Art Deco Gold and Black
- Jazz Age palette
- black and gold
- 1920s luxury palette
Black and polished gold, with ivory and one jewel colour to stop it becoming a logo.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #0D0D0D
- #7A1F2B
- #1E4D3F
- #B8912F
- #E1C16E
- #F0E7D2
What it is for
Black and gold is the shortest way to say expensive, and it has been since the 1920s. The contrast is total and the gold carries a material rather than a hue, which is why it reads as an object instead of a picture.
The jewel accent is what keeps it from being a luxury logo. One deep jade or oxblood gives the palette somewhere to go that is not simply brighter.
How it works
Make black the ground and let the gold sit on top of it as line, edge and lettering.
Say the gold is metallic. Flat yellow in the same position reads as a school project, and the word polished or brushed is what fixes it.
Add exactly one jewel colour, deep and saturated: jade, oxblood, sapphire. One, not two.
When to use it
Use it for anything premium or theatrical: a poster, a bottle, a title sequence, a hotel, an invitation.
Leave it alone when the subject is casual. This palette cannot be relaxed and every attempt to relax it makes it look cheap.
Told apart from its neighbours
Victorian parlour also uses gold, but it sinks it into a dark warm room. Art deco puts the same gold against pure black and ivory, which is why it looks machined rather than furnished.
Neutral plus one accent describes the structure. Art deco fixes the neutral as black and ivory and the accent as metallic gold.
Where it was used
The Chrysler Building is the palette in steel, and every theatre programme of the decade ran the same black and gold because the print shop could foil it. Film design has used it as shorthand for the 1920s ever since.
- Chrysler Building
- 1920s theatre posters
- The Great Gatsby (2013)
The prompt
Run it as it stands, or drop the colour clause into a prompt you already have. It works in an image prompt and in a video prompt.
<subject>, art deco palette of deep black and polished gold with ivory, one jewel accent of jade green, metallic sheen on the gold only, flat black ground, high contrast, no pastel and no muted colour
What goes wrong
The gold arrives as flat mustard yellow. Say polished metallic gold with a sheen.
A silver or a brown creeps in and the palette goes soft. Say gold only, no silver and no brown.
Leave out
pastel, muted colour, brown, silver
Watch for
Gold has to look metallic, not yellow. Say polished or brushed gold or it comes back as mustard.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
