Free Ideogram 4.0 Prompt Generator for Text and Posters

TL;DR: Fill seven fields — headline, subhead, layout, font mood, palette, aspect ratio, style — and the block below assembles a working Ideogram 4.0 prompt in seconds. Put the exact text in quotation marks near the front, describe the font instead of naming it, and switch to JSON prompting when placement has to be repeatable.

The Ideogram prompt generator: seven fields, one prompt

An Ideogram prompt generator is a fill-in-the-blanks template that turns seven design decisions into one correctly ordered prompt string. It works because Ideogram's own prompting guide is unusually prescriptive about order: the image summary comes first, the exact text goes in quotation marks near the beginning, and the model gives slightly more weight to whatever appears early. (docs.ideogram.ai, accessed Aug 26, 2026)

Fill this in. Every field is optional except headline and style.

HEADLINE      → the exact words, in quotes:  "SUMMER HOURS"
SUBHEAD       → the exact words, in quotes:  "Fridays close at 3"
LAYOUT        → headline top third, subhead centred beneath, mark bottom-left
FONT MOOD     → heavy condensed sans-serif, tight letter spacing, all caps
PALETTE       → #0B3D2E deep green, #F2E8D5 bone, #D9722C burnt orange
ASPECT RATIO  → 2x3
STYLE         → screen-printed poster, flat colour, visible paper grain

Now assemble it in this order. This is the shape Ideogram's structure guide teaches, with the text moved forward:

A [STYLE] poster. The headline "[HEADLINE]" is set in [FONT MOOD], [LAYOUT: headline].
Beneath it the subhead "[SUBHEAD]" sits [LAYOUT: subhead], in a lighter weight of the
same family. [SUBJECT OR GRAPHIC, one sentence.] The background is [BACKGROUND].
The palette is [PALETTE]. [LIGHTING OR ATMOSPHERE.] [COMPOSITION NOTE.] [FINISH.]

Which produces this, ready to paste:

A screen-printed poster with flat colour and visible paper grain. The headline
"SUMMER HOURS" is set in heavy condensed sans-serif, all caps with tight letter
spacing, spanning the top third. Beneath it the subhead "Fridays close at 3" sits
centred in a lighter weight of the same family. A single stylised sun with straight
radiating rays occupies the lower half. The background is flat bone-coloured stock.
The palette is deep green, bone, and burnt orange. Lighting is flat with no gradient.
The layout is symmetrical with generous margins. Edges are crisp, ink slightly
over-saturated.

That is 87 words. Ideogram's guide says prompts run to "roughly 150-160 words or about 200 tokens" and warns that "anything beyond that limit may be less effective or ignored entirely." (docs.ideogram.ai, accessed Aug 26, 2026) So you have room, but not much. Spend it on the text and the layout, not on adjectives.

Why is typography the reason people pick Ideogram?

Because it is the one axis where Ideogram's published numbers lead. In Ideogram's own June 2026 technical write-up for 4.0, the model scores 0.97 on X-Omni English OCR accuracy for in-image text, against 0.69 for layout control (7Bench mIoU), 0.76 for spatial reasoning and 0.89 for prompt alignment. Text is the spike in that profile, not the average.

Ideogram 4.0 shipped on June 3, 2026 as the company's first open-weight foundation model: a 9.3B-parameter single-stream Diffusion Transformer, trained from scratch, with weights published on Hugging Face. The model card claims "best text rendering of any open-weight release" at that parameter scale. (huggingface.co/ideogram-ai/ideogram-4-nf4, accessed Aug 26, 2026)

The mechanism matters for prompting. Ideogram 4.0 "was trained exclusively on structured JSON captions" in which every text element carries its literal string separately from a description of how it should look. That separation is why the model treats a headline as a string to spell rather than a texture to paint, and it is the whole reason a seven-field generator maps onto this model so cleanly. Your fields are its training schema.

What the docs admit Ideogram cannot do

A generator is only as honest as its limits. Ideogram publishes three, and all three change how you should fill the fields.

The docs go further than most vendors would: "Ideogram is not designed to generate complete, text-heavy documents," and if precise readable text really matters, "consider using Ideogram to generate the visual concept and then add the text manually using graphic editing tools afterward." (docs.ideogram.ai, accessed Aug 26, 2026)

That is the correct advice and it is worth taking. Generate the poster with placeholder headline, then set the real type in Figma. You lose nothing and you stop gambling on spelling.

Which prompt surface should you use?

