How to use Midjourney AI in UI design

Design

March 13, 2025

As AI increasingly makes its way into the UI designer’s toolkit, Midjourney is fast becoming one of the most popular image generators.

With a simple text prompt, you can use Midjourney AI to create custom digital artworks, whip up an app screen, design individual UI elements, and generate colour palettes—all in a matter of seconds.

For UI designers, this can really accelerate the ideation process and help you expand your own creativity.

So how does Midjourney AI work? And how can you leverage it in the UI design process? Let’s take a look.

What is Midjourney AI and how does it work?

Midjourney is a generative AI tool created by Midjourney, Inc.—an independent research lab based in San Francisco.

Midjourney AI generates images and digital artworks based on text prompts. If you enter a prompt asking for an image of a mermaid swimming underwater surrounded by marine life, Midjourney will generate four versions for you to choose from. The more specific your prompts, the better—but we’ll get to the art of prompt-writing for Midjourney in a later section.

Midjourney works within the Discord platform. Discord is an instant messaging app, commonly used to create communities where users can chat via text, voice, and video. Discord essentially facilitates communication between the user and the Midjourney bot.

Midjourney uses two key machine learning technologies:

Large Language Models (LLM): this is how Midjourney understands and interprets the text prompts provided by the user.
Diffusion Models (DM): in very simple terms, this technology converts random visual noise into a meaningful image. You enter a text prompt, which sparks a field of visual noise. The AI then progressively removes that noise in incremental steps, eventually resulting in an image that resembles what you’ve asked for.

Now we know what Midjourney is and how it works, let’s drill down to some key functions and features.

What can Midjourney AI do? Key features

Midjourney’s core function is to convert text prompts into images. This allows you to generate unique digital artworks and graphics in a range of styles.

You can guide the image generation process by applying custom parameters to your prompts. You might specify a certain aspect ratio, for example, or a particular style such as ‘watercolour’ or ‘flat design’.

You can also customise the quality of your images by specifying, within your prompt, a value for the rendering quality. You might specify ‘q 1’ (that’s the default quality level) or request that images be rendered to a higher quality by specifying ‘q 2’ in your prompt.

Once you’ve entered your prompt, Midjourney will give you four different image versions. You can choose to upscale a particular version, which will increase the size/dimensions of the image and also improve the quality.

Beyond image generation, Midjourney serves as a great source of community and inspiration. You can share your creations and browse images created by others, allowing you to see what’s possible with Midjourney and sparking ideas for your own work.

How to get set up on Midjourney AI

To use Midjourney AI, you’ll need to create both a Discord account and a Midjourney account.

If you’re not already a member, first head over to the Discord platform and follow the instructions to create your account. Once you’re signed up, join the official Midjourney Discord server by clicking the ‘Accept invite’ button.

You’ll then find yourself in the “Getting started” channel, where you can create your Midjourney account (if you haven’t already done so) by clicking “Get your Midjourney membership” (visible in the chat):

This will take you to a separate page, the Midjourney showcase, where you can click “Sign up” in the bottom left corner to create your Midjourney account.

Once you’re signed up and logged in to Midjourney, you can navigate back to the Midjourney Discord server and enter one of the so-called “newbie” bot channels. You’ll find available newbie channels on the left-hand side.

You can then enter your own prompts into the chat box to start generating images.

At the time of writing, Midjourney is no longer offering a free trial for new users. If you want to start prompting, you’ll need to sign up for a paid subscription.

How much does Midjourney AI cost?

Midjourney offers four price tiers:

Basic Plan for $10 per month or $96 per year with an annual subscription (that’s around €9 per month / €89 per year)
Standard Plan for $30 per month or $288 per year with an annual subscription (that’s around €28 per month / €267 per year)
Pro Plan for $60 per month or $576 per year with an annual subscription (that’s around €55 per month / €533 per year)
Mega Plan for $120 per month or $1,152 per year with an annual subscription (that’s around €111 per month / €1,066 per year).

For more information about each price tier and what’s included, visit the official Midjourney pricing page.

How to use Midjourney AI in UI design (with example prompts)

Midjourney can generate custom visuals in a matter of seconds—making it an incredibly interesting tool for UI designers. You can use Midjourney to quickly create screens and individual UI components, come up with themes, styles, and colour palettes, and generate unique digital artwork.

Note, however, that the graphics you create with Midjourney won’t necessarily be directly usable—and working with Midjourney doesn’t eliminate the need to create your own screens and elements using the usual UI tools like Sketch and Figma. If you generate an app screen with Midjourney, for example, you’ll still need to actually create that screen from scratch yourself.

