no two letters will be exact same and if zoomed in some edge might not even be perfectly straight. Another thing we can do these days (I think author should really try out in V2) is to use code to generate the . You may have seen examples of generating Javascript based videos with Claude. Same can be done with posters. Generate a font sheet and use that in code generated poster with image generated background.
Just taking one of your prompts and adding
> N.B. Make sure all the important information pops out (is visible at first glance) like an expert designer would, the information is more important than the design.
Already have me a much better result with the 'Arts & Crafts style', but N=1 so YMMV
Those posters all look pretty damn good to me. Thanks for that page. Super helpful for me and I need that right now.
Say you want to add an artist or change some information. Regeneration will end up with another poster altogether, right?
Well, low-stakes clients are usually poor clients because they’re clueless and overly demanding.
Real designers would avoid them in the first place.
Tangent I guess, it would be interesting to have like a AI/not AI quiz. They still look AI to me but idk if it's because I know
Pro designers are generally paid because they’re extremely good editors. And they’re an intermediary between clients and their consumers.
So when you put the capability in the hands of the client without the editing (or taste) and no way to evaluate the result, you get the passable, homogenous thing.
It mostly doesn’t matter because there’s no economic incentive for it to matter, which is why much of our aesthetic world is the way it is.