I wanted to know exactly how much control you have over a finished graphic in NB2. Not concept control - I'd already tested that with impossible subjects and surrealist ad campaigns. Pure graphic design control. Typography. Color palettes. Borders. Seals. Layout grids. Ribbon banners.

So I designed a test. One brand. One product. Six variations. Each one adds a new layer of design instructions - from 5 up to 24 - to see how far NB2 follows the brief before it stops listening.

The brand is OBSIDIAN RESERVE - a fictional luxury Ethiopian single-origin coffee. I chose coffee because it's visually simple. A matte black bag on a dark surface. No impossible concepts, no surrealist twists, no competing visual interest. Just a bag and the question: how precisely can you art-direct this thing?

Six variations. Each builds on the last.

Variation A (5 instructions): Just tell NB2 what text to put where. Brand name upper center. Origin below. Tagline at the bottom. Weight and URL at the corners. That's it.

Variation B (8 instructions): Add typography control. Gold serif for the brand. Thin white sans-serif for the origin. Gold italic for the tagline.

Variation C (11 instructions): Add a color restriction. Only three colors allowed: black, gold, warm white. Specify the surface material (obsidian stone) and background texture.

Variation D (15 instructions): Add decorative elements. A thin gold pinstripe border framing the image. A gold horizontal divider between the brand and origin text. A circular gold seal in the upper right reading "EST. 2019."

Variation E (19 instructions): Add a layout grid. Split the frame: product on the left, typography on the right. Angle the bag. Left-align the text. Scatter coffee beans at the base.

Variation F (24 instructions): The full creative brief. Everything above, plus a gold ribbon banner across the upper left corner reading "SMALL BATCH" in black text (color inversion), wide letter spacing on the brand name, upper two-thirds / lower one-third proportional split, and "MEDIUM-DARK ROAST" added to the specs.

Twenty-four distinct design instructions for a single coffee ad.

Here's what happened.

Before I told NB2 anything about color, typography, or layout, it chose: gold text on a matte black bag, dark slate surface, scattered coffee beans, artisan workspace backgrounds, serif typography. It designed a coffee bean logo. It rendered the bag with accurate packaging construction - heat-sealed top, one-way valve, ziplock closure.

Five instructions. NB2 did the rest.

And it put all the text on the bag itself - not floating above the image as ad copy, but physically printed on the packaging. I'd specified text positions relative to the image frame ("upper center," "centered bottom"), but NB2 interpreted "coffee bag + text" as "design the label." NB2 automatically chooses the text integration mode that fits the product.

Average score: 9.13. Without any design direction, NB2 produced professional product photography that would work on a specialty roaster's website.

I added three typography specifications. Gold serif capitals for the brand. Thin white sans-serif for the origin. Gold italic serif for the tagline.

NB2 differentiated them - the brand is always boldest and largest, the origin is always thinner and lighter, the tagline is always a different treatment. But "white sans-serif" rendered as warm cream rather than true white, and "italic" was clearly visible in only half the images.

The finding: NB2 understands typographic hierarchy - which text should dominate and which should recede. It's less reliable on specific style attributes - exact font families, exact colors, exact italic/roman distinctions. It treats style instructions as nudges rather than commands.

Average score: 9.14. Essentially flat. Adding typography instructions barely moved the needle because NB2 was already making most of these choices on its own.

Then I added three words to the prompt: "Only three colors."

Black, gold, and warm white. Nothing else.

The score jumped from 9.14 to 9.42. By far the biggest improvement in the entire test - a +0.28 leap from a single constraint. And it wasn't subtle. The images transformed.

Gone: the warm wood shelves, the copper equipment, the steaming cups, the ceramic bowls, the brown coffee beans, the vintage grinders. Everything that broke the three-color palette vanished. What remained was pure graphic design - matte black bag on jagged obsidian stone, gold text, warm white accents, nothing else.

The constraint forced NB2 to strip away clutter and commit to a design system. It stopped generating lifestyle photography and started generating advertisements.

This is the headline finding: telling NB2 what NOT to include is more powerful than telling it what TO include. Twenty-eight times more powerful, by the numbers.

Now I added purely decorative graphic design elements. A thin gold pinstripe border framing the entire image. A horizontal gold divider line between the brand name and origin text. A circular gold seal in the upper right corner reading "EST. 2019."

All three rendered in all four images. Every single one.

These aren't text. They aren't product. They're layout decoration - the kind of elements a graphic designer adds in InDesign, not the kind of things you expect an AI image generator to handle. But NB2 treated them as standard components. The border was consistent. The divider was clean. The seal was circular with a scalloped decorative edge and "EST. 2019" inside it.

The border was the element that completed the transformation from product photo to designed poster. It created a frame - a deliberate edge that says "this is a composed graphic, not a captured moment."

Average score: 9.43. The decorative elements added polish without costing quality.

