The test
Twenty poster prompts, each with a specific text string to render — from three-word headlines to full paragraph blocks. Same prompt, one seed per model, no cherry-pick.
The rankings
Short text (up to 5 words):
- Ideogram v3 — 19/20 legible
- Nano Banana 2 — 18/20 legible
- Recraft v3 — 17/20 legible
- Imagen 4 — 14/20 legible
- Flux 2 Pro — 11/20 legible
Longer text (paragraph blocks)
Only Ideogram v3 clears the bar reliably. Nano Banana 2 is close on 2-line blocks but starts drifting past 15 words. Everyone else fails at paragraph length.
Font control
Ideogram v3 is the only model that responds to font-family cues in the prompt ('serif newspaper masthead', 'condensed sans-serif poster'). The others treat these as vibe words.
The pragmatic recommendation
For anything text-heavy — posters, ads with headline, book covers — start with Ideogram v3. For a photoreal image that also needs one short overlaid line, Nano Banana 2 is fine and often looks better. Overlay text in a design tool if you need pixel-precise typography.
Try text-first models
Put this into practice in the studio — under a minute to your first result.
Try text-first models →