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A case study in prompt engineering for small businesses, authors, and marketers on a budget.
From Prompt to Poster
How do you create a culturally rich, eye-catching image that includes a temple festival, Chettinad food, and your own book—without a designer, budget, or team? This post shows how AI made it happen.
🎯 AI for the Rest of Us—true to its name.
Most people use AI image generators to create fun, fantastical pictures of cats in space or stylized Ghibli-inspired landscapes. It's a great way to experiment, but it barely scratches the surface of what AI can do for real-world productivity. What if you need a powerful, culturally specific, and commercially useful image for your business, but you're working with a tight budget?
AI can be your in-house designer, but you need to learn how to brief it correctly. It's not just about making pretty pictures; it's about creating meaningful, eye-catching visuals that serve a purpose.
I wanted to create a single image to promote my new book, AI for the Rest of Us. But I had a complex challenge: the image needed to seamlessly blend the rich heritage of Chettinad architecture, the vibrant atmosphere of a local food festival, the cultural significance of a temple car festival, and a subtle promotion for my book.
Hiring a designer for such a specific, multi-layered concept would take time and a significant budget. I was sure AI could do it, but it wouldn't be a one-shot deal. Here’s a look at my journey from a messy, unusable image to the perfect promotional visual.
📌 “3 Things You’ll Learn in This Post”
✅ 3 Things You’ll Learn in This Post
How to craft AI prompts that evolve into exactly what you need
Why visual storytelling with cultural depth is now possible without a designer
How to use AI tools like ChatGPT Vision to create campaign-ready images in under an hour
The AI-Powered Path to Perfect Visuals: A 6-Step Process
1. The Initial Idea & The Failed First Attempt
I started with a simple prompt for an AI chatbot, hoping to combine the themes.
My First Prompt: "Can you create a suitable image... combining both theme seamlessly about chettinad food festival with Karaikudi background and mild push of ai book - i need simple effective eye catching image"
The result was… not great. The food was scattered unnaturally, the book was poorly placed, and the overall image felt artificial and chaotic. It was clear that a simple prompt wasn't enough for a complex idea. Tried another idea with a second prompt to bring Chettinad mansion into the frame, this also did not come out successful and again the food was all over. The AI needed more direction.
2. The Pivot: From Direct Creation to Idea Generation
Realizing that image editing with the first tool was difficult, I changed my approach. Instead of asking the AI to create the image directly, I asked it to brainstorm text ideas for a better composition. With specific inputs to provide 3 ideas. Out of three suggestions, one stood out for its cleverness: placing the festival scene outside a window.
3. The Winning Idea from the AI
"A long dining table in a grand Chettinad mansion, filled with vibrant Chettinad dishes... In the center of the table, a stack of AI for the Rest of Us books... while the Sivan Temple’s Car Festival is subtly visible through an open window."
This was a brilliant way to layer the elements naturally. I took this detailed text description and moved to a more advanced image generation tool (in this case, DALL-E 3 via ChatGPT).
4. Another Attempt: Almost There, But a Critical Flaw
Armed with a much better prompt, I got a visually stunning image. The Chettinad mansion felt authentic, the food looked delicious, and the festival was perfectly framed by the window.
But there was one major problem: it was promoting the wrong book!
The AI, likely referencing my chat history, had placed my previous book in the image in spite of the prompt saying the correct book name . Furthermore, a book as a centerpiece standing among the food still felt a bit staged. It was close, but not right for my marketing needs.
5. The Final, Refined Prompt and the Perfect Result
This is where the magic of iterative refinement comes in. You don't just give up; you give better instructions. I gave the AI a follow-up prompt to correct the errors:
My Corrective Prompt: "This is good... the problem is the book we wish to promote is not SIP but AI... the book has to be AI for the Rest of Us: Click, Create, Succeed! and instead of it standing on the table, which is not real, if it is visible in the nearby wall in a suitable way will be good. All other things are fine." The idea to frame the book on the wall was the final piece of the puzzle. It integrated the promotional element in a way that felt completely natural to the scene.
And the result was exactly what I had envisioned.
6. What I Learned: Idea, Iterate, and Win
This entire process—from a failed concept to a perfect promotional graphic—took a little patience and a willingness to guide the AI. But the result is a unique, high-quality image that can be used as a blog header, a WhatsApp invitation, or a social media post.
The total cost? Zero. The time spent was a fraction of what a traditional design project would take. This is the power of using AI for real-world productivity. It’s not just about trial and error; it’s about learning to be the director of your own creative projects.
This is just one of the practical examples I explore in my new book, AI for the Rest of Us: Click, Create, Succeed!
AI for the Rest of Us: Click, Create, Succeed!—a must-read for anyone curious about AI!
📕 Hard Copy Options: Printed copies are available locally at actual cost to make it accessible. Reach me via my blog’s Contact Us form with your email and phone: https://radhaconsultancy.blogspot.com/2016/10/email-me.html—I’ll coordinate delivery as per your location.
💻 eBook on Amazon: India: ₹199 [https://amzn.to/3HgWcZB]
🌎 USA: USA: $4.99 [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FB2P7GKV]
Others: Search B0FB2P7GKV
📦 DM me for print-on-demand (POD) hard copies at India-friendly prices.
📚 Bonus: My SIP book (hard copy) is also available—message him if you’re interested!
📌 “Why This Matters for Small Teams”
💡 Why This Matters for Small Teams
No need to hire designers or spend hours editing
Local culture + professional polish = unique storytelling
Your marketing can stand out—even on a budget
If you're a small business owner, author, or marketer curious about how to leverage AI for visuals, writing, productivity, or even finance—especially if you're a beginner—this book is for you.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series, where we'll dive into another practical AI use case! Got an idea or request? Drop a comment. Let's build this together.
Tags: #AIforTheRestOfUs #PromptEngineering #SmallBusinessMarketing #AIforAuthors #ContentCreation
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Kannan M
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