The Commercial Workflow

Commercial creative work is like cooking in a restaurant — there's a recipe (brand guidelines), specific ingredients that must appear (the product), and a presentation standard (consistent quality across deliverables). Unlike personal art where "interesting mistakes" add character, commercial work demands reliable precision. This changes which models you use and how you use them.

Brand Constraint Integration

Every brand has constraints: specific colors (Pantone values), fonts, logo placement rules, photography style (warm and human? clean and minimal? bold and energetic?), and content policies. Before generating anything, translate these constraints into prompt language and reference images.

Product Accuracy

The biggest challenge in commercial AI work is product fidelity. AI models will "interpret" products — changing label designs, altering proportions, inventing details. This is unacceptable for commercial work. Strategies:

• Reference image anchoring — Always provide actual product photos as references. Don't rely on text descriptions alone.
• Composite workflow — Generate the scene/background/model with AI, then composite the actual product photo in post-production. This guarantees product accuracy.
• Inpainting refinement — Generate the full scene, then inpaint the product area with specific product references to improve accuracy.

Typography and Text

Commercial work almost always involves text — taglines, CTAs, product names, prices. Your options:

• Generate with text (GPT-Image 1.5) — Best for concepts and drafts where text is integrated into the design.
• Generate without text, add in post — Safer for production. Design text zones into the image (clean areas for overlay), then add professional typography in Canva, Figma, or Photoshop.
• Hybrid — Generate with placeholder text to nail the composition, then replace with professional typography in post.

Consistency Across a Campaign

Commercial campaigns need multiple images that feel like they belong together. This is where single-image generation struggles and systematic workflows shine:

Campaign Consistency Strategy
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1. Lock style prompt: same style suffix        │
│    for every image in the campaign              │
│                                                │
│ 2. Lock color grading: apply same LUT/filter   │
│    to all images in post-production             │
│                                                │
│ 3. Lock composition rules: same aspect ratio,  │
│    same text zones, same margin spacing         │
│                                                │
│ 4. Lock model + settings: don't mix models     │
│    within a single campaign                     │
│                                                │
│ 5. Post-process as a batch: color-grade all     │
│    images together, not individually            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────┘