How to write an AI hero image prompt that leaves room for your headline

Most AI hero images fail for one reason: the subject sits exactly where the headline needs to go. The fix is not a better tool. It is a brief that tells the model about the layout.

Start with the headline, not the image

Write the headline first, even a rough one, and decide which side of the screen it sits on. A hero image has one job, which is to make those words land. Everything in the prompt follows from that.

Write seven lines

An art director briefs a photographer with decisions, not adjectives. Do the same:

1. Subject: one concrete thing. "A ceramic chai cup with a curl of steam on a round terracotta plinth", not "café vibes".
2. Composition: where it sits and from what angle. "Right third, eye level."
3. Lighting: one light, described. "Soft key light from the upper left."
4. Lens or material: "Product lens look, crisp focus" or "matte clay 3D".
5. Palette: plain colour words. "Deep teal and warm cream." Image models do not read hex codes well.
6. Negative space: the side and the size. "The left two-thirds is a clean, empty backdrop."
7. Avoid: "No text, no logos, no extra props."

Turn the brief into the prompt

For Midjourney, compress the lines into short phrases separated by commas and add the aspect ratio parameter for a wide frame. For Flux-style models, write the same content as three or four plain sentences; they follow full descriptions better than keyword lists.

Use fractions for space. "Leave room for text" is routinely ignored. "The left half is plain and even" is followed far more often.

Run three rounds, not thirty

Generate once. Pick the closest result. Change one line only, perhaps the light or the angle, and run again. If three rounds have not worked, the brief is wrong, so go back and change a decision rather than re-rolling.

Check before you celebrate

• Zoom to full size and look for warped edges and stray marks.
• Read every surface for invented lettering.
• Place the real headline and button on the image at desktop and mobile widths.
• Check your image tool's current terms before using the image commercially.

If the headline is not readable on top, the image has failed, however good it looks alone. Ask for lower contrast in the text area and try again.

One last habit: note the tool, the settings and the seed for the image you keep. The feature cards and banners further down the page will need to match it, and that note is how you get back to the same look.

The Pixvault Prompt Vault has ten hero recipes written this way, each with the text space already specified.