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How to Make AI Designs Less Generic

Oct 21, 2026·8 min read
A designer at her desk comparing two pages on screen: the same restaurant website as a generic AI-generated page marked Before and as a carefully designed page marked After

AI can turn a single sentence into a website layout, a product photo or a full slide deck in seconds. The first result often looks impressive. Then you put it next to ten other AI designs and notice they all look alike.

Soft purple gradients. Floating 3D shapes. Smiling stock people in bright offices. A layout that could belong to any brand in any industry.

That sameness isn’t a flaw in the tool. It’s what happens when the tool has to guess. The less you decide, the more the AI falls back on the most common answer, and the most common answer is generic.

Here are seven ways to give AI a clear direction and turn its first draft into something that looks and works like your brand.

1. Start with a brief, not a style

“Create a modern, premium website” hands every important decision to the machine. It doesn’t know what you sell, who you sell to or what a visitor should do next.

A short creative brief fixes that. In a diary study by Nielsen Norman Group, 18 participants logged 425 conversations with AI chatbots. The researchers found that useful prompts tend to combine four parts:

  • The request: what you want.
  • Framing: the context and the problem you’re solving.
  • Format: how the result should look.
  • References: examples or earlier output to build on.

That study looked at chatbot conversations rather than visual design, but the structure translates directly. Before you generate anything, write down the purpose, the audience, the real content, the visual direction and the technical requirements.

So instead of “a professional restaurant website”, describe a contemporary restaurant whose visitors want to see the menu and book a table, list the sections you need, and name the photography style, the brand colours and the main button.

Every decision you make up front is one less thing the AI has to guess.

2. Swap vague adjectives for visible decisions

“Modern”, “clean”, “premium” and “beautiful” mean something different to every designer, and to every AI model. Translate them into choices you can actually see.

  • A premium SaaS homepage: generous white space, two or three restrained colours, strong typography, real product screenshots and one clear call to action.
  • A luxury real estate photo: the architectural style, the materials, the time of day, the camera height and the landscaping, instead of just “luxury villa”.
  • An icon set: stroke width, corner radius, perspective, colour treatment and level of detail.

References help too, as long as you say what you’re borrowing: a grid, a photographic mood, a use of negative space. Learn from the quality, then make it your own rather than copying the source.

3. Build a small visual system first

Ten AI images can each look great and still clash side by side. One has soft daylight, the next has dramatic studio shadows. One illustration is flat, the next is glossy 3D. Icons drift in size and line weight.

A few written rules keep everything in the same family:

  • Colour: primary, secondary and accent colours, plus your neutrals.
  • Typography: typefaces, weights and a clear hierarchy.
  • Photography: lighting, composition, camera angle and colour grading.
  • Illustrations and icons: shape language, line weight, texture and depth.
  • Layout: spacing, grid and how components look.

Consistency is one of Nielsen Norman Group’s ten usability heuristics. Their guidance separates internal consistency (your own patterns stay the same everywhere) from external consistency (you follow conventions people already know). You can be distinctive in colour and photography and still keep navigation and buttons where visitors expect them.

There’s a practical bonus. Once your rules are written down, every new image, slide or post comes out matching what you already have. That’s why our stock image packs are created as sets: same light, same setting, same style across every image.

4. Use real content, not placeholders

AI is very good at producing convincing filler: neat headlines, fictional testimonials and pretty imagery. None of it tells you whether the design works for your business.

A restaurant needs a menu and a booking button. A financial consultant needs credentials and a clear next step. A shop selling editable templates needs file formats, compatibility and licence details, not three decorative feature cards.

Bring your real content in as early as you can:

  • your actual product descriptions, services and customer questions;
  • real photos wherever accuracy matters;
  • realistic data and text lengths in dashboards and presentations.

Then check everything. Nielsen Norman Group has written about how confident, polished chatbot answers discourage error checking: people take the output at face value. Treat generated copy, numbers and claims as a draft until you’ve verified them, and zoom in on generated images for warped hands, garbled text or impossible details.

