In creative arts education, learning how to write effective prompts can become part of the creative process itself. Prompt writing encourages students to think carefully about concepts, visual language, materials, style, and context.
This post explores how tutors can introduce prompt writing as a creative skill in art and design education.
What is a prompt?
A prompt is the instruction or description given to an AI tool to generate a response. This could be a short question, a detailed description, or a structured set of instructions.
For example, a simple prompt might be:
“Create an illustration of a futuristic city.”
A more detailed prompt might be:
“An illustration of a futuristic coastal city focused on sustainable architecture, with vertical gardens and floating structures, soft pastel colour palette, editorial illustration style.”
The second prompt provides more information about concept, setting, style, and mood, which helps guide the AI system towards a more specific outcome.
In creative contexts, prompt writing can include elements such as visual style, mood, atmosphere, composition or cultural or historical references. Writing prompts therefore becomes a way of articulating creative intent.
The PARTS framework:
The PARTS Framework is a simple structure that can help you write clearer, more purposeful creative prompts. Each letter represents a different aspect of creative intent:
P – Persona: Set Copilot’s role and stance E.g., “Act as a studio tutor”, “Act as a curator”, “Act as a production manager”, “Act as a design researcher”.
A – Act: State the task explicitly. E.g., “Design”, “Rewrite”, “Storyboard”, “Critique”, “Summarise”, “Chunk”, “Map references”.
R – Recipient: Define the audience / level. E.g., “Year 1 BA Graphic Design students”, “MA Fashion Media cohort”, “Professional short course participants”.
T – Theme: Specify topic/context E.g., “Editorial styling”, “Type hierarchy”, “Podcast sound design”, “Sustainable material exploration”, “XR/AR prototyping”.
S – Structure: Request formats & models E.g., “5E lesson”, “Design Sprint”, “Crit rubric”, “Story arc (3-act)”, “Process journal template2, “Workshop plan with timing”.
Used together, PARTS encourages prompts that are intentional but still open enough to allow creative interpretation and iteration.
A short practical exercise using the PARTS framework:
Here is an example of a prompt using the PARTS Framework:
Act as a studio tutor and design researcher (P). Design an assessment brief and a sequence of learning tasks (A). You are teaching Year 1 BA Graphic Design students with limited experience of independent projects (R). The topic they are studying is speculative futures explored through visual storytelling (social, environmental, cultural, or technological futures) (T). Provide a staged project with: process journal, practical workshops, formative checkpoints, final presentation and reflection (S).
Your task: Either use this prompt to design an assessment activity or use the PARTS framework to help you design an assessment activity for your students.
Once you have completed this exercise have a look at the results Copilot Chat generates. What do you think of the output? Could you use the results without modification? Could it be used as a starting point for an assessment with your students?
Key risks and limitations
While prompt writing can be a useful creative skill, there are also limitations to consider.
1. Illusion of control. Even with carefully written prompts, AI systems may produce unexpected or inconsistent outputs. Results are influenced by training data and algorithms beyond the user’s control.
2. Overly descriptive prompts. Sometimes prompts that are too rigid or detailed can limit creative exploration. Iteration and experimentation are often more useful than trying to perfect a single prompt.
3. Surface-level visual results. A well-written prompt can generate visually impressive images, but this does not necessarily mean the underlying concept is strong.
Final thoughts
Prompt writing is emerging as an important skill when working with generative AI tools. For creative practitioners, it can become a way of articulating ideas, experimenting with visual language, and exploring multiple directions quickly.
Explore this topic in more detail: Go to the Moodle course “Artificial Imagination: Integrating AI in Art Education” – Part 3. Using prompts“.
In the next post in this series we will look at AI for Idea Generation and Creative Research.
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