Where Midjourney really comes in useful is helping you to explore different ideas and concepts and gather inspiration. You might use your AI-generated artwork to inspire mood boards, kick-start an ideation session, or serve as a guide for certain layouts or colour schemes.

With that, let’s consider some examples of how to use Midjourney for UI design.

Use Midjourney AI to generate app screens

If you’re designing for mobile, Midjourney can help you ideate layouts and designs for various app screens. If you’re designing a dating app, for example, you might try the following Midjourney prompts:

/imagine a vibrant and fun login screen for a dating app, with an eye-catching background, username and password fields, and buttons for login and social media sign-ins
/imagine a user profile screen for a dating app, featuring a large profile picture at the top, user bio, interests, and match percentage displayed in a clean layout
/imagine a match screen for a dating app, showing potential matches with profile pictures, a brief bio, and buttons to like, dislike, or super like
/imagine a chat screen for a dating app with a clean interface, message bubbles, timestamps, and an input field at the bottom

Create UI components such as icons, buttons, and logos

Perhaps you want inspiration for the finer details of your app or website. In that case, try using Midjourney AI to create individual UI components such as icons, buttons, and logos. Here are some prompt examples to guide you:

/imagine a set of modern buttons for a mobile app, including primary, secondary, and disabled states, using a black and white colour scheme
/imagine a collection of minimalist icons for a mobile app, including icons for home, search, messages, settings, and notifications
/imagine a sleek and modern logo for a dating app, incorporating elements of connection and love, with a vibrant colour scheme

Generate theme and style concepts

In the early stages of the design process, you might focus on coming up with an overall visual style for your website or app—and Midjourney can help with this, too. Specify your vision or initial ideas and let Midjourney bring them to life.

Consider the following prompt examples:

/imagine a light mode theme for a productivity app, featuring white backgrounds, soft grey UI elements, and navy blue highlights
/imagine a dark mode theme for a music app, with black backgrounds, dark grey UI elements, and neon pink highlights
/imagine a vibrant and colourful theme for a creative design app, with bold colours like orange, pink, and teal, playful typography, and dynamic UI elements

Create custom website imagery

Imagery plays an important role in UI design, helping to reinforce brand identity and enhance the visual appeal of your website or app.

Whether you want to create cartoon-style illustrations, abstract artwork, or realistic images of products, places, or people, Midjourney can generate custom imagery that reflects your brand and vision.

Here are some examples of how you might prompt Midjourney to generate images for different use cases:

/imagine a stunning hero image for a tech startup website, featuring abstract technology elements and a modern cityscape in the background
/imagine a set of custom illustrations for a health and wellness website, featuring people doing yoga, eating healthy, and meditating
/imagine a unique background image for a creative agency website, with abstract shapes and vibrant colours

Generate colour palettes

Perhaps you want help coming up with the perfect colour palette, or you’ve already got a colour scheme in mind and want to see how it looks in practice. Again, Midjourney is an excellent source of inspiration here. Simply specify the kind of look and feel you’re aiming for and Midjourney can generate multiple colour palettes accordingly.

Consider the following prompt examples to guide you:

/imagine a pastel colour palette for a wellness app, featuring soft shades of mint green, blush pink, lavender, and light grey
/imagine a bold, split-complementary colour palette for a fitness app, comprising three colours
/imagine a monochromatic colour palette for a finance app

How to write effective prompts for Midjourney AI

As with all generative AI tools, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. In other words, it’s up to you to tell the AI what you want—and to master the art of prompt-writing for the specific tool you’re using.

Here are some tips to help you write effective prompts for Midjourney AI:

Start each prompt with the /imagine command, followed by a description of what you want the AI to create.
Keep it simple and specific. To quote the official Midjourney guidelines for prompt-writing: “The Midjourney Bot works best with simple short phrases that describe what you want to see. Avoid long lists of requests and instructions.”
Specify what you want the image to include, rather than what you don’t want it to include. Even if you specify “no flowers” in your prompt, the AI will likely only focus on the word “flowers” and therefore create an image that does indeed contain flowers. If you absolutely want to exclude something from the image, use the “no” parameter. For example: – – no flowers.
If necessary, specify your desired aspect ratio using the following parameter: – – ar [value]. If you wanted to generate an app screen, you could specify – – ar 16:9.
Use the stylize parameter to control the level of artistic flair that Midjourney injects into each image. If you imagine that the default level, 2500, gives you a medium level of stylization, you can dial it up or down by specifying values higher or lower than 2500. If you wanted to generate an image of a garden that’s more realistic than artistic, you might specify – – stylize 500. If you wanted to create an image of a garden that looks magical and fantastical, you might specify – – stylize 3500.
Use the quality parameter to adjust the level of quality and detail in the image. – – q 1 is the default, so work from that value to dial the quality up or down.

