Project: Design a Complete Brand Identity Using AI Image Prompts

In this project you will design a complete brand identity using AI image prompts — logo concepts, colour palette, typography, illustration style, and an applied mock-up — without opening Figma until the very end. The deliverable is a one-page brand board you can present to a client or use to launch your own product.

1. Introduction

A brand identity is more than a logo. It is a coherent visual language — colours, type, imagery, layout — that makes your product feel like itself across every surface. Until recently, building one from scratch required a designer and several weeks. With AI image tools, a non-designer can produce a strong first cut in an afternoon, and a designer can produce a finished kit in a day.

We will design the brand for a fictional company: Aster & Oak, a small online bookshop specialising in nature writing. The same process generalises to any brand.

2. The Concept Explained

Image generation is at its best when you give it specific, structured prompts and you accept that the first 80% of design choices can be auto-generated but the last 20% is human taste. Our chain produces five artefacts: a moodboard, a logo set, a palette, a type pairing, and a final brand board mock-up.

The kit assembles from a brief into five components and then into a single presentable brand board.

3. The Problem Without a Brief

Naive logo prompt

logo for my bookshop, modern and clean

The output is a generic open-book icon in a generic sans-serif, which looks like every other independent bookshop logo on the internet. There is no brand point of view, no audience, no story — so the image model defaults to its training-data median.

4. The Solution: Brief First, Image Second

Step 1 — Brand brief (text prompt to a chat model)

You are a senior brand strategist.

Read the brief and produce a short brand DNA document I can use to
guide an image-generation model.

Return:
- 5 brand adjectives (no clichés like "modern", "premium")
- 3 forbidden associations (things this brand must NEVER look like)
- mood reference list (5 things from real life — fabrics, places,
  smells, music genres — that capture the feel)
- recommended visual style (in 1 paragraph, 3 sentences max)
- recommended palette direction (warm/cool, saturated/muted, with
  one line of reasoning)
- type pairing direction (e.g. "elegant serif + grounded geometric
  sans") with one line of reasoning

Brand: Aster & Oak
- Online bookshop specialising in nature writing and slow living.
- Audience: 30–55, UK, readers who buy fewer-but-better books.
- Voice: thoughtful, unhurried, slightly literary.
- Things to avoid: cottagecore kitsch, dark academia clichés,
  startup gradients.

The output is the spine of the project. Save it as brand-dna.md. Every image prompt below references it explicitly.

Step 2 — Moodboard prompt (image model)

A 3x3 moodboard of editorial reference images for a small
independent UK bookshop called Aster & Oak.

Style: documentary photography, soft natural light, muted palette
of olive green, oat, ink-black, and a single accent of warm
terracotta. Subjects: a hand turning a page, lichen on bark,
worn linen, a steam kettle on a wooden stove, a small bookshelf
in a window, dried autumn leaves on stone, hand-bound notebooks,
moss-covered tree roots, a single lit candle on a desk at dusk.

No people's faces. No text overlays. Cinematic, slightly grainy,
35mm film aesthetic. Avoid: HDR colours, plastic, glossy surfaces,
greeting-card prettiness.

Run this two or three times. Pick the moodboard that captures the brand best. This becomes a visual reference you can paste into later prompts.

Step 3 — Logo concepts prompt

Generate 6 logo concepts for "Aster & Oak", an independent UK
bookshop selling nature writing and slow-living titles.

Each concept on a clean off-white background. Include:
1) a hand-drawn botanical mark (an oak leaf or aster flower) paired
   with serif wordmark
2) a monogram-style "A&O" with subtle leaf integration
3) a minimal line illustration of a single book with a sprig
   growing out of its pages
4) a quiet, type-only wordmark in an elegant transitional serif
5) a small circular badge with the words wrapped around a tiny
   botanical engraving
6) a "vintage publisher" mark — small black-and-white
   engraving-style emblem

Style: refined, slightly literary, ink-on-paper feel. Avoid:
gradients, drop shadows, 3D effects, mascots, AI-typical
fake-handwriting fonts. Each concept clearly distinguishable.

