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Mastering Midjourney: How to create consistent, beautiful brand imagery without complex prompts | Jamey Gannon

49 min episode · 2 min read
·
Mastering Midjourney

Episode

49 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Design & UX, Artificial Intelligence, Product & Tech Trends

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Style References Over Mood Boards: When Midjourney mood boards produce inconsistent results, switching to individual SREFs (style references) pulled directly from Pinterest images delivers sharper stylistic consistency. Midjourney tends to "average out" diverse mood boards, while targeted SREFs give the model cleaner, more specific visual direction — particularly for editorial or high-contrast aesthetics.
  • Publication and Artist Names as Prompt Shortcuts: Referencing specific publications like *Days* or *Vogue* in prompts communicates contrast levels, lighting style, and subject treatment without lengthy descriptions. A single editorial name carries the equivalent of dozens of descriptive words, making prompts shorter while producing more stylistically precise outputs — especially useful when generating hundreds of images daily.
  • Camera Model as Style Code: Pasting specific camera models (Sony RX100, DSLR, mirrorless, film) into prompts functions as a one-word style shortcut for controlling realism, grain, and era. Maintaining a saved list of camera names eliminates the need to remember technical specs like aperture settings while still achieving distinct visual treatments across large image sets.
  • Nano Banana as Spoken Photoshop: After generating base images in Midjourney, Nano Banana handles targeted edits — replacing objects, fixing hands, swapping logos — using plain language instructions. Specifying exact constraints like "keep position and size identical" and "only the left side of the keyboard is visible" prevents unintended changes and reduces iteration cycles on high-resolution final assets.
  • Deliverable as Prompt Package, Not Just Images: Instead of delivering a finished photo set and waiting for repeat business, the workflow packages the exact Midjourney setup — personalization codes, SREF codes, reference images, and final prompts — into a Figma document clients can reuse independently. This shifts the creative director's value to upfront brand definition rather than ongoing production dependency.

What It Covers

AI creative director Jamey Gannon demonstrates a repeatable Midjourney workflow for generating consistent brand imagery using style references, personalization codes, and mood boards — replacing traditional agency retainer models with a client-empowering system that delivers reusable prompt packages and reference codes.

Key Questions Answered

  • Style References Over Mood Boards: When Midjourney mood boards produce inconsistent results, switching to individual SREFs (style references) pulled directly from Pinterest images delivers sharper stylistic consistency. Midjourney tends to "average out" diverse mood boards, while targeted SREFs give the model cleaner, more specific visual direction — particularly for editorial or high-contrast aesthetics.
  • Publication and Artist Names as Prompt Shortcuts: Referencing specific publications like *Days* or *Vogue* in prompts communicates contrast levels, lighting style, and subject treatment without lengthy descriptions. A single editorial name carries the equivalent of dozens of descriptive words, making prompts shorter while producing more stylistically precise outputs — especially useful when generating hundreds of images daily.
  • Camera Model as Style Code: Pasting specific camera models (Sony RX100, DSLR, mirrorless, film) into prompts functions as a one-word style shortcut for controlling realism, grain, and era. Maintaining a saved list of camera names eliminates the need to remember technical specs like aperture settings while still achieving distinct visual treatments across large image sets.
  • Nano Banana as Spoken Photoshop: After generating base images in Midjourney, Nano Banana handles targeted edits — replacing objects, fixing hands, swapping logos — using plain language instructions. Specifying exact constraints like "keep position and size identical" and "only the left side of the keyboard is visible" prevents unintended changes and reduces iteration cycles on high-resolution final assets.
  • Deliverable as Prompt Package, Not Just Images: Instead of delivering a finished photo set and waiting for repeat business, the workflow packages the exact Midjourney setup — personalization codes, SREF codes, reference images, and final prompts — into a Figma document clients can reuse independently. This shifts the creative director's value to upfront brand definition rather than ongoing production dependency.

Notable Moment

Gannon described spending fifteen minutes trying to get Midjourney to generate a hand with extra fingers for an AI-themed article — after years of doing the opposite and removing unwanted extra fingers. The reversal highlighted how deeply model behavior has shifted in just a few years of development.

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Episode Transcript

It all comes down to having a very tight and manicured process, which thankfully I have spent my ten gajillion hours in midjourney and nana banana everything to figure out exactly what that is so you're not pulling your hair out prompting all day. One of the things I like about the mood mood board is it's a visual language to explain to Midjourney what you're trying to do. The picture is worth a thousand words. Like, literally a picture to an LLM is worth a thousand words. Mentioning, like, Vogue or High Fashion or even, like, a different artist name is a great way to tell the model a ton of stuff without actually having to tell a ton of stuff. In the past, brand and creative directors or agencies will give you these photos and be like, cool. Call us and re up when you want more photos. What I love is that you're like, look. You're You're gonna value me for all this upfront work that I'm gonna do to define the space, give you these codes, really give you reference images, and then now you can go do this for yourself. It's just like a very different model of providing service, and I think it creates a really positive collaboration between the client and the creative director. Welcome to How I AI. I'm Claire Vaux, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, we have an aesthetic episode with Jamie Gannon, who is an AI creative director and is gonna show us how to create consistent, beautiful, and unique brand assets using Midjourney, Nano Banana, Flora, and more. This is a workflow we haven't seen yet and goes into incredible depth on how to create awesome brand assets that you can use to uplevel all of your designs. Let's get to it. As an AI founder, you're used to sprinting towards product market fit, your next round, or that first enterprise contract. But speed isn't enough for AI startups. Buyers expect security, compliance, and transparency from day one. That's why serious AI transparency from day one. That's why serious AI startups use Vanta. With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast moving AI teams, Vanta gets you audit ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infra, and customers evolve. AI innovators like Langchain, Rider, and Cursor scaled faster and closed bigger deals by getting security right early with Vanta. Listeners can claim a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/howiai. Jamie, thanks for joining how I a I. I am having you on the show for a very selfish reason, which is I think I'm the only pink AI brand in all of SaaS. And when I saw your work, I was like, oh my god. I need this lady to teach me how to create brand imagery that is beautiful and fun and girly and whatever magic …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

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Tools

  • Nano BananaRecommended
    After generating base images in Midjourney, Nano Banana handles targeted edits — replacing objects, fixing hands, swapping logos — using plain language instructions.
  • FigmaRecommended
    the workflow packages the exact Midjourney setup — personalization codes, SREF codes, reference images, and final prompts — into a Figma document clients can reuse independently
  • MidjourneyRecommended
    AI creative director Jamey Gannon demonstrates a repeatable Midjourney workflow for generating consistent brand imagery using style references, personalization codes, and mood boards

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