Apparently the secret to generating nice illustrations for blog posts is to tell Nano Banana to use “sketchnote style”. You have to be very pedantic about what goes in the illustration though, since by default it wants to make the image way too detailed. Claude did reasonably well at suggesting prompts[1], although it sometimes had trouble picking out what humans would have trouble understanding. Edit mode to remove extras also works way better than it used to.
A hand-drawn sketchnote / doodle-style illustration on a warm off-white background, using a limited palette of black ink plus muted teal, mustard yellow, and coral red. Casual marker-and-pen look with hand-lettered labels and doodle icons. Draw three numbered panels in a row, each showing the same friendly cartoon robot head-and-shoulders. Use a consistent visual convention in every panel: the robot’s brain is visible inside of the head with little gears, with a line labeling it “non-verbalized thoughts”. A separate thought bubble floats above the head — labeled “chain of thought”. Panel 1, labeled “1. it thinks, and says so”: inside the head, the brain holds a small coral-red tag reading “danger”. The thought bubble above also shows the same coral-red “danger” tag. A magnifying glass hovers over the bubble, reading it. Panel 2, labeled “2. we punish the output”: a hand holding a red marker draws a big X over the thought bubble, with a small hand-lettered “no!” next to it. Inside the head, the brain still clearly holds the coral-red “danger” tag. Panel 3, labeled “3. the thought is still there but hidden”: inside the head the brain STILL holds the coral-red “danger” tag, unchanged, but the thought bubble above now shows a light green “safety” tag. A hand-lettered banner title at the top reads “The Most Forbidden Technique”. Generous white space.
Can you remove the bubble with no! in it?
Actually can you change the second text from “2. we punish the output” to “2. we train away the output”?
I also particularly liked the image for this post.
Apparently the secret to generating nice illustrations for blog posts is to tell Nano Banana to use “sketchnote style”. You have to be very pedantic about what goes in the illustration though, since by default it wants to make the image way too detailed. Claude did reasonably well at suggesting prompts[1], although it sometimes had trouble picking out what humans would have trouble understanding. Edit mode to remove extras also works way better than it used to.
I needed to explain The Most Forbidden Technique before talking about it in a post.
Most Forbidden Technique Prompt
I also particularly liked the image for this post.
Claude can also use Nano Banana directly with an MCP tool.