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Maister

Your design dictionary.

If you’re not a UI/UX designer and you found yourself starting to build products and websites with AI, it can be hard to describe exactly what you have in mind. You know what it looks like in your head, but you don’t have the vocabulary to verbalize it to your AI assistant. So we made it easier for you and put everything you need to know in a dictionary, so you can build the design of your dreams.

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Imagery and photography

Imagery is the quickest way for a site to look either distinctive or generic. Describe what the pictures show, how they are lit, colored and framed, and how they sit on the page.

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The photograph is the page. Words sit under it, not over it.

In a prompt“Photography-led, few graphics”

HopLearnParentsTry free
Drawn, not photographed.Illustration can show what no camera can, and never looks like a stock library.

In a prompt“Flat illustrations instead of photos”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Bought, generic, and on four competitors' sites already. Usable when it is the background, never when it is the point.

In a prompt“No stock photography”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Nobody is posing.Taken while the work was happening. Slightly imperfect, and believable because of it.

In a prompt“Candid photos of real teams at work”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Made to a brief rather than found. Fine for texture and atmosphere; risky for anything a customer will expect to exist.

In a prompt“AI-generated images in a documentary style”

AtomicShopTradeBasket
Modeled, lit and rendered. Every angle available, and nothing to photograph.

In a prompt“Soft 3D renders of abstract shapes”

NORTHShopJournalBasket
Same background, same light, same crop. Three shots that look like one shop.

In a prompt“Clean product shots on plain backgrounds”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The thing, in a life.Not the chair on white — the chair in a room, with a cup on it.

In a prompt“Lifestyle imagery in real homes”

FormWorkAbout
No pictures. Nothing to load.Fastest possible page, and impossible to make look cheap.Read

In a prompt“Image-free homepage; type does the work”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
What is actually in the frame.Hands, a tool, a half-finished joint. Name the subject or the tool will give you a boardroom.

In a prompt“People working together at laptops”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Where it was taken.A workshop with sawdust on the floor says more about the business than any sentence on the page.

In a prompt“Bright modern offices with plants”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
People, doing the thing.Faces make a small business feel like a person rather than a brand.

In a prompt“People-led imagery with diverse teams”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Close enough to see the grain.The joint, the stitch, the edge. Detail shots are what convince people the quality is real.

In a prompt“Detail shots of notebooks and screens”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
A person, in their place.Half portrait, half story: who they are and where they work, in one frame.

In a prompt“Environmental portraits of the founders”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
MertheFounderLeinaWorkshopSamFinishingSame crop, same background, same light. A team page falls apart without it.

In a prompt“Consistent headshots on a plain background”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The mess that makes the thing.Off-cuts, notes and a half-drunk coffee. People trust what looks like work.

In a prompt“Behind-the-scenes workshop photos”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Window light, nothing else.Soft, directional and free. The default look of almost every warm brand.

In a prompt“Soft natural daylight”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Controlled, repeatable, clean.Same light every time, so a catalog of a hundred shots looks like one shoot.

In a prompt“No studio lighting”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The hour after sunrise, or before sunset.Long shadows and warm light. Romantic, and only available twice a day.

In a prompt“Golden-hour warmth”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Bright, airy, almost no shadow.Clean and optimistic. Common in wellness, skincare and anything that wants to feel light.

In a prompt“High-key, airy photography”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Mostly dark, one lit edge.Dramatic and expensive-looking. Needs a dark page to sit on.

In a prompt“Low-key, moody portraits”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The light is behind the subject.A glowing rim and a soft haze. Flattering, atmospheric, and bad for showing detail.

In a prompt“Backlit figures by windows”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Same photograph, left untouched and right graded warm. Grading is what makes a mixed set look deliberate.

In a prompt“Warm color grading across all photos”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Color pulled most of the way out.Quiet, serious, and it stops photographs fighting the brand color.

In a prompt“Slightly desaturated photos”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
No color at all.Timeless, and it makes a set of photographs from different days look like one set.

In a prompt“Black-and-white portraits”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Texture, and slightly lifted blacks.Warmth and imperfection. The opposite of a clean render.Grain is added on top as a fine noise layer.

In a prompt“Subtle film grain”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
One recipe applied to every image. This is the single cheapest way to look professional.

In a prompt“Same grading on every image”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Edge to edge, no margin

In a prompt“Full-bleed hero photo”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Margin all the way round. Calmer, more like a print on a wall.

In a prompt“Inset photos with rounded corners”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
The whole room, and the person in it.Establishes where you are before it shows you anything else.

In a prompt“Wide shots of the room”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Waist up.Close enough to read a face, wide enough to keep the context.

In a prompt“Medium shots of people talking”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Fills the frame.One thing, very large. Texture, hands, a detail of the material.

In a prompt“Close-ups of hands on keyboards”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
One thing sharp, everything behind it soft. The eye has nowhere else to go.

In a prompt“Shallow depth of field”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire

In a prompt“Subjects off-center, room for text”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Room left for wordsShot with one side deliberately empty.

In a prompt“Photos with copy space on the left”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
1:1 square4:3 classic16:9 wide3:4 portrait

In a prompt“4:5 portraits, 16:9 banners”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Same photograph. The crop decides what it is about.

In a prompt“Tight crops on faces”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Text stays readableA dark wash under the words, not over the whole image.

In a prompt“Dark overlay behind hero text”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
An arch, a circle, a shape of your own. One mask, used everywhere, becomes a signature.

In a prompt“Arch-shaped image masks”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
A block of color sitting just behind the photograph. Cheap, and it makes one image look art-directed.

In a prompt“Colored block offset behind each photo”

HopLearnParentsTry
Solid shapes, no shading, no outline. Friendly and very quick to load.

In a prompt“Flat illustrations in brand colors”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Drawn in one weight of line, usually in one color. Light, technical and endlessly reusable.

In a prompt“Thin line illustrations”

FlowstateProductDocsStart
Drawn at an angle with no perspective. The standard way to draw a system or a process.

In a prompt“Isometric diagrams of the process”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
ChooseBuildLaunchSmall drawings beside the words, not instead of them.

In a prompt“Spot illustrations next to each feature”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
FastSimpleCheckedBookedA small symbol beside a label. An icon alone almost never says what you think it says.

In a prompt“Simple icons for each service”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
OutlineFilledPick one and stay there. Mixing the two is the most common giveaway of a site built in a hurry.

In a prompt“Outline icons, 1.5px stroke”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
One family, one stroke weight, one corner radius. Eight icons from eight places never look like a set.

In a prompt“One consistent icon set”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Moving, muted, loopingShort, small and never the only way to understand the page.

In a prompt“Muted background video in the hero”

Vale & Co.WorkStudioJournalInquire
Still, except for one thing.

In a prompt“A cinemagraph instead of video”

Image budget

How many images appear per page