You are not asking for a final logo — you are asking for six directions. Pick one, then iterate within it. This is exactly how human designers work.

Step 4 — Palette + type prompt (chat model)

Based on the brand DNA above and the moodboard I selected, propose:

- A 5-colour palette (primary, secondary, neutral light, neutral
  dark, accent). Return each as a hex code + plain-English name
  + intended use.
- A type pairing: heading typeface + body typeface. Each must be
  available on Google Fonts or as a common commercial license.
  Justify in one line each.
- One sentence on what the palette explicitly avoids (e.g. "no
  pure black; no saturated blues").

Output as Markdown.

Sample output: "Primary: #2F3A2C 'Mossy Ink' — main type colour. Accent: #B6552B 'Terracotta' — sparingly, on calls-to-action. Heading: Cormorant Garamond — elegant transitional serif, carries literary weight. Body: Inter — neutral and legible, lets the serif do the talking…"

Step 5 — Brand board mock-up prompt (image model)

A one-page brand board mock-up for "Aster & Oak" on a soft
oat-coloured background.

Layout: top-left a finished logo (use {paste chosen concept}),
top-right a 5-swatch colour palette as small filled rectangles
with the hex codes labelled, middle a type specimen with the
heading "Books that slow you down" set in Cormorant Garamond
and a paragraph of body copy below in Inter, bottom a small
applied mock-up: a hardback book cover, a cotton tote, and a
business card. The whole composition should look like a real
brand presentation page, not a Pinterest collage.

Style: editorial, calm, lots of negative space. Avoid: shiny
mockup textures, dramatic perspective, gradient backgrounds.

The image will not be production-perfect — it never is — but it gives you and the client something concrete to react to. That reaction shortens the rest of the project from weeks to days.

5. Step-by-Step Breakdown

Brief in text before images. Image models cannot read your mind. The DNA document is the bridge between strategy and image prompts.
List forbidden associations. "Avoid cottagecore kitsch, dark academia clichés, startup gradients" is more powerful than any positive descriptor. Image models default to clichés unless you forbid them.
Moodboard before logo. A moodboard locks the feel before you commit to a mark. This single step prevents three rounds of revisions later.
Generate logo directions, not a logo. Six rough concepts beat one polished concept because they force you to choose a direction before perfecting.
Use a chat model for palette and type. Image models are not great at reasoning about hex codes or licensing. The text-based pass produces a usable, structured spec.
Always finish with one applied mock-up. Logos and palettes do not sell on their own — applied mock-ups do. Even a rough mock-up turns abstract decisions into "I can see this".

Tip: Save every prompt with the image it produced in a folder called brand-aster-oak/. Six months later when you come back to refresh the brand, you have a complete diary of what you tried and what you chose.

6. Practice Exercises

Exercise 1

Write a one-paragraph brand brief for a business you would love to launch. Run the brand DNA prompt. Print the output and read it as if a client had handed it to you. Would you know what to design from it? If not, add the missing constraints to the brief and rerun.

Exercise 2

Take any existing brand you admire and try to reverse-engineer its DNA into the same format. Then run the moodboard prompt using that DNA. The exercise teaches you how brand language maps to image prompts.

Exercise 3

Add a "stress test" pass: generate a poster, a social square, and an email header using the chosen logo, palette, and type. Brands break in application. Apply early, fix the cracks, then commit.

7. Key Takeaways

Brief in text first; images second. The text brief is the brand's DNA.
Forbidden associations are more powerful than positive descriptors.
Moodboard before logo; logo direction before logo refinement.
Use a chat model for palette and type — image models do not reason about hex or licensing well.
Always finish with an applied mock-up; abstract decisions only become real when you see them on a book cover.

Discussion

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