Ideogram 4.0 accepts three, and they are not interchangeable. The trade is speed against repeatability.

Ideogram's own summary of the JSON case is refreshingly narrow: "Run the plain-text prompt ten times and the layout will drift. Run the JSON prompt ten times and the structure holds. That's the practical case for JSON — not quality, but repeatability and compositional control."

So the seven-field text template above is the right tool for one-off posters and for exploring. The moment a client asks for the same layout in five colourways, graduate to JSON prompting.

Presets: posters

Each preset below is a filled version of the seven fields. Swap the quoted strings and go. Aspect ratios use the values Ideogram's API accepts, which use an x separator rather than a colon.

Event poster, 2x3

A vintage offset-printed event poster with visible halftone texture. The headline
"NIGHT MARKET" is set in tall condensed serif capitals with tight tracking, spanning
the top quarter. Beneath it the subhead "Every Friday until October" runs in a light
italic serif, centred. A stylised row of market stall awnings fills the middle band.
The background is warm cream with faint paper foxing at the edges. The palette is
ink black, cream, and a single tomato red. Lighting is flat. The layout is
symmetrical with a thin rule under the headline. Edges are slightly ink-bled.

Film-style title poster, 1x2

A moody one-sheet poster with deep shadow and heavy grain. The headline "SALT FLATS"
is set in wide-spaced thin sans-serif capitals across the lower third. Above it the
subhead "A film about staying put" sits small and centred in the same family. A lone
figure stands in silhouette against an empty horizon in the upper two-thirds. The
background is a desaturated dusk gradient. The palette is slate blue, bone, and a
faint amber at the horizon. Lighting is backlit with a long shadow toward the viewer.
The composition is centred with large negative space. Fine 35mm grain throughout.

Retail promo, 4x5

A clean flat-vector retail promo card. The headline "40% OFF" is set in extremely
heavy geometric sans-serif, filling the upper half edge to edge. Beneath it the
subhead "Everything, this weekend only" sits in a medium weight of the same family
on a single line. A simple folded-tag icon anchors the bottom-right corner. The
background is a solid saturated field with a subtle circular halftone burst behind
the headline. The palette is #E8452C, #FFF4E6, and #1A1A1A. Lighting is flat, no
shadow. The layout is left-aligned with a consistent 8% margin. Crisp vector edges.

Presets: logo-adjacent work

A caution before the templates. Ideogram is genuinely strong at lockups, wordmarks and badge layouts, and its docs show worked examples of exactly that. But it is not a logo delivery tool. You get a raster image, not vectors, and the API exposes an enable_copyright_detection flag that runs post-generation likeness and logo checks, which tells you how the company itself thinks about the risk. Treat output as a direction to redraw, not a finished mark.

Wordmark exploration, 1x1

A logo design study on a flat white background. The wordmark "HALLOW" is set in a
high-contrast serif with sharp bracketed serifs and a heavily weighted stem, centred.
The letterforms are tightly kerned with the crossbar of the A extended into a fine
horizontal rule. No icon, no background scene. The palette is a single deep ink
navy on white. Lighting is flat and even. The composition is centred with wide even
margins on all sides. Clean vector-style edges with no texture.

Badge lockup, 1x1

A circular badge logo on a flat cream background. The outer ring carries the text
"NORTHBOUND SUPPLY CO" in small spaced sans-serif capitals following the curve. In
the centre, the word "EST 1994" sits in a compact slab serif on two lines. A simple
line-drawn compass rose sits between them. The palette is forest green and cream
only. Lighting is flat. The composition is perfectly circular and symmetrical. Clean
line weights, no gradients, no drop shadow.

For the mechanics of turning a mark you already like into a repeatable prompt, reverse-engineering an image into a prompt is the faster route than describing it from memory.

Presets: social graphics

Quote card, 1x1

A minimal quote card on a textured off-white ground. The text "You cannot proofread
your own life" is set in a large humanist serif across the centre, broken over three
lines with a ragged right edge. Below it the attribution "— Anon" sits small and
right-aligned. There is no illustration. The background carries a faint linen weave.
The palette is warm off-white and charcoal. Lighting is flat and even. The
composition is centred with a generous top margin. Soft print texture, no gloss.

