Summary for Graphic Design
The Graphic Design category reveals a sharp divide between models that have mastered semantic text generation and those that remain purely artistic. The clear winners in this category are models that prioritize instruction following and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities over raw painterly aesthetics.
Key Findings
- Top Performers: ChatGPT 4o, Ideogram 3.0 (Quality), and Flux 2 Pro consistently dominated the leaderboard. These models demonstrated near-perfect text rendering and stylistic control.
- The "Text Barrier": Traditional artistic powerhouses like Midjourney V6.1 and Midjourney v7 struggled significantly in this category. Despite producing beautiful textures, their inability to reliably generate specific text strings (e.g., in Visual element for an infographic) resulted in low scores for usable design assets.
- Unexpected Contender: Nano Banana Pro delivered surprisingly high-quality results, particularly in complex logo design and mascot creation, rivaling the top-tier paid models.
- Counting Issues: The most difficult prompt was Set of 5 consistent flat design icons, where many models failed to generate the specific number of items requested, revealing a weakness in complex object enumeration.
Patterns and Trends
1. The Typography Revolution
The most significant differentiator in this dataset is typography. Models like Ideogram V2 and ChatGPT 4o have effectively solved the "gibberish text" problem. In the The word 'GROWTH' visualized prompt, top models integrated organic vines into legible letterforms, while older or more art-focused models produced illegible tangles. For graphic design use cases, text accuracy is now the primary filter for model selection.
2. Style Drift: Flat vs. 3D
A common failure mode observed was "Style Drift." When asked for a "flat vector" or "minimalist" style (e.g., App icon design for a weather app), several models (including Flux 1.1 Pro Ultra) drifted towards 3D glossy renders or complex shading.
- Best at Flat Design: Recraft V3 and DALL-E 3 showed strong adherence to flat, vector-like aesthetics.
- Tendency for 3D: Midjourney and Replicate often defaulted to hyper-realistic lighting even when explicitly instructed otherwise.
3. Seamlessness and Texture
In the Seamless geometric pattern prompt, we saw high performance across the board, suggesting that generating abstract textures is a solved problem for most diffusion models. However, models like Flux 2 Pro stood out by balancing the requested "Art Deco" style with the technical requirement of a print-ready texture, whereas others created images that looked like 3D photos of a wall rather than a flat texture map.
4. Complex Composition & Counting
The Set of 5 consistent flat design icons exposed limits in spatial reasoning. While Reve Image (Halfmoon) and ChatGPT 4o nailed the count and consistency, many models hallucinated extra icons or duplicated labels. This indicates that while single-subject generation is strong, multi-subject consistency remains a challenge for many providers.
Best Model Analysis by Use Case
✒️ Typography & Logos
Best Models: Ideogram 3.0 (Quality), ChatGPT 4o, Nano Banana Pro
For tasks requiring specific brand names or integrated text (e.g., Abstract geometric logo), these models are unmatched. They respect font styles (serif vs. sans-serif) and spelling constraints almost perfectly.
- Recommendation: Use Ideogram 3.0 (Quality) for creative typographic integration where the text shapes the image.
☁️ UI/UX Elements & Icons
Best Models: Flux 2 Pro, Reve Image (Halfmoon), Recraft V3
When consistency and clean lines are required for app icons or interface elements (e.g., App icon design for a weather app), these models excel at maintaining a coherent "flat" aesthetic without introducing unwanted 3D artifacts.
- Recommendation: Recraft V3 is particularly strong for vector-style assets that need to look like SVG exports.
✨️ Abstract Backgrounds & Textures
Best Models: Midjourney V6.1, Imagen 4.0 Ultra, Flux 2 Pro
In scenarios where text is not required, such as the Abstract background graphic, the artistic models shine. Midjourney scored a perfect 10 here, delivering depth, lighting, and texture that purely instruction-following models sometimes lack.
- Recommendation: Use Midjourney V6.1 for wallpapers, textures, and mood-setting graphics where text is not a factor.
📢 Social Media & Marketing Graphics
Best Models: Fal Z-Image Turbo, Flux 2 Pro, ChatGPT 4o
For creating finished marketing assets like the Instagram post graphic, these models successfully blended photographic elements (flowers) with graphic design overlays (text bubbles, frames) to create a cohesive commercial look.
- Recommendation: Flux 2 Pro offers the best balance of photorealism and text capability for high-end ad creative.
