Prompt library · T-shirt design
Ten tested prompts for wearable graphics — vintage sun badges, monoline botanicals, bold streetwear illustration — all generated as isolated art on a flat background, ready to cut out and drop onto a garment.
The mistake almost everyone makes is asking for “a t-shirt with a design on it”. That returns a photo of a shirt — useless, because you can't print a photo of a shirt onto a shirt. What you want is the artwork alone: “Vintage screen-print style graphic of a sun setting behind three mountain ridges, isolated on a flat cream background, centred, no shirt, no mockup”. Say “isolated graphic on a plain background, no garment in frame” in every prompt and you get a file you can actually use.
After that, two clauses do the work. The print technique — “vintage screen print with slight ink texture and a limited three-colour palette”, “bold flat vector illustration with heavy black outlines”, “fine monoline single-weight linework” — decides the entire look and how well it will survive being printed. And the colour count matters commercially: screen printing charges per colour, so “limited three-colour palette of rust, cream and navy” is both a style choice and a cost decision. Every graphic below is an unedited first output generated on BananaBanana.
Leave it out of the prompt. Image models still mangle small lettering — a word will come back with a doubled letter, an odd ligature, or spacing no typographer would ship — and on a garment that mistake is printed a thousand times. Every prompt on this page therefore asks for artwork only, with an explicit “no text, no lettering”.
Set the type yourself afterwards in any vector or design tool, over the generated art. You get a real font with real kerning, editable in one click when the slogan changes, and crisp edges at print resolution. This is the same rule the logo prompts follow, and it's the difference between a design that looks handmade and one that gets flagged in review. If you want the graphic to leave room for a slogan, say so — “leave clear empty space beneath the illustration for a headline” — and the model will compose for it.
Every image below is the unedited output of the prompt on its card — no cherry-picking across dozens of attempts, no retouching. The model badge shows exactly what generated it and what it cost.
Vintage screen-print graphic of a setting sun with straight radiating rays behind three layered mountain ridges, enclosed in a circular badge with a thin double outline. Limited three-colour palette of rust orange, cream and deep navy, slight halftone ink texture, weathered distressed edges. Isolated artwork on a flat cream background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Fine monoline illustration of a wild fennel stem with two seed heads and three slender leaves, drawn in a single consistent line weight with no fills. Deep forest green line on a flat off-white background, elegant and minimal, generous empty margin around the artwork. Isolated graphic, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Bold streetwear illustration of a tiger's head seen straight on, stylised with heavy black outlines, flat colour blocking and sharp angular shapes. Limited palette of burnt orange, black, bone white and one teal accent. Graphic and confident, poster-like. Isolated artwork on a flat light grey background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Linocut-style print of a breaking ocean wave with carved directional gouge marks in the water and foam, plus three small birds above the crest. Single deep indigo ink on a flat warm paper-white background, visible hand-carved texture and imperfect edges. Isolated artwork, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Retro 1980s screen-print graphic of a cassette tape at a three-quarter angle with a ribbon of tape unspooling into a curling wave beneath it. Limited four-colour palette of hot pink, cyan, cream and black, subtle halftone dots, slight print misregistration for authenticity. Isolated artwork on a flat black background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Psychedelic-folk illustration of three tall mushrooms of different heights inside a rounded arch frame, with small stars and a crescent moon in the negative space above them. Muted seventies palette of mustard, terracotta, sage and cream, flat colours with fine texture, symmetrical composition. Isolated artwork on a flat cream background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Bold flat vector illustration of a skateboard deck tilted diagonally with stylised flames curling off the tail, heavy black outlines and simple colour blocking. Limited palette of red, orange, black and off-white, no gradients, sticker-like graphic energy. Isolated artwork on a flat pale grey background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Traditional-tattoo-influenced illustration of two koi swimming in a circle head to tail, framed by stylised water swirls and three lotus blooms. Bold black linework with flat colour fills in coral, cream and slate blue, symmetrical circular composition. Isolated artwork on a flat bone-white background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Vintage outdoors badge graphic in the shape of a rounded rectangle: a canvas tent beside two pine trees, a campfire with a curl of smoke, and a range of hills behind, all inside a thin border. Limited three-colour palette of forest green, cream and burnt orange, halftone texture, retro national-park feel. Isolated artwork on a flat cream background, centred with margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
Minimal abstract composition of overlapping organic shapes — a circle, a soft arch and two curved ribbons — arranged asymmetrically with visible risograph-style grain and slight colour overlap where the shapes cross. Limited palette of clay pink, ochre and deep teal on a flat off-white background. Isolated artwork, centred with generous margin, no shirt or mockup, no text or lettering.
“Isolated graphic on a flat background, no shirt, no mockup” is the whole difference between a print file and a product photo. Add it to every prompt, no exceptions.
“Limited three-colour palette of rust, cream and navy” looks like real screen print and costs less to actually print, because screen printers charge per colour. It's a style decision and a margin decision at the same time.
Models still garble small type, and a bad ligature printed on 500 shirts is expensive. Generate the art clean, then set the slogan in a real font over it.
“Vintage screen print with halftone texture”, “linocut with visible gouge marks”, “flat vector with heavy outlines” each produce a genuinely different, coherent look — and each survives printing differently. Vague “cool design” prompts return mush.
10 promptsTen tested prompts for kawaii characters, retro badges and glossy holographic designs — each generated as a die-cut sticker with a clean white border, ready for print sheets or messenger packs.
Browse prompts
10 promptsTen tested prompts for logo symbols — monoline outdoor marks, geometric animals, vintage emblems, negative-space monograms and gradient app icons. Each card shows the unedited output and the model that made it.
Browse prompts
10 promptsTen tested prompts for surface pattern design — botanicals, geometrics, terrazzo, block print, toile — with the unedited tile beside each, and the two-minute fix that makes any of them actually repeat.
Browse promptsFlat, limited-palette graphics are the ideal $0.03 job.
Read the guideWhy naming the print technique beats naming a vibe.
Read the guideDesign a whole drop without a monthly plan.
Read the guideYes — you own the images you generate on BananaBanana, including for print-on-demand. Some marketplaces ask you to disclose AI-generated artwork when you upload, so check the rules where you're selling, and keep prompts free of brand names and copyrighted characters as the ones here are.
For a chest print at typical sizes it's borderline — usable for a small graphic, tight for a full front print. Generate at 2K on Nano Banana 2 or Pro for anything large, and prefer flat, high-contrast styles: they upscale far more gracefully than detailed, textured art.
Generate on a flat, plain background as these prompts do, then remove it in one pass in any editor — bold outlines and flat colour cut out cleanly. Asking the model directly for transparency doesn't work; it outputs an opaque image regardless.
Yes, and for flat styles it's straightforward: bring the image into a vector tool and trace it. Flat vector, linocut and badge designs trace almost perfectly; halftone and heavy grain textures don't, so pick your style with the output format in mind.
Fix the style and palette sentence and change only the subject, the same way the badge and camp designs above share their treatment. A shop full of designs that share a palette reads as a brand; a shop of unrelated one-offs reads as a stock dump.
Every new account starts with a free $0.20 balance — enough to test six image prompts before paying anything. No subscription — top up with crypto from $1 or a card from $20.