Cap the modules or the infographic becomes a poster

Ask for “an infographic about prompt templates” and both GPT Image 2 and Nano Banana will try to win a design award: 14 cards, a world map, a 3D isometric city, and a paragraph of unreadable body text. The picture looks busy. Nobody can learn from it. The model is not a typesetter.

What actually breaks

We generated “How Prompt Template tokenizes a prompt” with no module cap. Round one produced a poster: hero illustration on the left, six overlapping circles, and a footer essay. Round two added “professional, clean.” Same mess, greyer palette. The turning point was forcing four numbered modules and seven-word labels.

Long sentences are the other failure. A 40-word explanation inside a box becomes glyphs. Short labels survive; paragraphs do not.

The rule we use

Count the boxes. 4 modules or 6 numbered panels — pick a number before the topic.
Name the chart type. Flow, comparison, timeline, or labeled diagram. “Infographic” is a genre, not a layout.
One-line copy. Title + 6–12 words per module. No body paragraphs.
Audience in one clause. “For people who paste prompts, not prompt engineers.”

A zoom-scale science plate (atom → city) needs explicit sizes per ring. If every circle is the same diameter, the “scale” story is gone.

Example we actually ran

Weak

Infographic explaining how prompt templates work, educational, lots of detail.

Locked

Portrait 3:4 infographic, light paper background, no isometric city, no poster hero.
Title: "A prompt template has four parts".
Exactly 4 modules in a 2x2 grid, numbered 1-4, each with a line icon and a 8-word label:
1. Skeleton — the sentence that never changes
2. Color token — a swatch, not an adjective
3. Camera token — 50mm and f/1.4, not "cinematic"
4. Copy token — quoted UI text, spelled once
Thin arrows 1→2→3→4. No paragraph text. No extra callouts.

Both models kept the 2×2 grid when the count sat in the first third of the prompt. Buried at the end, Nano Banana added a fifth “Pro tips” column.

When to open this guide from a control

The modules slot is the one that prevents overflow. If you only change the topic and leave modules at “as needed,” you will get a poster. Pair it with copy so each box stays a label, not an essay.

Sources

Rewritten from public pitfall notes; the four-part tokenizer diagram is a Prompt Template example.