Honesty matters here as well. Google’s guidance on creating helpful, people-first content calls out AI-generated headshots and made-up credentials used to pass content off as expert work as deception. If you use AI portraits as placeholders, never present them as your real team or as customer reviews.

5. Cut decoration that doesn’t do a job

Gradients, glowing orbs, glass panels and floating shapes make a strong first impression. They aren’t wrong in themselves. The problem starts when they compete with the content.

Picture the same restaurant website twice. Same menu, same food photos, same booking form. One version wraps everything in glowing gradients and identical feature cards. The other uses strong photography, clear type, calm spacing and a reservation button you can’t miss.

The second isn’t better because it’s simpler. It’s better because every choice helps a visitor understand the restaurant and book a table.

For each decorative element, ask: does it clarify the message, express the brand or point attention somewhere useful? If not, try the design without it. Our post on website animation applies the same test to movement.

A quick check: switch off the effects in your head. The structure, the content and the main action should still make complete sense.

6. Give specific feedback, not “make it better”

Treat the first result as a sketch. Then tell the tool exactly what to keep, what to remove and what to change:

“Keep the existing food photography and content. Remove the floating 3D shapes and bright gradients. Replace the three feature cards with an editorial food gallery. Use warm ivory backgrounds, charcoal text and restrained burnt-orange accents. Make the reservation button more prominent.”

That one instruction names the problem, the goal and what must stay the same.

For images, fix the detail instead of starting over. Most generators can now edit a selected area, which keeps everything that already works.

After each round, compare the result with your brief. More elaborate isn’t automatically better.

7. Test it where it will live

An image that looks stunning full screen can fall apart as a blog thumbnail. An icon that looks crisp in a preview can become a smudge at 24 pixels. A layout that shines on a laptop can feel cramped on a phone.

Before you publish, check:

  • Websites: the mobile layout, navigation, content order and whether the main button stays visible.
  • Images: the actual pixel size, sharpness and crop. Asking for “4K” in a prompt doesn’t guarantee a true 4K file, so check the dimensions yourself.
  • Icons and illustrations: real sizes, on the backgrounds where they’ll appear.
  • Templates and presentations: whether text, photos and colours really are editable in the software you promise.

Accessibility is part of this. The W3C sets a minimum contrast of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. A beautiful colour pairing can still be hard to read.

Finally, check the licence and usage rights for the tool, any source material and the finished assets. Some tools, such as Adobe Firefly, also attach Content Credentials that show an image was made or edited with AI. That’s a useful transparency signal when you publish.

A simple prompt structure to copy

Use these six headings every time:

  • Purpose: what should the design achieve?
  • Audience: who will see or use it?
  • Content: what real information must appear?
  • Visual direction: which colours, typography, photography and layout rules apply?
  • Constraints: what must stay the same, and what should be avoided?
  • Output: which size, format and level of editability do you need?

For example:

“Create a homepage concept for a contemporary restaurant aimed at professionals looking for healthy lunch and dinner options. Use the restaurant’s real menu, food photography and booking details. Design an editorial layout with warm ivory backgrounds, dark charcoal typography, muted olive accents and restrained burnt-orange buttons. Prioritise the food photography, a readable menu section and a clear table-booking button. Avoid glowing gradients, floating 3D objects and decorative cards. Deliver a responsive desktop and mobile version.”

It won’t guarantee a perfect result. It will give you a far better starting point, and a clear standard to judge the result against.

Let AI do the work, not the thinking

AI is a fast assistant. It can explore ideas, generate assets and produce variations in minutes. Left without direction, it will just as quickly produce something that looks like everyone else.

The difference is the decisions around the tool. Start with a clear purpose, use real content, set a visual system, refine on purpose and test before you publish.

Want a head start? Browse our consistent 4K stock image sets, editable presentation templates and free resources, then adapt them to your brand. For more on finding your style, read how to choose illustrations that fit your brand, or compare your options in DIY, template or custom.

The goal isn’t to hide that AI was involved. It’s to make something that works for your audience and could only belong to your business.

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