Art direction before generation
Generation makes images cheap and decisions expensive, so decide first. A key visual brief should fix the idea in one line, the hero (product, person or place), the light, palette, lens and mood, the typographic lock-up and what must never change. Use generation to explore several genuinely different routes early, then choose one and stop exploring. Reference boards help, but do not build a route on another campaign's recognisable look. A master assembled from lucky generations rarely adapts well, because nobody can say which parts are the design and which were accidents.
Designing for fifty crops and ratios
The same visual may have to work as a 48-sheet poster (2:1), a 6-sheet (2:3 portrait), a 9:16 story, a 1:1 feed post, a 970x250 billboard banner and a 320x50 mobile strip. Build it in layers: background plate, hero subject, product, logo, headline, legal line. Keep the hero compact enough to survive a tall crop and a wide one, and make the background extendable so it can grow sideways or upwards without inventing new content. Test the extreme ratios on day one; an idea that only works at 16:9 is a picture, not a key visual.
Typography safe areas
Reserve type areas as part of the composition, not as space found later. Keep a calm zone behind the headline with no faces, product edges or busy texture, and size it for the longest language: German and Finnish copy often runs well past the English, and right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew change where the eye starts. Mirroring a layout for right-to-left markets must never flip the product, packaging text or logo. Keep logos and legal lines inside each format's safe area, clear of platform interfaces, poster frames and the edges that print trims.
Versioning per market, and who owns the result
Market versions should change what matters locally and nothing else: casting, season (December is summer in Sydney), landmarks, language, legal lines, currency and sometimes the product itself. The grid, lock-up, palette and hero stay constant, which is what makes the campaign recognisable across borders. Ownership deserves thought too: the US Copyright Office has said that material generated without sufficient human authorship is not protected, so the human-made parts of a key visual, such as selection, arrangement, typography and edits, carry more of its protection. In Synthetic White, the brand hub holds logo, colours and typography, and every market version goes through approvals with sign-off and an audit trail.
Updated 25 September 2026