With basic text prompts, you get basic non-customized results here. For example, if you type "3 cats playing poker" into Midjourney without further tinkering, you might get something like these outputs:

Not awful. But if this is the limit of your prompting, you won't have any say in your outputs besides the base content of your scenes. If you want to direct your aesthetics more finely, you'll need to modify your prompts with Midjourney parameters.

Parameters are special shortcuts that instruct Midjourney to do certain things, and you can use multiple parameters together in one prompt to achieve better aesthetic control and more sophisticated outputs.

For instance, let's say you still want a "cats playing poker" scene, but you want your outputs to have a wide aspect ratio and to look more illustrated, surreal, and colorful. You could use a prompt like so:

a red demon cat, blue demon cat, and green demon cat sitting around a poker table casually hanging out --chaos 100 --ar 2:1 --exp 100 --sref 3002874870 --sw 500 --stylize 500

That scene prompt is more detailed than "cats playing poker," of course, but the ensuing parameters define the outputs' visuals. The parameters (which are always set off with two plain dashes) might look confusing at first, but the system is straightforward:

• --ar tells Midjourney what aspect ratio you want, e.g. 1:1, 2:1, 16:9, etc.

• --sref defines which Midjourney style reference code to apply; there are billions of these codes, and each one represents a unique aesthetic style (e.g. oil painting realism, ink wash minimalism, 3D claymation, and so on)

• --sw is "style weight" and determines how strongly the style of your sref code should be applied; this parameter can be set to any number between 0 and 1,000

• --stylize, which can also be set anywhere between 0 and 1,000, tells Midjourney how strictly or freely to interpret your prompt; lower values keep your prompt followed literally, while higher values give Midjourney more creative freedom

• --chaos configures how much variety you get in your outputs; for every prompt you input, Midjourney produces four images; this parameter, which can be set from 0 to 100, lets you determine how much visual variation you see among your four outputs; a higher value will make your images more aesthetically distinct from each other

• --exp, another 0 to 100 parameter, is a newer experimental modifier that works like --stylize and can be used to make more detailed and creative outputs

Accordingly, using multiple parameters together with good scene prompts lets you granularly direct the aesthetics of your outputs per your creative vision. You can create "style recipes" this way, too, that you can use to create consistent imagery over time.

With the example prompt that I broke down above, I created the featured graphic of this article. Notice how different the image is visually compared to the "3 cats playing poker" default-setting outputs I showed you first. This image is more expressive, more in line with my personal tastes:

Yet you don't have to memorize many Midjourney parameters to take better control here.

When it comes to aesthetic styling (color palette, texture, etc.), the bulk of the work stems from what --sref code or codes you use. I mention the plural "codes" because you can combine different sref codes to mix their aesthetic styles.

For example, in my example prompt above, I only used one sref code: --sref 3002874870. This code is responsible for the airy illustrative look and stark colors in this post's featured graphic.

If you used this sref code again in another prompt, e.g. "a shining Ethereum logo," and you did so without any other parameters applied, you'll still get a visual that's aesthetically in the ballpark of my featured graphic, like so:

So let's say you wanted to keep some of the aesthetic characteristics that --sref 3002874870 offers, but you wanted to additionally target a more 3D look.

Toward that end, first find another sref code that targets a 3D aesthetic, like --sref 275441216, which makes outputs like this:

Then to mix your target styles, you simply combine your sref codes (with a single space in between your codes) in your Midjourney prompts. For instance, this instruction...

a shining Ethereum logo --sref 3002874870 275441216

...tells Midjourney to make outputs like these:

As you can see, this style recipe gives you more of a 3D look while still orbiting the original color palette of --sref 3002874870.

Notably, you can also customize the strengths of your srefs with double colon syntax. In other words, if you write "--sref 3002874870::3 275441216" in a prompt, the "::3" tells Midjourney you want the first sref code to have triple the influence on your outputs compared to the second sref code.

Keep in mind that you can also use style codes and other parameters in tandem with reference image uploads to modify your prompts.

If you click on the image icon in the prompting box of the Midjourney web editor, you can upload references. Upload pictures to "Image Prompts" if you want to emulate their content, e.g. apples beneath a tree. Upload pictures to "Style Reference" if you want to emulate their aesthetic style, e.g. cubist portraits.

For example, I've noticed some sref codes struggle to make Ethereum imagery. To counter this, I can download a simple Ethereum logo from the web and then upload it into the "Image Prompts" section of my prompts to give Midjourney more inspiration.

