Abstract Concepts (Sample)

Embark on a journey of imagination and self-expression with a wide range of prompts designed to ignite your creativity.

paper cut craft illustration, creativity spewing from the mind of an anthropomorphic head, low angle shot, vibrant colors — ar 1200:630 — v 5.1 | 📸: Stacey Schneider.

Sometimes I feel like my creativity button is shut off. Either I have dozens of ideas floating around, or my mind is a cold, blank space.

When creating images for my marketing or writing, if my creativity button is off, I typically resort to the marketer’s adage: Piracy is the best form of flattery.

Plagiarism is bad, of course, but finding inspiration among your peers is not. A simple Google image search on your topic often cues your own inspiration. For me, seeing a page of various compositions and visual metaphors fuels my vision, and helps me to land on an artistic direction.

Now though, we have a new tool to help spur imagination! Generative AI tools like Midjourney have a seemingly endless supply of digital creativity stored in its circuitry, ready for you to tap.

But, you can still get mired down. You can still stare for an uncomfortably long time at a blank prompt.

To push through the creative gauntlet, I now collect and review long lists of prompts for inspiration. I also have a handful of go-to methods to let Midjourney surprise and assist me with its own creativity.

In this post, I will link you to some of my favorite lists and walk you through some of my methods for unlocking creativity with Midjourney prompts.

Go Simple First

Similar to how I used to image search Google for a single term for graphical inspiration, today I put that prompt into Midjourney.

In this case, my post is on creativity—so I put just that into a prompt to see what Midjourney could do.

Then Add Chaos

I’ve also found that upping the **--chaos** value will produce initial image grids that are more varied and unexpected each time. The max setting is 100, but I usually stick in the middle somewhere.

How to change the chaos value

Simply add **--chaos <value>** or **--c <value>** to the end of your prompt.

Try Illustrations

fauvism illustration, creativity in the age of artificial intelligence, masterpiece quality — ar 1200:630 — v 5.1 📸: Stacey Schneider.

Illustrations extend past reality and open the whole universe of possibilities. But as I’ve said before, I’ve found that creating illustrations in Midjourney is one of the toughest tasks to nail on the first try.

My tips on how to craft Illustrations are all in my previous post on 400+ Midjourney Prompts for Illustrations.

I won’t repeat all of them, but I will point out my personal top 10 favorites:

1. Paper cut craft illustration. You see this very often on my cover images for my posts.
2. 3D illustration. Really brings your art to life.
3. Isometric illustration. This is likely a hangover of working in tech for so long—these styles of illustrations have been popular for a while, and are starting to look a bit dated.
4. Vector illustration. Pair this with ‘geometric shapes’, ‘abstract shapes’ or something specific like ‘circles’.
5. Pre-columbian illustration. I just love the primitive drawing style. I’m also an island girl, so I have a cultural attachment to this style.
6. Fauvism illustration. Its bold, vibrant, and an intuitive, highly gestural application of paint.
7. Whimsical illustration. Just putting a prefix on illustration also works. Also try ‘fantasy illustration’ or ‘storybook illustration’ for explicitly creative worlds.
8. Detailed __ illustration. Adding modifiers to any illustration type like ‘hyperdetailed’ or ‘minimalistic’ can radically uplevel your illustration.
9. Concept art for __. Just add two topics together and Midjourney will invent something spectacular, like ‘concept art for networking and artificial intelligence.’
10. Infographic illustration. These tend to demonstrate creative relationships between objects.

Play with Color

Sometimes a pop of color can breath life into an illustration. As you can see above, adding ‘vibrant color’ works better to underscore the idea of creativity by affording more dimensions.

My personal favorites include:

1. Vibrant color. Non-specific rich, saturated tones. Can also use ‘vivid colors.’
2. Psychedelic color. For intensely saturated hues.
3. 80s color. Bold and bright colors, including shades of blue, pink, yellow and green.
4. 60s color. Most well known for eye popping colors such as lime green, magenta, lemon, mimosa, jade, hot pink and tangerine.
5. Color splash. Maximize contrast between your black and white and colors.
6. Happy colors. Put a mood to your colors!
7. Bold colors. Heavily saturated and bright.
8. Violet accent colors. The modern way to add power and luxury to an image.
9. Colorful. Sometimes simple works.
10. Beautifully color-coded. Very popular descriptor, albeit unspecific.

a conceptual illustration of balancing financial data for a business inside a virtual accounting system, violet accent colors, highly detailed, virtual digital concept — ar 16:9 📸: Stacey Schneider.

Colors typically go at the end of your prompt before any suffixes. However, it can be powerful to put them in the descriptor of the art type, which should go at the front of your prompt.

For example, use ‘psychedelic papercut style illustration’ to condense your prompt, and increase the importance of color.

You may also want to limit your colors, especially in the case where you need to follow branding guidelines. No problem! Just list the hex values of your colors at the end of your prompt.

Go Cultural

harlem renaissance illustration, creativity on a city street, #243043, #e34b44, #E9DAC1 — ar 1200:630 — v 5.1 | 📸: Stacey Schneider.

