When you make an app, one of the most difficult challenges you'll be faced with is to create an icon that perfectly represents it. This may seem like it's an easy task but it's not. You need an icon that's visually appealing, simple, and memorable.
Since app icons are so small, you can't exactly put too much detail in your design. If you hire a graphic designer to make an icon for you, it might take you countless iterations before you get a design that you like. And that costs both time and money.
Instead of hiring a graphic designer to come up with multiple ideas and concepts, you can use Midjourney to seamlessly create as many variations of a design as you want. This will save you a lot of time.
My advice is that when the model generates a worthy design you hire a professional graphic designer to make some tweaks and polish certain details. By doing this, you won't have to worry about the designer coming up with multiple concepts that simply aren't good enough but still charging you for them.
If you have good prompting skills in Midjourney, you can also create various app icon designs for clients. The only thing you should pay attention to is to always mention to your clients that you create the designs using AI, since there are still a lot of people who aren't too fond of this technology.
How to Write Midjourney Prompts for App Icons
The beautiful thing about Midjourney is that you can simply explain what the app does in a few short sentences and it will generate designs based on your description. You don't necessarily have to know a lot about prompting to create good app icon designs.
It's important to be concise with your prompts. However, that doesn't mean that your prompts should consist of only a few words. If you simply write "health app icon" in Midjourney, you'll be one of the countless users who entered the exact same prompt in Midjourney and may have created a similar design.
Instead, what you need to do is add some details or keywords that will ensure your prompt is not basic. Before you start writing prompts for app icons, it's also worth doing a bit of research on how to create logos.
I have a great article dedicated to Midjourney prompts for logos where you can find a lot of information that's relevant for app icons. They're both practically logos, but there is a difference in how you design a logo for a company or website and for an app, which is why there are two distinct articles on this general topic.
Using the right keywords in your prompts can make a lot of difference when you're creating designs in Midjourney. In this article, I'll do my best to include some of the keywords I think work best for app icon designs.
12 Midjourney Prompts for App Icons
I will be using Midjourney version 5.2 for all the prompts here, as that's the latest iteration of the text-to-image AI model at the time of writing this article. I will also use the default aspect ratio because that's what you're looking for when you're making app icon designs.
I'll include app icon design ideas for various types of applications. I'm making these prompts up as I go and am showing them only as examples. If you have an idea for an app or a finished application, you should tailor the prompt specifically to what you created.
Without further ado, let's check out some cool Midjourney prompts for app icons.
/imagine app icon design for an educational platform where people can easily access a variety of information about science, math, physics, chemistry --v 5.2
I wrote earlier in this article that you can basically give a description of your app in a prompt and Midjourney will generate a design from it. This is exactly what I meant when I wrote that. I wrote what the app represents, added relevant keywords like science, math, physics, chemistry, and the AI model generated this beautiful app design.
Honestly, I don't know if there should be any major changes made to this design. It's almost perfect. There are strange details poking out of two planets at the top and a weird geometric shape on the bottom right planet, but aside from that it looks amazing.
/imagine app icon design for a health app that keeps track of your vitals and sends you notifications when certain parameters are not optimal --stylize 500 --v 5.2
The stylization parameter in Midjourney can have a great effect on logo designs. If you don't have a habit of using it, I suggest that you start. The standard stylization value in all images generated in Midjourney is 100, which means I increased the value significantly for this prompt. You can put any value between 0 and 1000 in your prompts.
/imagine app icon design for a travel app that enables you to find extremely cheap flights everywhere around the world --v 5.2
I love it when I come across a cheap flight. I travel a lot, so I got used to searching for cheap flights. You'd be surprised how much money you can save if you plan in advance and search for good deals online. I sometimes book an entire trip only because I stumbled upon affordable airline tickets.
/imagine app icon design, pictorial mark logo, a messaging app where you can communicate with other people only video messages --v 5.2
This would be something like a combination between TikTok and WhatsApp and I pray to God that it never gets developed. Imagine that every time you want to send a message to someone you have to send a video. No thanks, I prefer text messages. I do like the app icon design though; it's very cute.
/imagine app icon design for a dating app oriented towards people who only seek serious and long-term relationships, minimalistic --v 5.2
I love how this design turned out, and it has a lot to do with me including the 'minimalistic' keyword at the end of my prompt. It's important to think about whether you want to include a certain aesthetic or art style in your app icon design before you start writing the prompt.
/imagine clean app icon design for a music app that enables you to easily find new artists across the world --v 5.2
Well, this was much better than expected. I'm impressed by the fact that I can give a brief description of an app and the AI model will generate a fitting design for it. I expected to see headphones, musical notes, or something similar in the design given that it's a music app, so I'm pleasantly surprised there wasn't any of that yet the icon is still fitting for an application in this category.
/imagine app icon design for a gamified fitness app where you get rewards for working out --v 5.2
I'm progressively getting better at coming up with app ideas as I'm writing these prompts. All jokes aside, I think that gamified fitness apps are the future. You get rewards for training, which encourages your brain to treat physical activity like it's a game. This can help people get motivated to work out consistently.
/imagine app icon design for a mobile video game where you are a cute ghost that helps people solve mysteries --v 5.2
It's especially difficult to create a good app icon design for a mobile video game. You have so much competition in this category that it's insane. Thankfully, you can experiment in Midjourney and go through countless variations until you find the right design.
/imagine app icon design for a mobile video game in which the main objective is to gather an army and conquer the world --v 5.2
I liked the app icon design for the cute ghost video game so much that I immediately wanted to make an icon for a different type of game. This is a much more serious video game, so it makes sense that the icon design isn't so cute and charming. I actually like this icon a lot. It's extremely memorable.
/imagine app icon design for a productivity app that's designed to maximize your efficiency at work, clean, minimalistic, professional --v 5.2
I need to download an app like this soon. There are times when my productivity is at a hyper level. Then there are also times when I'm not productive at all. Although it kind of balances itself out, I think it's healthier to just keep your productivity at a relatively same level at all times.
Ignore the weird symbols featured in this design. They can easily be edited out in a different graphics software.
/imagine app icon design for an educational app that teaches you the best ways to make money online --stylize 250 --v 5.2
Educational apps are the best. If people would spend the same amount of time on educational apps as they do playing Candy Crush, the world would be a much better place. I had to include the stylization parameter in this prompt because I wanted to make the icon more alluring.
/imagine app icon design for a food app that enables you to find the most affordable restaurants that serve quality food --v 5.2
This is an app that every human being on this planet should have. My apologies if it already exists and I'm not familiar with it. I usually use TripAdvisor to find somewhat credible reviews and see which restaurants offer quality dishes at affordable prices. But it can take quite a while to conduct that type of research.
Instead, what if there were an app that featured only good and affordable restaurants? It would be so much easier to find spots where you can eat without breaking the bank.
Final Thoughts
I hope that these 12 prompt examples sparked enough creativity in your mind for you to start writing your own prompts for app icons. As you can see, there is nothing too difficult about making an app icon design in Midjourney. In most cases, you can get a good design even if you only explain what the app does in layman's terms. And that's the true power of Midjourney.
If you never made logos or app icons before, it's worth taking the time to read about how graphic designers do it. You can pick up a lot of terms when you see graphic designers work, which will be very helpful when you're writing prompts.
In the end, you can never know for certain which prompt will yield the results you want. Sometimes, the AI model unexpectedly generates an incredible image from a relatively simple prompt. Then there are cases in which you think you wrote the perfect prompt with all the right details, but the model never generates the design you're looking for.
With that being said, I encourage you to experiment with a lot of different prompt ideas and concepts to find the right design.
