Visual Style Lock (Onboarding)

Visual Style Lock (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Collect the client's existing visual corpus before generating anything

   Request 20 to 50 approved assets (past campaign art, packaging, deck covers) plus any brand book. Generation without a reference set is how agencies end up with output that looks like every other client in the portfolio.

2. 02

   Extract a written style contract the whole team can prompt against

   Document palette hex values, line weight, texture treatment, composition rules, and three banned visual clichés. Tools like Recraft support custom styles built from uploaded images, which turns this contract into a reusable preset rather than a per-designer interpretation.

3. 03

   Run a 10-prompt calibration batch across at least two engines

   Generate the same brief in a concept-art engine and a commercially safe editing engine, then compare against the style contract. Divergence between engines is normal; divergence from the contract is a rejection.

4. 04

   Set the IP and licensing posture in writing before the first client deliverable

   Confirm which engine's commercial terms cover the client's use case, whether outputs can be trademarked, and how the client wants AI involvement disclosed. Store the answer in the account file so delivery staff stop re-litigating it per project.

5. 05

   Define the human edit gate and name who owns it

   Assign one art director per account to approve every asset leaving the studio. Targeted edit features reduce revision cycles, but someone still has to catch the sixth finger and the wrong logo lockup.

6. 06

   Build a reusable template layer for recurring formats

   Social cards, Open Graph images, and ad variants should run through branded templates with automated refresh rather than fresh prompts each time. This is where volume becomes cheap instead of chaotic.

7. 07

   Log the approved preset, prompts, and seeds in the client's asset library

   A locked style is only durable if the next person on the retainer can reproduce it. Version the preset and note which engine version produced approved work, since model updates shift output.