How to Set Up Design Rules

Design Rules let you define permanent constraints that your AI always follows — no matter what prompt you use or what style you pick. Think of them as your brand's creative guardrails.

What are Design Rules?

Design Rules are plain-text instructions that get injected into every AI prompt automatically. They work alongside your styles and brand colors, but they're always active — even when you don't select a specific style.

Common use cases:

• Enforcing brand color restrictions ("never use orange")
• Controlling person placement ("always place the person on the right")
• Setting language preferences ("use German for all text")
• Protecting YouTube UI areas ("avoid the lower-right corner where the timestamp appears")
• Defining typography preferences ("always use bold, sans-serif fonts")

Setting Up Design Rules

1. Navigate to Settings in the left sidebar
2. Under Organization, click Design Rules (the brain icon)
3. Write your rules in the text area — one rule per line works best
4. Click Save design rules

Writing Effective Rules

Keep rules specific and actionable. The AI works best with clear, direct instructions.

Good rules

• "Never use orange or bright red — my competitor uses these colors"
• "Always place the person on the right side of the image"
• "Use German for all text, headlines, and UI elements on the thumbnail"
• "Keep the lower-right corner empty — YouTube puts the video duration there"
• "Slightly blur backgrounds and reduce saturation so the subject pops"
• "My brand colors are #1E40AF (blue) and #F59E0B (amber)"

Rules to avoid

• "Make it look good" — too vague for the AI to act on
• "Be creative" — doesn't give the AI a specific constraint
• Extremely long paragraphs — keep each rule to one or two sentences

How It Works Behind the Scenes

When you generate or edit a thumbnail, your design rules are appended to the AI prompt with an "IMPORTANT design rules" prefix. This means:

• Rules apply to new generations via the prompt enhancer
• Rules apply to edits made in the editor
• Rules work in addition to brand colors, styles, and AI learnings
• You can have up to 2,000 characters of rules

Tips

• Start with 3–5 rules and add more as you learn what works
• Be specific about colors using hex codes when possible
• Rules are shared across your entire organization
• You can update rules at any time — changes take effect on the next generation