Why minimalist infographics are strangely powerful
I used to overdesign everything. I would cram charts, arrows, sticky-note shapes, little fake 3D icons into one single slide. The result looked impressive only until I actually had to use it in front of people. Half the room was squinting, half the room was confused, and suddenly I felt like I was explaining a comic book instead of a concept. Minimalist infographics saved me from myself. The first time I tried stripping out all the clutter and leaving only a few lines of text with simple blocks to show cause and effect, people actually paid attention to what I was saying. The silence during a presentation that is not full of phones glowing is a surreal feeling 🙂
One thing I learned quickly though was that minimalist doesn’t mean lazy. It isn’t about leaving things blank. You actually have to think harder about what to remove and what to keep. For example, I once had an automation flow that spanned three different apps, and when I illustrated it in a busy infographic it looked like spaghetti. When I redid it minimalist style, I kept only the main icons for each app and one arrow between them. I didn’t show the filters or error paths. Did people ask about those? Of course. But that was perfect because it created conversation instead of confusion. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Testing prompt styles that work with dalle
Here is the actual thing nobody told me until I wasted a chunk of a Saturday. If you type something like “beautiful infographic about time management with icons and colorful design” you will get a poster that looks like a travel agency ad. DALL·E does not think like a PowerPoint designer, it thinks like a painter. The trick is to force it to think with limitations. So instead of saying colorful, you say “flat simple illustration with two colors only.” Instead of saying infographic, you say “minimal shapes arranged like a diagram.”
For instance, I had to explain a broken Zapier step where data was getting transformed twice. My first attempt at a “data flow infographic” gave me four clocks and a random clock tower in the background. My second attempt, where I said “simple box diagram with arrows only black and white style,” actually gave me exactly what I needed. It looked almost like a chalk sketch, and honestly I liked it better because I could then paste text on top without fighting with the art style.
Simple phrasing wins. Something like “minimal line illustration diagram arrows circles plain white background” outputs consistently usable results. If you push for detail too much, you get surreal extra stuff like floating pencils or weird cartoon characters that you can’t really paste into a presentation without someone asking “why is there a cat holding a globe.”
Forcing diagrams to actually look aligned
This is the one that drove me nuts. The arrows in DALL·E infographics almost never line up the way you want on the first try. You’ll get one box up in the corner, one box in the middle, and then this overweight arrow that looks more like a river than a connector. The fix — and I mean this literally, after testing it for hours — is to use the phrase “symmetrical layout” or “evenly spaced.” I once tried “balanced layout,” but that just duplicated objects instead of spacing them. “Grid aligned” worked better.
My best result came from saying “four boxes arranged in a grid with minimal arrows between them like a simple flow diagram.” That output gave me something that looked like I could have sketched it in Google Drawings, but cleaner. Then I just overlay text manually. This is why minimalist works so well: you don’t care about extra patterns, you just want placeholders you can label yourself.
I even had one case where I fed it “three stacked horizontal boxes arrows pointing down minimal infographic style” and it nailed it. Three perfect rectangles, arrow lines, nothing else. I almost cheered. That’s how low the bar gets after thirty attempts.
When colors decide to sabotage your design
Colors are weird with DALL·E. If you don’t mention them, the AI will sometimes pick a strange pastel palette, like pink and teal gradients that make your automation workflow look like an ice cream ad. I learned quickly to specify “plain white background” otherwise you end up fighting with noisy backgrounds. If you want accent colors, you have to be specific like “one accent color in flat style such as blue.” That generally gives you gray or white shapes with one extra color for emphasis.
I once asked for “minimal infographic with black text and one red accent color” and got something that looked like a warning label. Not exactly what I needed, but after retrying I got a pleasant simple monochrome with tiny pops of red that actually looked intentional. My suggestion is always test text overlays separately on your real slides. Sometimes the background white isn’t actually pure white, which means pasting it onto your document leaves a ghost rectangle you didn’t notice until your third edit. 😛
Adding text is never worth it
If you try to get DALL·E to actually spell things properly, prepare to lose two hours of your life. Even when it gets the letters right, they’re warped or stylized in a way that makes the whole thing look off. I stopped asking it for text altogether. Instead, I just prompt for shapes only. Then I drop the graphic into Canva or even boring PowerPoint, add my own text boxes, pick a clean sans serif font, and move on.
It does help to imagine these as wireframes rather than finished infographics. I was once stuck with a pitch deck draft at two in the morning where Zapier triggers had to be explained clearly. DALL·E kept giving me pseudo words like “Zarpir” in the boxes. So instead of fighting it, I just used boxes with no text and typed my own in. Happier ending and way less embarrassment when my boss didn’t ask what “Zerpir” was supposed to mean.
Starter prompt examples that consistently work
Based on all my tests and retries, these are some text prompts that actually create usable minimalist diagrams
– minimal line diagram with arrows showing simple flow two boxes white background
– four boxes arranged in a square grid with connecting arrows flat simple style
– simple horizontal bar chart small clean shapes white background no words
– vertical timeline with five circles connected by straight line minimalist icon style
Think of these less as perfect instructions and more as scaffolding. If you add too many adjectives, you confuse the system. Keep it short like you are explaining to a kid drawing on paper. Also, variation works. If “diagram” gives you funkiness, try “flow drawing” or “simple schematic.” Sometimes the wording swap fixes alignment issues immediately.
When minimal prompts magically fix workflow panic
The weirdest part of this whole thing is that I sometimes treat asking DALL·E for diagrams the same way I treat debugging Zapier. You’re not aiming for beauty. You’re aiming for clarity. If you can pull a placeholder image that stops you from spending half a day wrestling with PowerPoint shapes, that’s a win. I once needed to describe an Airtable to Google Sheets sync without overwhelming my client. Prompted for “two rectangles side by side one arrow between them minimal diagram white background” and dropped in my own labels — problem solved in minutes. No one cared that it wasn’t glossy. They cared that they understood it instantly. And honestly, that realization made me stop overcomplicating the whole process.
Where to use these prompts beyond slides
Slides are the obvious target, but I found minimalist infographics from DALL·E work surprisingly well in Notion pages, documentation, and even as filler images in blog posts. The clean style doesn’t clash much. A little trick — if you export them in PNG, you might still get faint edge lines from compression. Dropping them into a Canva file and re-exporting fixes that quickly. Random tip, but it took me way too long to figure out why my “clean white” slide had a shadow band along the edge.
I’d also add that these work in Miro boards when you want to brainstorm. Instead of spending energy drawing shapes with the clunky tools, you can paste one minimal chart and just scribble on top. My team laughed the first time I did it, but by the end they were like “wait where’d you get that template.” I don’t even admit I spent thirty prompt attempts because it ruins the magic.
One last link in case someone wants to play further — you can read about the system itself on openai.com which helps frame what the generator thinks about when you give it weirdly specific descriptions.