A now famous Facebook post shows us the scourge of identikit posters generated by AI.
\nHere’s an article on the subject from the Independent.
\nHere’s another I found in the wild. With apologies for picking on the Leamington Beer Festival - they are by no means unique
\nThe problem with these is not so much that they’re bad. They’re OK,\nI don’t love them. The problem is that once you’ve seen that style 20 times\nit starts to irritate just from the sheer repetition.
\nI knew that even ChatGPT was capable of a broader variety of styles than this, so I set out to prove it.
\nI gave ChatGPT some invented event details and asked it to produce a poster. Rather than go with the default look it would choose for a spring fayre, I made a point of specifying what I thought was a different style:
\nMe:
\nProduce a poster for a spring fayre.
\n21 April - 11am to 3pm
\nMill Beach Park, Honeyford
\nFree entry
\nTombola
\nCakes and drinks
\nPerformance by a samba band and a dhol band.
\nCraft stalls
\nCircus Skills workshop
\nGo for a clean, unfussy, bright layout with a bold striking spring-themed graphic. Avoid pastel/airbrush/oil style art or images of people.
\nThis is what came back.
\nNot as successful as I hoped. To me it still feels like what I’m trying to avoid.
\nI asked for something deliberately different.
\nMe:
\nMake another one using a completely different design aesthetic of your choice. Treat the current one as a “what not to do” – not that there is anything wrong with it, but we want ours to stand out from other posters that look similar.
\nI think this is already much better. It stands out just be being different. I wondered what I would call this style if I wanted to ask for it again?
\nMe: What is this design style you’ve used called?
\nChatGPT: This one is leaning into a modernist / Bauhaus-influenced graphic style, with a bit of contemporary “flat illustration” layered on top.
\nMore specifically, you could describe it as:
\nBauhaus / Modernist Poster Design
\nLimited, high-contrast colour palette
Geometric Minimalism
Very little texture or shading — mostly flat colour
Swiss Style (International Typographic Style) influence
Clear, legible structure
If you wanted a shorthand label for a designer or printer, you could call it:
“Bauhaus-inspired geometric minimalist poster”
\nIf you’re trying to stand out, this direction works well because most local event posters default to:
\n“craft fair” aesthetics
Whereas this feels more like:
or something you’d see in a well-curated café
If you want, I can push it further into a really distinctive niche (e.g. brutalist, risograph, 90s rave flyer, Japanese minimal, etc.).
Well, thanks GPT. I knew there was an endless array of design styles that it could produce. Instead of trying to dredge some names from my memory, I asked for suggestions.
\nIt replied with a list of styles, some of which I’d never heard of, some I recognised but couldn’t picture, some which were names I didn’t know for styles I did.
\nMe: Give me a list of styles to choose from
\nChatGPT: Here’s a deliberately varied menu—some safe-but-distinct, some quite left-field. I’ve kept each one concrete so you can imagine how your fayre poster would actually look.
