Can AI Design a Band T-Shirt?
A wild ride through prompts, punk energy, and band name chaos.
AI design tools are booming — but can they handle the task of designing a band shirt that embodies chaos, queerness, and live-performance energy? Let’s find out.
What I Wanted vs. What AI Gave Me
My mission: design a t-shirt for a band known for wild, theatrical performances. And not just any band — Ukulele Death Squad from Adelaide, Australia is less "campfire singalong," more "genre-bending chaos with saxophones, shredding solos, and stage-diving energy." Loud, theatrical, and wonderfully unhinged, their merch needed to reflect that same anarchic spirit (Listen for yourself). The challenge? Getting AI to channel punk grit — not default to soft pastels and polite clip art. Spoiler: AI had opinions... and apparently thinks the band is called "UK Dull Elf Squad."
From Prompt to Print (And Back Again. Several Times.)
First, let ChatGPT help with the prompt design: “Design a prompt for designing a band t-shirt illustration that represents the band best in their culture and style.”
Design a bold, theatrical band t-shirt illustration for Ukulele Death Squad — a queer, high-energy ensemble known for fusing gypsy jazz, folk, soul, R&B, and brass into explosive live performances.
The artwork should feature ukuleles used as dynamic, almost weapon-like instruments, surrounded by swirling musical motifs (saxophones, congas, dramatic vocal bursts).
Include vibrant, rebellious, and slightly chaotic visual elements that reflect the band’s queer identity, festival roots, and genre-bending defiance. Style should be edgy, expressive, and slightly surreal — think Tarantino meets cabaret punk. Include the band’s name in a strong, unconventional typeface.
Let's go with this prompt and not modify it, let's see what happens:
ChatGPT
Midjourney
DreamStudio
Adobe Firefly
Leonardo AI
Canva AI
Freepik AI
Identity & Symbolism
Queer identity was difficult for most tools to capture:
- Best attempts were colorful or playful, but lacked real gender fluidity
- No tool really delivered on androgyny or non-normative expressions
Death symbolism was interpreted too literally:
- Common tropes: skulls like the popular mexican Día de los Muertos skulls, "Joker"-style chaos
- More successful results came from words like "dark," "punk," or "theatrical."
Ukulele integration was a general failure:
- Only ChatGPT and Canva rendered a ukulele with four correct strings
- Other models showed generic guitars or ignored the instrument entirely
Style, Typography & Visual Consistency
Visual energy varied widely:
- DreamStudio stood out for its bold, intense style that felt emotionally charged
- MidJourney looked polished but fell back on predictable tropes
Typography was a consistent weakness:
- Adobe Firefly struggled most — often producing gibberish or off-topic text (UK Dull Elf Squad??)
- ChatGPT and Canva handled fonts better, but still lacked reliability or expressiveness
People in the Image
Depicting people proved problematic:
- Since Ukulele Death Squad is kind of a rotating collective, showing fixed individuals didn't fit
- Freepik and Leonardo produced visuals that looked good but focused too much on specific characters — undermining the band's flexible, non-static identity
Integrating the Aussie roots
To ground the design in the band's roots, I wanted to weave in some subtle nods to Australia — without slapping a kangaroo on it. So I added native flora like gum tree leaves, golden wattle, and banksia to the prompt. These elements helped give the chaos a sense of place — vibrant, wild, and unmistakably Australian.
Refining the Prompt
After a few rounds of tweaking the original prompt with the things i learned i arrived here:
Create a vibrant, high-energy band t-shirt illustration for “Ukulele Death Squad” in a punk-meets-fiesta style, using only rainbow colors / neon pink, cyan, and bright yellow on a black background. The composition should center around a ukulele being held by a skeletal hand (with all five fingers visible), surrounded by musical elements like congas, saxophone, trumpet, and a marching-style trombone. Include native Australian flora such as gum tree leaves, golden wattle, anigozanthos, and banksia, along with scattered bones, music notes, and dynamic sparkle or lightning burst effects. make the scene feel explosive, theatrical, and expressive. The style should be bold, screenprint-friendly, and hand-drawn, inspired by punk zines and underground poster art. The band name “Ukulele Death Squad” should appear at the bottom in a clear, rebellious, hand-drawn typeface, with a darker outline or single-color fill, partially overlapping the ukulele. Avoid green hues, facial imagery, grim reaper figures, and unnecessary symbolism—focus instead on a fun, defiant, gender-neutral energy.
Refined Results
After multiple iterations and refinements, here are the final designs that best captured the band's essence:
ChatGPT
Canva
DreamStudio
Firefly
Freepik
Gemini
What I Learned
- Start vague, then get absurdly specific: Let the AI surprise you first — general prompts like "punk ukulele chaos" can spark unexpected ideas. Once you know what you're actually after, narrow it down with detail: "One skeleton hand gripping the neck of a four-string ukulele from the left"
- AI is a creative partner (with chaotic energy): Trying multiple tools gave me visual curveballs I wouldn't have thought of — sometimes helpful, sometimes horrifying. But either way, it helped clarify what works and what to avoid
- Curation is key: You still need a designer's eye — cultural context, aesthetics, visual literacy. Without that, you're just throwing prompts at the void and hoping it doesn't return a marching band of skeleton ducks
- AI typography? Not quite there yet: Don't expect legible, edgy band names from the models
This is the final shirt with a manually placed font:
One last thing... These results might look completely different in a week. That's the fun (and chaos) of working with rapidly evolving tools.