Most importantly, be prepared to experiment. The more you use Midjourney, the more intuitive the art of prompt-writing will become. You’ll start to get a feel for what works and see how different words, phrases, and parameters influence the output.

Ethical considerations when using Midjourney AI

If you’re using Midjourney AI (or indeed any AI tools) throughout the design process, you must take care to use it responsibly. Here are some of the most important ethical considerations to bear in mind.

Intellectual property and copyright

When generating images with AI, be careful about replicating existing images or artworks created by other artists or designers. You might use a famous logo for inspiration, for example, but you wouldn’t want to emulate the style too closely to the point of copying.

Deceptive and misleading content

This is like the visual equivalent of fake news—creating image-based content that deliberately deceives, misleads, manipulates, or spreads misinformation. Don’t do it!

Stereotypes and bias

It’s well-documented that AI can and does perpetuate harmful stereotypes and biases. As a human user, you must be diligent about actively looking out for such biases and taking steps to mitigate them.

Strive to generate images that are inclusive and representative of diverse groups. If you generate an image that doesn’t feel inclusive or could potentially exclude or harm certain people, don’t use it. You can learn more about the importance of designing inclusive content in this guide.

As a general rule: always review AI-generated content with a critical eye, and use your better judgement. As a human user, it’s your responsibility to consider the impact of any content you create—and to ultimately decide what makes it into the public domain.

The takeaway

Midjourney AI can generate custom images in seconds, making it an excellent tool for gathering inspiration, sparking your own creativity, and ideating and exploring different design concepts, layouts, and styles.

Whether you use it to generate fully-fledged app screens, individual UI elements, impressive artworks, or colour palettes: Midjourney AI is a powerful addition to your UI design toolkit.

Ready to get started with Midjourney AI? Experiment with different prompts and use cases, explore other Midjourney users’ creations, and be mindful of the ethical considerations we’ve laid out in this guide. You’ll soon be generating images like a pro!

Stories

Linda Lindas: What Life Is Like For Teenage Students Who Are Also In A Punk Rock Band

How does one balance their passions for creativity and artistic expression with maintaining an everyday life? This seems to be one of the hardest things to do when not everyone appreciates your creativity. Perhaps it may be possible, but very few people have been able to pull it off.

Meet the punk rock band Linda Lindas who are all still teenagers and are concentrating on their studies while on stage. They never go out to clubs after their concerts, instead, they do homework.

The Linda Lindas are comprised of the four members Lucia and Mila de la Garza, ages 15 and 12, respectively, their cousin Eloise Wong, age 14, and their friend Bela Salazar, age 17. They hail from Los Angeles and identify as both Asian American and Latinx.

Linda Lindas didn’t grow up thinking they would be a musician. The fact that Mila and Lucia de la Garza’s father is a Grammy-winning producer had no impact on their future goals. Wong always wanted to study paleontology, while Salazar dreamed of becoming a doctor. Youngest and most gregarious of the bunch, Mila de la Garza always looked up to the character of Olaf from “Frozen.”

In 2018, Kristin Kontrol invited local girls to perform with her at a concert titled Girlschool L.A., marking the debut of Linda Lindas with the Dum Dum Girls. The band’s reputation grew as they continued to perform in Chinatown. They have supported Bikini Kill, Alice Bag, Money Mark, the Dils, and the Alley Cats, among others. Amy Poehler reached out to them to have them perform a medley of “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill and “Big Mouth” by The Muffs for her film “Moxie.”

They say they do their homework in the backstage area, on the plane, or during another downtime. They are convinced they are not yet adults, but they would still like to give their full attention to schoolwork. The band’s debut album, titled “Growing Up,” is centered around progress and ongoing education.

Nov 6, 2022
2 min read

Stories

Filipino Entrepreneur Cultivates Family’s Land With A Goal Of Providing Food For Every Family’s Table

The Philippines, like many countries around the world, is dealing with skyrocketing food inflation due to supply issues and high fuel costs.

26-year-old Mark Ezzer Ligan, from Bacolod, Philippines, has learned how to start and sustain his farm by producing vegetables such as okra, eggplant, soursop, and coconut in his family’s 3-hectare plot of land called MBL Integrated Farm. He also raises imported goats from Australia, cows, carabaos, and chickens.

