Synthwave
- retrowave
- outrun
- 80s neon
A neon grid running to a striped sunset, chrome type, and a purple sky full of haze.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Synthwave is the most reliable crowd-pleaser in this section. It is immediately readable, looks expensive and needs no explanation.
The grid running to the horizon also solves a composition problem for free: it creates depth, points at the title and fills the lower half.
How it works
Build the stage: a magenta wireframe grid running to a low horizon, an enormous sun striped in horizontal bands from orange to magenta, and a deep purple sky above it.
Add silhouettes for depth: palm trees, a distant skyline, mountains, one sports car. All black, no detail.
Chrome and neon lettering with a hot pink outer glow and a bevelled edge. Volumetric haze, a few stars and scan lines over the whole image.
When to use it
Use it for an 80s night, a games event, a club night, a car show, a film screening, a gym or fitness event, a launch party.
Leave it alone for a daytime or quiet event. It is night, neon and loud.
Told apart from its neighbours
Vaporwave uses the same grid but degraded, ironic and sad. Synthwave is confident and cinematic.
Y2K chrome is silver and white with no sunset. Synthwave is purple and magenta.
Diner neon is physical glass on a real sign. Synthwave is a rendered landscape.
Where it was used
Miami Vice and the film scores of the 1980s are the source material, but the style as it exists now was built after the fact by Kavinsky, College and the Drive soundtrack in 2011, which is when the striped sun became compulsory.
- Drive
- Kavinsky
- Miami Vice titles
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own event, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
poster for <event>, synthwave retrowave, a magenta neon wireframe grid running to a low horizon, an enormous striped sunset of orange to magenta bands, deep purple and indigo sky with a scattering of stars and volumetric haze, chrome and neon lettering with a hot pink outer glow and a bevelled edge, palm tree silhouettes and a distant city skyline, one sports car or mountain silhouette, scan lines over the whole image, <date, time and place> in a glowing pill-shaped band
What goes wrong
The model returns a smooth gradient sunset. Ask for a sun striped in distinct horizontal bands from orange to magenta.
The second failure is a detailed landscape. Say the palm trees, skyline and car are flat black silhouettes with no detail.
Leave out
daylight, muted colour, matte surfaces, clutter, realistic landscape
Watch for
The sunset has to be striped. A smooth gradient sun is the wrong decade.
Questions
Print it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
