Designing Promotional Materials with AI

The module runs tool by tool. Each section tells you what the tool is good at, then gives you steps and copy-paste prompts you can adapt straight away. The last sections show you how to chain the tools together for each type of material, and how to keep the work responsible and on-brand.

Suggested running time as a workshop: about 3 hours, with hands-on practice built in. As a self-paced guide, work through one tool at a time.

A quick word on the tools — they change fast. Features, free limits and prices move every few months, so treat any number here as a rough guide and check the current screen before you teach it.

Write a one-line brief

Answer four questions:

• Who is this for? (students, staff, the public, a specific department)
• What is the one thing they should remember? (just one)
• What do you want them to do? (register, attend, scan, call)
• Where will it appear? (printed A4, Instagram, a screen in the foyer, WhatsApp)

That last one matters more than people expect. A poster for print and a graphic for Instagram are different shapes and different resolutions. Decide early.

Gather your brand bits

Logo file, the official colours, the approved fonts. If your organisation has a style guide, keep it open. In Canva, load these once into a Brand Kit so every design starts on-brand instead of you fixing it each time.

Set up your accounts

A free ChatGPT account. A Google account for Gemini. A Canva account — and if you work in a school or university, check whether you qualify for Canva for Education, which unlocks the paid features at no cost.

Fill your brief once — reuse it everywhere

This builder is the heart of the module. Whatever you put in here flows into the prompts in every following section. Saved on this device only.

Write the copy for a Instagram square promoting "[event or purpose]" for [your organisation].
Audience: [your audience].
The one thing they should remember: [the one key message].
Call to action: [your call to action].
Details: [date · time · venue].
Give me: one short headline (max 5 words), one supporting line, three bullet points of what's on offer, and a clear CTA.
Tone: friendly and confident. UK English. Then offer five headline alternatives, from playful to formal.

Create a Instagram square graphic, 1:1, for "[event or purpose]".
Audience: [your audience]. Mood: friendly and confident. Palette: [your brand colours].
Show a relevant, optimistic scene with space around the text.
Render this text exactly, no extra words:
Top headline: "[the one key message]"
Below it: "[date · time · venue]"
Button line at the bottom: "[your call to action]"
Keep the text large and readable. Leave generous margins.

Create a 1:1 poster for "[event or purpose]".
Style: friendly and confident, clean, on-brand with [your brand colours].
Render this text exactly, large and crisp:
Heading: "[the one key message]"
Sub-line: "[date · time · venue]"
Footer line: "[your call to action]"
No extra words, no stray letters. Keep the layout calm with breathing room.

A Instagram square for "[event or purpose]", aimed at [your audience]. friendly and confident. Colours: [your brand colours]. Leave space for a logo. Headline: "[the one key message]". Details: "[date · time · venue]". CTA: "[your call to action]".

Write a 15-second three-shot script for a vertical promo video about "[event or purpose]" by [your organisation].
Audience: [your audience]. Tone: friendly and confident.
Shot 1 (3s): opening hook tied to "[the one key message]".
Shot 2 (8s): the experience or benefit.
Shot 3 (4s): on-screen CTA "[your call to action]" with "[date · time · venue]".
Include suggested on-screen text per shot, and one music style suggestion.

ChatGPT is your planning partner and your copywriter. It is also a capable image generator that is unusually good at putting readable text inside a picture, which is exactly what a poster needs. Its video side, Sora, makes short clips but sits behind a paid plan.

Job A — Plan the brief and write the copy

Before any image exists, get your words right. Weak copy ruins a strong design.

I'm making a flyer for a [campus career fair] aimed at [final-year undergraduates]. The one message is [meet 30+ employers in one day]. I want them to [register online by 15 March]. Ask me five short questions to sharpen this, then give me a tight brief I can hand to a designer.

Or use your brief — already filled in:

Write the copy for a Instagram square promoting "[event or purpose]" for [your organisation].
Audience: [your audience].
The one thing they should remember: [the one key message].
Call to action: [your call to action].
Details: [date · time · venue].
Give me: one short headline (max 5 words), one supporting line, three bullet points of what's on offer, and a clear CTA.
Tone: friendly and confident. UK English. Then offer five headline alternatives, from playful to formal.

Ask for options. "Give me five headline choices, from playful to formal" works well. Pick, then refine.

Job B — Generate poster and flyer images

1. Open a new chat. Describe the image in plain language.
2. State the exact text in quote marks, and say where it goes.
3. State the shape (aspect ratio).
4. Generate, then refine by chatting — "make the background darker", "move the title up".

Create a Instagram square graphic, 1:1, for "[event or purpose]".
Audience: [your audience]. Mood: friendly and confident. Palette: [your brand colours].
Show a relevant, optimistic scene with space around the text.
Render this text exactly, no extra words:
Top headline: "[the one key message]"
Below it: "[date · time · venue]"
Button line at the bottom: "[your call to action]"
Keep the text large and readable. Leave generous margins.

The "render the text exactly, no extra words" line matters. AI loves to invent stray letters. Telling it not to helps. To edit, just keep chatting: "Keep everything the same but change the headline to navy and the button to orange."

Job C — A short promotional video with Sora

Sora turns a prompt, or one of your images, into a short clip. It needs a paid plan, so treat this as the premium option.

A 10-second promotional video, 9:16, for a campus career fair. Open on a quiet empty hall, then students stream in and booths come alive with conversation. Bright, hopeful, gentle camera push-in. End on the empty centre of the frame so I can add text later.

