Building a Complete Brand Identity with AI Image Prompts

Everything you have learned across the last seventeen tutorials comes together here. In this capstone we will design an entire brand identity for a fictional company — logo directions, colour palette, mood board, lifestyle photography, product imagery, and social-media templates — using a single coherent library of AI image prompts. By the end, you will have a repeatable system you can use for any brand brief that lands on your desk.

1. Introduction

Most beginners use AI for one image at a time. Professionals use AI to ship visual systems. The difference is the same as between writing one good sentence and writing a coherent book. A brand identity is, fundamentally, a controlled vocabulary applied across a dozen different deliverables — and AI image tools, used with a disciplined prompt library, are spectacular at producing visual systems.

2. The Concept Explained

A brand identity has six layers: brand definition, logo direction, colour and typography palette, mood board, lifestyle and hero imagery, and application templates (social posts, packaging, web). Each layer needs its own prompt approach — but they all share a common "brand prompt block" that you write once and paste everywhere.

The brand prompt block

Before anything else, write a 60–120-word block that captures the brand's essence in concrete visual language — colour palette, style anchor, lighting, mood, and tone. This block becomes the keystone you paste into every prompt for the project. It is what makes the dozens of deliverables feel like they came from the same brand.

Working through the six layers

Once the brand prompt block exists, you generate each layer in sequence: logo concepts (Topic 9), colour and typography swatches (Topic 6), mood-board images (Topic 8), lifestyle hero shots (Topics 7 and 10), and finally social templates and packaging mockups (Topic 16). The trick is to never recreate the brand voice from scratch — always paste the brand prompt block as the foundation.

3. The Problem Without a System

"a logo for my candle brand"
"some pretty product shots for my candles"
"an instagram banner for my candle brand"

4. The Solution

=== BRAND PROMPT BLOCK (paste into every prompt) ===

Brand: "Lumen & Linen" — a slow-living artisan candle
brand for thoughtful home-makers in their 30s and 40s.
Values: handmade, calm, considered, quietly luxurious.

Visual language: warm minimalism. Palette dominated by
cream, oat, terracotta, and deep olive, with a single
muted gold accent. Materials referenced often: raw linen,
unglazed terracotta, oak, beeswax. Lighting: soft warm
window light, golden hour, gentle shadows. Style: editorial
slow-living photography in the spirit of Kinfolk magazine,
shot on a 50mm prime lens with a Kodak Portra 400 film
aesthetic. Mood: serene, intentional, quietly poetic.

==================================================

LAYER 2 — LOGO DIRECTION (Adobe Firefly):
[BRAND BLOCK]
Flat vector logo concept for "Lumen & Linen". Icon:
a minimal candle flame formed from two interlocking
linen weave lines. Single deep-olive colour (#4A5A2C)
on a cream background. No gradients, no shadows, no text.
--ar 1:1

LAYER 4 — MOOD BOARD (Midjourney):
[BRAND BLOCK]
Mood board image: an overhead flat-lay of raw linen
fabric, an unglazed terracotta candle holder, dried
olive branches, and a single beeswax candle on an oak
table, warm golden hour window light.
--ar 4:5 --v 6 --style raw --s 200

LAYER 5 — LIFESTYLE HERO (Midjourney):
[BRAND BLOCK]
Lifestyle hero shot: a woman in her late thirties wearing
a cream linen apron, gently lighting a beeswax candle on
a worn oak kitchen table at golden hour, mid-action.
Shot from a low three-quarter angle, 50mm prime, shallow
depth of field, candid documentary feel.
--ar 4:5 --v 6 --style raw --s 200 --no text, watermark

LAYER 6 — SOCIAL TEMPLATE (Midjourney for art, Canva for text):
[BRAND BLOCK]
Instagram square composition: a single unglazed terracotta
candle holder centred on a soft cream linen surface, warm
window light from the upper-left, generous empty space in
the lower third for typography overlay.
--ar 1:1 --v 6 --style raw --s 150

5. Step-by-Step Breakdown

1. Write the brand prompt block first. 60–120 words capturing palette, style, materials, lighting, and mood. This is your most valuable artefact for the entire project.
2. Generate logo directions. Three to five flat-vector concepts in Adobe Firefly (Topic 9). Pick the strongest two to refine in Illustrator later.
3. Build a 12-image mood board. Use Midjourney to generate textures, places, palettes, and lifestyle vignettes — all anchored to the brand prompt block.
4. Shoot the lifestyle hero imagery. Apply portrait (Topic 7), landscape (Topic 8), and product (Topic 10) prompt patterns, with the brand block pasted into each.
5. Produce social-media templates. Apply Topic 16's platform-aware patterns, with the brand block reused. Add typography in Canva or Figma.
6. Optionally add motion. Pull the strongest stills into Runway or Luma (Topic 17) for short brand-story video clips.
7. Hand off to a human designer. The AI work becomes a creative-direction package. A designer turns concepts into final vector assets, guideline documents, and production-ready files.

Tip: Save the entire prompt library (brand block + six layer prompts) in a single document. The next time a similar brief lands, you can clone it, swap a few words, and have a new brand identity 80% drafted before the meeting ends. This is how AI-augmented designers compress weeks of work into a single afternoon.

6. Practice Exercises

7. Key Takeaways