Mark continues to cultivate the land and raise livestock to increase community production. He ensures sufficient supplies from eggs to vegetables and corn to fresh milk for the general public. As a farmer, he believes it is his responsibility to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.

More than 80% of Filipinos eat goat meat, but there are only two major commercial goat farms in the Philippines. The opportunity for growth for goat farmers is also substantial in light of this booming market.

Even more importantly, he benefits financially from their crop yields. Mark worked so hard that the provincial government of Negros Occidental recognized him as the 2019 Oustanding Young Animal Raiser. His success hasn’t hindered him from his commitment to his main goal of providing food, especially during the pandemic.

Nov 4, 2022
2 min read

News

World’s First Studio Ghibli Park In Japan Features Iconic Settings And Characters Animation

It’s the perfect time to visit Kyoto, Japan, as Ghibli Park opened less than an hour away from the city last November 1st. The new Park features some of your favorite animated scenes and characters from Studio Ghibli films.

During an event a few days before the park’s official opening, Studio Ghibli Co. chairman and president Koji Hoshino said that the start of the park has a significant meaning for them that surpasses almost three years of the pandemic.

Overall, the final design for Ghibli Park encompassed some 17.5 acres and was split into five distinct areas. Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, the park’s centerpiece, is a huge indoor “town” with streets, displays, and reproductions of Studio Ghibli’s “Totoro” and “The Catbus from Outer Space” sets. The Ghibli Museum’s theater shows special short films to visitors of the new park and Tokyo’s Ghibli Museum.

There are also two restaurants, a souvenir shop, a vintage shopping district with lanes, and a play area for children. The “Hill of Youth” antique shop from “Whisper of the Heart” and “The Cat Returns” is the second tourist attraction. The park can be seen in its entirety from this vantage point.

The third and newest section of the park is the Dondoko Forest, which is themed after the anime film “My Neighbor Totoro.” Both the bouncy house and a Totoro-themed playground can be found there.

Valley of Witches will feature elements from “Howl’s Moving Castle,” about a young milliner who accidentally gets caught up in a war, and “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” about an earnest and hardworking young witch.

According to the director and son of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Goro Miyazaki, the park was conceived with the local community in mind. Miyazaki’s original intention for the site was to be a park, not a typical theme park with rides and attractions. He desires that the people of Aichi share his passion for their gardens, as he believes parks are primarily for the local community.

Check out their official website for ticket and booking information.

Nov 4, 2022
2 min read

News

Australian Logistics Tech Firm Shippit Procures Singapore Startup Luwjistik for $11M

Shippit has announced that it will pay $18 million to buy the logistics SaaS platform Luwjistik, based in Singapore.

Founded by longtime friends William On and Rob Hango-Zada in 2014, with a mission to improve shipping for small businesses, as they have personally experienced the drawbacks of online shopping.

After two years of operations in the region for the Sydney-based company, the Australian logistics tech company co-founder and co-CEO William On has relocated to Singapore to lead the new expansion and manage the existing 50-person Luwjistik team.

This comes after the company raised $65 million in Series B2 funding, which helped operations in Southeast Asia, and almost seven months after it bought the last mile logistics tech platform Premonition.

Shippit’s inclusion of Luwjistik’s co-founders, who bring extensive industry experience and connections to the table, is expected to revolutionize the company’s approach. The acquisition of Luwjistik will also enable the company to provide tailored solutions for the Southeast Asian market. Therefore, Shippit can be the best option for many who manage their warehouse or search for a logistics partner.

The startup works with carriers such as Ninja Van, J&T Express, and JNE Express, as well as logistics companies such as Maersk, POS Malaysia, Lion Parcel, and Summer International.

Within a month of launching Luwjistik, the duo raised US$1.1 million (AUD$1.7 million) in a seed round led by East Ventures, including MDI-Arise Finches and Global Founders Capital.

William anticipated a significant increase in e-commerce in Southeastern Asia, which will continue if Shippit and Luwjistik join forces. Currently, they can provide a one-stop platform for enterprises and the expanding SME segment, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

More than 40 million deliveries were booked via the Shippit platform in the fiscal year 2022. Since its inception in 2014, Sydney-based Shippit has fulfilled e-commerce orders worth $5.5 billion for more than 3,500 retailers.

“I strongly believe that by combining our strengths, we can continuously innovate and offer the most impactful, reliable, and relevant solutions to a fast-changing, dynamic market.” – William shared with Business News Australia.

Nov 3, 2022
2 min read