Story frame, 9x16

A bold vertical story graphic with strong colour blocking. The headline "NEW DROP"
is set in oversized heavy sans-serif capitals stacked on two lines in the upper
half. Beneath it the subhead "Thursday, 9am" sits small and centred with wide letter
spacing. A hard diagonal colour split runs behind the type. The background is two
flat fields meeting at 30 degrees. The palette is #111111, #F5F5F5, and #FFD400.
Lighting is flat. The composition leaves the lower fifth empty for interface
elements. Crisp edges, no texture.

Carousel cover, 4x5

A clean editorial carousel cover on a soft neutral ground. The headline "Six things
I got wrong" is set in a medium-weight grotesque, left-aligned across three lines
in the upper two-thirds. Beneath it the subhead "Swipe" sits very small in the
bottom-left. A single thin rule separates them. The background is a flat warm grey.
The palette is warm grey, near-black, and one muted teal accent. Lighting is flat.
The composition is left-aligned with an even 10% margin. No texture, no shadow.

Presets: typographic layouts

These are the prompts where the type is the image, and they are where Ideogram earns its reputation.

Type specimen, 3x2

A typographic specimen sheet on white. The word "GRAVITY" is set enormous in an
ultra-bold grotesque, filling the centre band edge to edge and slightly cropped at
both sides. Above it, "Aa Bb Cc" appears small in the same face, left-aligned.
Below, the line "Regular · Medium · Black" runs in a light weight, right-aligned.
The background is pure white. The palette is black on white with a single red
accent on the word GRAVITY's final letter. Lighting is flat. The composition is a
strict three-band grid. Crisp digital edges, no texture.

Text-as-object, 3x2

A photograph in which the word "MELT" is formed from thick pouring chocolate against
a matte cream surface. The letters are rounded and glossy with visible viscous
drips at the base of each stroke. A single scattered cocoa dusting sits to the
right. The background is a soft cream studio sweep. The palette is deep cocoa
brown and cream. Lighting is soft and directional from the upper left with a gentle
specular highlight along each letter. The composition is centred with shallow depth
of field. Shot on a macro lens.

That second one follows the pattern Ideogram's own docs call "text formed by objects", one of six text-rendering modes they document alongside simple text, text as logo, text as part of an object, text as design, and text as logo or design.

The same seven fields as a JSON prompt

When a layout has to hold across reruns, the seven fields stop being a sentence and become a schema. Ideogram 4.0's JSON caption has three top-level keys: high_level_description, style_description and compositional_deconstruction. Key order matters, because the model was trained on captions with a consistent order.

The mapping from the generator is direct. STYLE and PALETTE go into style_description. LAYOUT becomes a bbox on each element, four integers as [y_min, x_min, y_max, x_max] on a normalised 0 to 1000 grid with the origin at the top left. HEADLINE and SUBHEAD each become a text element carrying the literal string in text and the FONT MOOD in desc.

{
  "high_level_description": "A screen-printed shop poster announcing reduced summer opening hours.",
  "style_description": {
    "aesthetics": "flat, graphic, mid-century screen print",
    "lighting": "flat, no gradient, no shadow",
    "medium": "graphic_design",
    "art_style": "screen-printed poster, flat colour, visible paper grain",
    "color_palette": ["#0B3D2E", "#F2E8D5", "#D9722C"]
  },
  "compositional_deconstruction": {
    "background": "Flat bone-coloured paper stock with faint even grain across the whole sheet.",
    "elements": [
      {
        "type": "text",
        "bbox": [60, 80, 260, 920],
        "text": "SUMMER HOURS",
        "desc": "Heavy condensed sans-serif capitals in deep green, tight letter spacing, spanning the full width across the top third."
      },
      {
        "type": "text",
        "bbox": [300, 200, 380, 800],
        "text": "Fridays close at 3",
        "desc": "Lighter weight of the same sans-serif family in deep green, centred on one line beneath the headline."
      },
      {
        "type": "obj",
        "bbox": [440, 250, 900, 750],
        "desc": "A stylised sun with straight radiating rays in burnt orange, centred in the lower half, flat with no shading.",
        "color_palette": ["#D9722C"]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Three rules will save you the debugging. Hex values must be uppercase #RRGGBB. A style_description must contain exactly one of photo or art_style, never both, and the required key order differs between the two. And Magic Prompt turns itself off the moment you send JSON, so anything you were relying on it to infer now has to be written out.

If you would rather not hand-write this, Ideogram ships a Prompt Builder on the Explore page: a three-panel tool where you drag bounding boxes on a canvas and watch the JSON build in a live preview, with import, download and a "Build from image" option that reverse-engineers a caption from an upload. It is the same schema, drawn instead of typed. The general case for structured output in prompts, across models rather than just this one, is covered in JSON prompts explained.

