Midjourney prompting and controls for marketing visuals

Executive overview

Marketers often struggle to translate brand needs into AI image prompts that produce usable results. Midjourney v6 offers significantly improved prompt coherence, making structured prompts far more effective than keyword spam.

A clear prompt structure — subject + action, setting, mood, medium, shot type, style keywords — gives reliable, on-brand outputs. Beyond prompting, aspect ratio, stylization, and variation controls let you iterate quickly toward a finished asset.

The fastest path to on-brand images is a structured prompt plus deliberate use of aspect ratio and variation controls.

Prompt structure for Midjourney v6

• Order: subject/action → setting/mood → artistic medium → shot type → style keywords
• Omit any category to let Midjourney decide — often produces interesting surprises
• Emotional keywords carry extra weight in v6; include mood descriptors deliberately
• Longer prompts are supported in v6, but Midjourney is not an LLM — keep prompts structured, not conversational
• Add character-specific details (position, expression) to avoid back-to-camera defaults

Shot types and angles

• Common shots (long, medium, close-up) work reliably
• Specialty shots (tilt shift, cram shot, birds-eye) are less predictable but can yield strong results
• Shot vocabulary applies across photographic, cinematic, and illustrative styles
• Removing a shot keyword lets Midjourney choose composition — useful for variety

Aspect ratio

• Default is 1:1; slide the ratio control left for portrait/mobile, right for widescreen/cinematic
• Custom ratios via --ar [width]:[height] at the end of the prompt
• Combine aspect ratio with shot type to control composition more precisely

Stylization and weirdness

• Stylization slider defaults to ~100; higher values push aesthetic quality but can distort details
• Sweet spot varies by image — 400 starts showing breakdown on specific objects; 800 can produce strong results
• Weirdness introduces offbeat qualities; keep it low for commercial work, reserve higher values for abstract or artistic images

Variation and iteration controls

• Vary (subtle/strong): generates iterations on a selected image; subtle preserves composition, strong allows major changes
• Remix: lets you adjust prompt parameters (e.g. change stylization) while keeping the same base image
• Pan and zoom: extend the canvas directionally or zoom out 1.5x or 2x; chainable for large compositions
• Inpainting (Vary Region): select an area and re-prompt just that region; Midjourney preserves lighting and matches surrounding context automatically