Generate the motion clean, then add your titles and logo in Canva afterwards. That keeps the text crisp and on-brand.

Gemini's image feature, known as Nano Banana, is the standout for posters where the words have to be perfect. It renders clean, legible text, and it can write or translate that text in more than one language inside the same image. For a Malaysian audience that often means one poster in Bahasa Melayu and English, done properly. Its video side is Veo, which produces short clips with sound.

Job A — Posters and flyers with crisp text

Create a 1:1 poster for "[event or purpose]".
Style: friendly and confident, clean, on-brand with [your brand colours].
Render this text exactly, large and crisp:
Heading: "[the one key message]"
Sub-line: "[date · time · venue]"
Footer line: "[your call to action]"
No extra words, no stray letters. Keep the layout calm with breathing room.

A useful Gemini habit: settle the wording first by chatting, then ask for the image. "Give me three tagline options", choose one, then "now put that tagline into a poster…". Nailing the text in conversation first gives sharper results.

Job B — Bilingual and localised posters

This is where Gemini earns its place. Produce one version, then ask for the same design in another language with the layout intact.

Now make a second version of this exact poster with the same layout, colours and imagery, but with all the text translated into Bahasa Melayu. Keep the design identical, only change the language.

You get a matched pair that look like a set. No designer needed to keep them consistent.

Job C — A short video with Veo

A 1:1, 12-second promotional video for "[event or purpose]".
Mood: friendly and confident. Subject: a warm, real-feeling scene relevant to [your audience].
Gentle camera motion, natural light. Leave the final 2 seconds clean for a title card to be added in Canva.

Note: Gemini's images carry an invisible watermark (SynthID) marking them as AI-made. That is a feature, not a fault — it supports honest use.

This is where most staff will spend their time. ChatGPT and Gemini are brilliant at single images and copy. Canva is where you assemble a real flyer, lay out a three-fold brochure, resize one design into six formats, and stitch a video together. Its AI is bundled as Magic Studio.

A reality check: Canva's image generator is fine for backgrounds and illustrations. It still struggles with photo-realistic people. For a believable photo of a person, generate it in Gemini or ChatGPT, then bring it into Canva to lay out. Canva's strength is the layout, not the photo.

Magic Design — flyers and posters in seconds

1. From the Canva home bar, choose Canva AI → "Design for me" — or open the Design tab inside the editor.
2. Type a clear prompt.
3. Pick a layout you like.
4. Apply your Brand Kit so colours and fonts snap into place.
5. Edit the text and swap the images. Done.

A Instagram square for "[event or purpose]", aimed at [your audience]. friendly and confident. Colours: [your brand colours]. Leave space for a logo. Headline: "[the one key message]". Details: "[date · time · venue]". CTA: "[your call to action]".

Magic Write — copy without leaving the page

The text generator built into the editor. Use it to draft a headline, shorten a paragraph that does not fit, or change the tone. Treat it as a second-pass editor rather than a first-draft writer — polish, don't outsource your thinking to it.

Dream Lab & Magic Media — images and short video

Dream Lab makes still images from a prompt and can match a reference picture's style. Magic Media does images and short video, with video built on Google's Veo engine. Use these for backgrounds, textures and illustrations. For a hero photo of a real person, prefer Gemini or ChatGPT.

Brochures — the multi-page job

1. Search the template library for "tri-fold brochure" or "A4 brochure" and pick a structure close to what you need.
2. Use Magic Write to draft the copy panel by panel.
3. Drop in your photos. Generate any supporting images in Gemini or ChatGPT and upload them.
4. Apply the Brand Kit.
5. Export as a print-ready PDF.

Magic Switch — one design, many formats

You made an A4 poster. Now you need an Instagram square, a story, a WhatsApp image and a screen banner. Magic Switch resizes and intelligently re-lays the design to fit each shape, rather than just cropping it. This single feature saves the most time of anything in the module.

Photo fixes — the small but mighty tools

Magic Eraser removes an unwanted object. Magic Edit changes part of an image from a description. Magic Expand stretches a photo to fill a wider frame. Magic Grab lifts a subject out so you can move it.

Heads-up on credits: on the paid plan, AI features share a monthly credit pool, and image generation burns through it fastest. Use the stock library for icons and plain backgrounds, save credits for images that actually need generating.

• Microsoft Designer — free, quick social graphics, useful if your office lives in Microsoft 365.
• Adobe Express — similar to Canva with its own AI, a good fit if you already use Adobe.
• CapCut — popular and capable for editing short promotional video, especially for social.

The principle holds: a thinking-and-words tool, an image tool, then a layout-and-assembly tool. Learn that pattern once and any new app slots in.

1. Purpose — what it is (a poster, a flyer image, a video).
2. Audience and feel — who it's for and the mood.
3. Subject — what's in the picture.
4. Style — colours, lighting, illustration or photo.
5. Exact text — in quote marks, with where it sits.
6. Shape — the aspect ratio (9:16, 1:1, 16:9, 4:5).

Create a [poster / flyer image], [aspect ratio], for [event or purpose], aimed at [audience]. Style: [mood, colours, photo or illustration]. Show [subject]. Render this text exactly, no extra words: [headline] / [details] / [call to action]. Keep the text large and readable with space around it.

Two habits that lift quality straight away. Settle the wording in conversation before you ask for the image. And refine by editing, not restarting — change one thing at a time and keep the rest.

When in doubt, the fix is usually less, not more. Fewer words, more space.

Finish with the checklist from Part 8. If it passes, you've made a real campaign in under an hour.