Every documented Ideogram 4.0 setting

Verified against Ideogram's docs and public OpenAPI specification on August 26, 2026. Availability varies by plan, endpoint and rollout, so treat this as the documented surface rather than a guarantee.

Two of those deserve expanding.

The negative prompt is deliberately secondary

Ideogram documents a negative-prompt field and then, in two separate places, tells you it loses to the main prompt. The app documentation: "The content of the regular prompt will always be favored over the negative prompt." The API reference for the field itself: "Descriptions in the prompt take precedence to descriptions in the negative prompt." (developer.ideogram.ai, accessed Aug 26, 2026)

Their worked example is the clearest explanation of why. Ask for a guitar without strings and you will usually get strings, because the model's concept of "guitar" includes them. The negative prompt cannot subtract a feature that the positive prompt implies.

Ideogram's recommended fix is to stop writing negatives at all. Their guide asks you to name the positive visual opposite: not "no people in the room" but "an empty room with chairs neatly arranged"; not "a beach without people" but "an empty beach at sunrise". For a headline that keeps sprouting a decorative flourish you did not ask for, "clean unornamented letterforms with flat terminals" beats "no flourishes" every time.

The two prompt-length numbers do not match

Ideogram's user-facing guide says roughly 150-160 words or about 200 tokens. The open-weight model card lists max text tokens 2048. Both are Ideogram's own. The most likely reading is that 2,048 is the architecture ceiling and 150 words is where quality falls off in practice, but Ideogram does not reconcile them anywhere I could find, so I am reporting both rather than picking one. Write to 150 and you are safe under either.

Model choice beats prompt craft, and Ideogram's own data says so

This is the part most Ideogram pages will not tell you. For text accuracy, which model you pick matters more than how well you write the prompt. A well-structured prompt on a model that cannot spell still cannot spell. We covered the diagnosis of that in detail in why the text in your AI image is garbled, and nothing in Ideogram 4.0 changes the conclusion.

What is new is that Ideogram published a head-to-head where it does not come first. In an internal designer-preference arena, 4,366 blind pairwise votes across nine pipelines produced this ranking:

Source: Ideogram 4.0 technical details, published June 3, 2026, accessed August 26, 2026. This is Ideogram's own arena, not a neutral third party, which makes the result more notable rather than less. Voters were not told which model produced each image.

The practical reading: OpenAI's gpt-image-2 competes directly and, on general designer preference, won. Ideogram's advantage is narrower and more specific — best-in-class text rendering per unit of model size, bounding-box layout control, and weights you can download. If your job is a poster with four text elements that must land in exact positions, that specific combination is hard to beat. If your job is "make this look good", run both.

Turning the generator into something you reuse

The seven-field template is only worth anything if you still have it in three weeks. Most people paste a good prompt into a chat window, get their poster, and lose the prompt.

That is the gap Prompt Architects fills, and it is worth being precise about what we do and do not do. We do not generate images. We generate, structure and store the prompt. The image-prompt tooling turns a rough description into the Role, Task, Format, Constraints, Tone structure that this kind of template depends on, in under two seconds. The Prompt Library keeps the seven-field template as a saved item, and Global Variables let you leave {{HEADLINE}}, {{PALETTE}} and {{ASPECT}} as fields you fill per job instead of rewriting the sentence each time.

There is a free plan, forever, at five prompt enhancements a day, documented on our FAQ. Current paid pricing is on the pricing page. We are a bootstrapped two-person operation out of Dhaka, so the honest pitch is narrow: if you write the same poster prompt more than twice a month, a library beats a notes app. If you do not, the template above is free and works fine pasted from this page.

If you want the same structured-field treatment applied to video rather than stills, the free Veo 3 prompt generator uses an identical approach against a very different model. And for the broader question of when to reach for Ideogram versus Midjourney at all, our head-to-head covers the split by job type.

A short checklist before you generate

1. Is the exact text in quotation marks, and is it near the front of the prompt?
2. Is the font described by mood rather than named?
3. Is the whole prompt under about 150 words?
4. Have you described the positive opposite instead of writing a negative?
5. Is the rest of the scene simple enough to let the lettering breathe?
6. If the layout has to be repeatable, are you in JSON mode rather than plain text?

Five of those six come straight from Ideogram's own documentation. The sixth is the only one that requires judgement, and the answer is usually "not yet".