Sometimes creative inspiration lies in the culture of your audience. I find highlighting different styles around the globe is more inclusive and eye-catching.

I already mentioned my affinity for pre-columbian illustrations, but here are some of my other favorite art styles from around the globe to inspire creativity:

1. Chicano art. Celebrating the culture and experiences of Chicanos, or Mexican Americans.
2. Harlem Renaissance. African-american art from the 1920s and 1930s.
3. K-Pop Esthetic. Typically an explosive cocktail of colors that captures the eye.
4. Dadaism. Central europe’s art style for anarchy after World War I.
5. Tibetan art. Complex compositions with vibrant colors and intricate patterns.
6. Moari art. New Zealand natives have a tell-tale use of geometric patterns, koru (spirals), and whakairo (carvings).
7. Marano art. Maranao art is characterized by its use of intricate patterns, bold colors, and calligraphy.
8. World art. A bit of a catch-all, but guaranteed to add dimension to your art. Can also use ‘tribal art’ or ‘folk art’. Feel free to add any country to make the art more specific.
9. Outerworld art. Who says the culture has to be from earth?

For 150+ art styles with more examples, check out my art style dictionary, including Chicano art as seen in the key image for the article.

Break Your Image Into Pieces

Sometimes the secret to building your image is to craft it in layers. This will require using other tools like Photoshop or Canva to put the layers together.

Start with a background image

3D pixal art, psychedelic abstract shapes and waves, color pop background, negative space on left — ar 1200:630 — v 5.1 📸: Stacey Schneider.

Sometimes all you need is an interesting background to overlay a logo, text, or isolated image upon. Some of my favorite descriptors to use here:

1. Minimalistic. Confining your prompt to a limited number of colors, shapes and textures helps keep your background image in the background.
2. Abstract. Non-representational designs easily add interest to your image.
3. Geometric shapes. Straight lines and clear angles for the win.
4. Background pattern. About as direct as you can get.
5. A 3D texture. Adding texture to a background is a great strategy to layering images.
6. Bokeh background. Blur that background out. As a bonus you can add lens flares.
7. Lots of different objects. Jam your background full of a specific object, or photos of that object.
8. Use of negative space. Especially if you are going to layer writing or another image, you may want to plan for there to be a blank space.
9. High angle view. Zooming out makes most images background worthy.
10. Repeating background. Repetition helps objects to blend into the background. In a similar vein, ‘intricate open patterns’ also works.

Or, try tiling

Another strategy to building a repeating background is to build tiles. Then you can control how small or large the tiles are, creating fine-grained control over how distracting your background can be.

I’ve written on how to create tiles using Midjourney before, but to make a repeating pattern, you just need to add the add **--tile** to the end of your prompt. For more on tiles, including tips, see my previous post:

Then add your image

Drop your background into your favorite photo editor. For simple image builds, I prefer to start with Canva. Mostly because its brand kit makes consistency easy, and it puts all my reusable uploads all in one spot. Plus, it has a huge library of images and video that are ready to use.

And, cutting out images to overlay is literally a one button click. In fairness, it is equally as easy in Photoshop these days, as it just got Generative AI too.

If you need to create the image to overlay from Midjourney, here are some prompts to help you:

1. Isolated. This will make it real easy to cut out. ‘Isometric’ also works.
2. Full body shot. Ensures you can actually isolate the image, and nothing is haphazardly cut off.
3. Frame within a frame. Sometimes this is useful to literally frame something to be cut out.
4. Overhead shot. The angle adds interest and usually covers the whole subject without cutting parts off.
5. Strong outline. Consider adding a color to the outline to stylize even more.
6. Stickers. Stickers are meant to be cut out and layered.
7. Rim lighting. Puts a glow around your object that can be interesting to cut out.
8. Woodblock prints or Stencil. Use painting styles designed to paint over any background. Be sure to use high contrast colors like black, white or neon to make it stand out.
9. In a circle. Focus your image into a shape.
10. On a solid background. Specify a specific color or color code to isolate your image.

Add Feelings

A heartwarming illustration, a student receiving a laptop from their teacher, expressing immense joy and gratitude — ar 1200:630 — v 5.1 📸: Stacey Schneider.

It always amazes me that a machine can understand emotion. But Midjourney was trained extensively on emotions, and it really affects the outcome! So, it really helps to color your prompt with the emotion you are trying to evoke.

Some favorites:

1. Innocent and happy.
2. Blissful.
3. Joyful.
4. Fear and confusion.
5. Filled with wonder.
6. Proud.
7. Amused.
8. Serenity.
9. Hope.
10. Gratitude.

Keep Looking For Inspiration

Inspiration is everywhere! But if you’re lost, sometimes posts like these are a real help to get you going. Here are a couple ways you can continue your search for creativity.

1. Use the **/describe** function. Regressing to the old image search on Google, you can use a image to have Midjourney volunteer descriptors that may inspire you.
2. Check out Midjourney showcases on Discord. There are several, and while users annoyingly don’t always include their prompt, you can take a screen cap and use the **/describe** function.
3. Check out some of my other prompt lists:

Medium