\n🎨 Clean but Characterful
\n1. Bauhaus / Modernist
\n(What you just saw)
\nGeometric shapes, primary colours, strong type
\nFeels cultural / design-led rather than “craft fair”
\n2. Swiss Style
\nstrict grid, lots of whitespace
\nBlack/white + one accent colour
\nVery “information design”, almost institutional
\n3. Contemporary Editorial (Magazine-style)
\nBig headline, elegant serif + sans mix
\nThink weekend supplement or gallery leaflet
\nCould feel surprisingly premium for a fayre
\n🌿 Graphic & Illustrative (but not twee)
\n4. Risograph Print Style
\nLimited ink colours, slightly misregistered layers
\nGrainy textures, bold shapes
\nFeels handmade but designed, not crafty
\n5. Cut Paper / Collage (Matisse-inspired)
\nInspired by Henri Matisse cut-outs
\nOrganic shapes, bold colour blocks
\nVery striking from a distance
\n6. Botanical Scientific Illustration (Modernised)
\nClean line drawings of plants, labelled or diagram-like
\nMonochrome + one highlight colour
\nQuietly distinctive, slightly academic
\n⚡ Bold / Unusual Directions
\n7. Brutalist Graphic Design
\nRaw, high-contrast, almost “ugly on purpose”
\nHeavy black blocks, stark type
\nFeels rebellious—very different from typical village posters
\n8. 90s Rave Flyer / Acid Graphics
\nNeon colours, warped type, energetic layout
\nCould echo the samba/dhol energy
\nSurprisingly effective if done with restraint
\n9. Memphis Design (80s Postmodern)
\nPlayful shapes, squiggles, clashing colours
\nInspired by Memphis Group
\nFun but still graphic and bold
\n🧭 Quietly Distinct / Understated
\n10. Japanese Minimal Poster
\nVery restrained layout, lots of empty space
\nOne strong graphic element
\nElegant, calm, and unusual in this context
\n11. Monochrome + Single Accent (Ultra-minimal)
\nBlack, white, and e.g. bright green or orange
\nTypography-led, almost no illustration
\nRelies on composition rather than decoration
\n12. Wayfinding / Signage Style
\nLooks like a park map or transport signage
\nIcons, arrows, structured layout
\nFunctional but visually interesting
\n🎪 Slightly Playful but Still Clean
\n13. Modern Icon System
\nEverything represented as simple icons
\nConsistent stroke weight, grid-based
\nFeels like an app UI or transport system
\n14. Stamp / Letterpress Style (Modernised)
\nBold inked shapes, slight imperfections
\nLimited palette, strong contrast
\nSuggests “event” without being twee
\n15. Festival Poster (Contemporary Indie)
\nBig central graphic + stacked lineup text
\nBorrow cues from music festivals
\nWorks nicely given the bands
\nIf you want a steer
\nGiven your brief (“clean, unfussy, bold, no twee imagery”), the strongest stand-out options are:
\nWayfinding / signage
If one of these clicks, I can generate a poster in that exact style—and push it properly, not just superficially.
Asking for specific aesthetics produced a variety of posters.
\nNow, I’m not claiming these don’t have a whiff of AI about them. I don’t think that’s really my goal - we can be honest that we’re using AI, we just don’t want it to have that look that everyone’s sick of.
\nMe: Please give me Stamp / Letterpress Style (Modernised)
\nMe: and now please Japanese Minimal Poster
\nMe: Now do Memphis Design please
\n(I didn’t know what Memphis Group design was, but I recognised if when I saw it.
\nThen I got a bit silly. Designers Republic is a design agency famous for record covers from the late 80s onwards.
\nMe: And now in the style of Designers Republic
\nOne note here is that along the way, the poster has acquired extra text (“A day of music making and family fun”) – it’s decided that Designers Republic would have thrown in some text of that kind, so it’s come up with some words. Those words are now in the chat context, so they appear in subsequent posters.
\nIf you were working from scratch, you’d just ask for the style you want in the first place, and avoid picking up trappings as you go.
\nMe: Now as if a professional graphic designer has added typography to a poster paint drawing by his young child.
\nMe: Now with the aesthetic of a photocopied 1980 punk fanzine. But with some colour snuck in.
\nMe: Now please make one in the style of a 90s drum n bass gig flyer, with early 3D/fractal computer imagery
\nBack to sensible ideas, naming an art style but asking for a poster that movement might have used, seems like a strong tactic.
\nMe: Now in the style of a contemporary 40s poster for a cubist exhibition.
\nSo there we are. The sharp-eyed are still going to recognise these as AI-generated, but they’re distinctive, and I think they’re not ugly.
\nSo that’s the moral - you don’t have to make posters that look like everyone else’s.
\nThere’s a further step - you don’t have to ask AI for posters as images that can’t be edited. Claude and Gemini can generate HTML, PNG, PDF, where the text is real text, layers are real layers, you can change fonts, move things around, edit the text – but that’s more than I want to talk about today.
\nInspired by this blog post, I went on to make a catalogue of one hundred poster styles, with ready-to-paste prompts and example images for each one.
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