I told NB2 to split the frame in half. Product on the left. Typography on the right. Left-align all text. Angle the bag 15 degrees.

The split worked - product left, text right, in all four images. The angle worked - bags showed three-quarter views instead of front-facing. But left-aligned text? NB2 refused. It centered the text within the right zone instead.

This is the first time NB2 chose its own design sense over my explicit instruction. And honestly, it was probably right. Left-aligned text in luxury branding is unusual - centered reads as more premium. But the override tells you something about how NB2 processes design instructions: it treats them as a brief, not a spec sheet. It'll follow the intent but reserve the right to make the final call.

The asymmetric layout also dropped the score for the first time - from 9.43 to 9.30. Centered compositions are NB2's strongest layout mode. Forcing asymmetry costs roughly a tenth of a point.

The full brief. Everything from the previous five variations, plus a gold ribbon banner across the upper left corner reading "SMALL BATCH" in black text - a color inversion against the gold-on-black scheme used everywhere else. Wide letter spacing on the brand name. An upper two-thirds / lower one-third proportional split. Portrait orientation. Charcoal linen texture. Three specific coffee beans placed diagonally.

Out of 24 distinct instructions, NB2 followed approximately 22.5. The ribbon banner appeared in all four images - a diagonal gold sash with "SMALL BATCH" in dark text, correctly positioned in the upper left corner. The wide letter spacing was visible - "O B S I D I A N R E S E R V E" with deliberate air between characters. The proportional split worked cleanly. The three-color restriction, now six variations deep, still hadn't broken.

The 6% that didn't land: the exact background texture was ambiguous (hard to confirm "linen" specifically), and the three-bean diagonal placement was approximate rather than precise. Micro-specific instructions - exact textures, exact angles, exact counts - are where compliance softens.

Average score: 9.42. Back to the constraint-driven peak. The quality recovery came from returning to centered composition after Variation E's asymmetric experiment.

Worth a closer look. The ribbon banner in Variation F was the hardest single element in the test. Not because it's complex visually, but because it's a compound graphic element: a specific shape (diagonal banner), at a specific angle, in a specific position (upper left), containing specific text ("SMALL BATCH"), in a specific color that inverts the overall scheme (black text on gold, when everything else is gold text on black).

Four out of four images rendered it correctly. NB2 can handle compound decorative elements when each sub-instruction is clear.

The best score came from 11 instructions, not 24. More instructions don't mean better results. The right instructions do.

Text content: 100%. Never missed a word across 120 elements and six variations.

Color restriction: 100%. The three-color palette held across 16 images without a single break.

Decorative elements: 100%. Border, divider, seal, ribbon - all rendered every time.

Typography hierarchy: 85%. Size and weight differences are reliable. Specific font families are suggestions.

Layout proportions: 80%. Vertical splits work. Asymmetric is achievable but approximate.

Text alignment: 60%. NB2 will override alignment instructions if its design sense disagrees.

Specific measurements: 50%. "1cm margin" becomes "narrow margin." "15 degrees" becomes "angled."

Based on 24 images and six escalation tiers, here's how to get the most out of art direction.

Start with a constraint, not a specification. "Only three colors" did more than 19 other instructions combined. Before you write your prompt, decide what you're excluding.

Specify text content exactly. NB2 has 100% accuracy on text across every test I've run. Whatever you write, it will render.

Use decorative elements freely. Borders, dividers, seals, and ribbons all work. Compound elements (shapes with text inside them) work. Color inversions work.

Direct hierarchy, not typography. Say "large gold brand name" and "small white details" rather than "Garamond italic 14pt." NB2 understands importance, not font specs.

Stay centered unless you have a reason. Centered compositions are NB2's strongest mode. Asymmetric layouts are achievable but carry a quality cost.

Trust the supplementation. When you specify a product type, NB2 adds industry-appropriate details - "EAU DE PARFUM" on perfume, "AGED 18 YEARS" on whisky, packaging valve holes on coffee bags. It knows what belongs and will add it without being asked.

I gave NB2 a brief with 24 distinct design instructions - text content, typography, color restriction, decorative elements, layout grid, proportional splits, ribbon banners, letter spacing, product angles. It followed 94% of them.

But the instruction that mattered most wasn't any of those specifications. It was a restriction: "only three colors." Three words that forced NB2 to strip away everything it didn't need and produce its cleanest, most intentional work.

That's the lesson. When you're art-directing NB2, don't start by adding instructions. Start by removing options.

Testing methodology: NB2 (via Adobe Firefly). All images scored using a weighted 5-dimension rubric. Minimum 4 generations per variation before drawing conclusions.

I'm an Adobe Firefly Ambassador documenting replicable patterns through systematic testing. Follow along - I publish new findings every week.

@GlennHasABeard | @AdobeFirefly | @NanoBanana