Once you've produced some outputs, the Midjourney web editor offers you lots of flexibility if you want to keep experimenting. If you click on an individual output, you'll arrive in a dashboard filled with "Creator Actions" features.

You'll find these creator functionalities on the right side of an output's dashboard grouped by categories like "Vary," "Upscale," and "Remix." Personally, my favorite actions here are as follows:

• Vary Subtle grants you four new outputs that will be only slight remixes of your target output

• Vary Strong gives you four new outputs that will be very liberal remixes

• Upscale Subtle produces a high-quality upscaled version of your desired piece.

• Rerun offers four new outputs using the exact same prompt that produced your target output

• Edit brings up a dedicated editing UI where you can resize and "inpaint," or change only specific areas, of your outputs

The "Edit" resource is particularly useful because it's common in Midjourney to get an amazing output that is 95% perfect but still has a few weird spots you want to fix. Use the brush tool in this UI to paint over the areas you want rerolled, so to speak, and then you'll get new outputs where only those areas have been changed.

At this point, you know everything you need to know to dive into Midjourney on your own. Now, the challenge is to curate sref codes that you like and would want to use in your personal or professional work.

Fortunately, you've got multiple good options for this curation:

• "--sref random" in a prompt (as opposed to a specific code number) will tell Midjourney to pick a random sref code for your outputs; this is a great way to discover new styles, though it may take a bit to land on an aesthetic you enjoy

• Style Explorer is a newer resource from Midjourney that serves as a hub for discovering new sref codes via large thumbnails; it's awesome for quickly honing in on styles that suit your tastes

• Midjourney enthusiasts also share great sref codes on X all the time; two of my favorite follows in this regard are @gizakdag and @sergeantsref, but there are many more you might like as well

Gizem Akdag

@gizakdag

Weekend vibes

--sref 464790764

646

1:52 AM • Sep 6, 2025

Sgt Sref

@sergeantsref

--sref 2120703075 2007748773

29

3:45 PM • Sep 19, 2025

G. Kim

@artisin_ai

--sref 2304664241 3534308793 --exp 50

708

11:15 PM • Sep 28, 2025

OscarAI

@Artedeingenio

Since many of you showed interest, here’s the anime style I mentioned for Midjourney:

--sref 2017692590

It can be defined as 80s cinematic anime with a cyberpunk and retro-mecha aesthetic, clearly influenced by Western sci-fi cinema from the 80s such as Blade Runner and Aliens.

316

6:00 AM • Nov 1, 2025

Lastly, I'll add that once you start amassing sref codes and specific style recipes, you can use Midjourney's folders system to keep track of everything and make new outputs in organized fashion. It's much easier to do this than scrolling back through all your outputs and trying to remember what you created and when.

Anecdotally, I use Midjourney to make graphics for my Metaversal articles, and I share some of my favorite personal creations on Zora. It's also just fun: now you can cast visual spells with words. If you use good prompts + custom parameters, you can bring anything you can imagine to life.

There's lots of ground I didn't cover in this post, like how to use pre-V7 sref codes or how to animate your outputs. But feel free to let me know if you have any questions here, and I'll point you in the right direction. I recommend bookmarking the Midjourney docs, too.

For now, I'll leave you with five of my favorite sref codes in case you want to jump into trying them yourself without hunting around first...

--sref 759416501 (my nickname: Conctos)

--sref 4164741677 (my nickname: Noons)

--sref 526771482 (my nickname: Dyns)

--sref 2484620865 (my nickname: Aleats)

--sref 2152990343 (my nickname: Greems)

All that said, if you make some outputs after reading this, I'd love to see them! Tag me on Farcaster.

On Sensuality

like the river to oblivion, Lethe,
aimless and unmindful to
the words i have misplaced
upon my return, careless like an
unmanned hammock by the sea;
perhaps this is not a return
but where i’ve crept all along
like a body that sneezed out
a soul that dreamt of fleeing loudly;
maybe this is where i kiss next
the one with violent hair, gorgeous
babbler of things nonsensically
appropriate, so so so she’ll say
just know why i call you Sisyphus
because you rise and fall like the sun
deserving all six of my kisses, and
yes, in those moments there is
tension, like great muscles flexing
out of apprehension
of something immediate, some
Charybdis or Scylla churning
out an inviting gesture of the eye
a look that could only mean
come and we will meet as lovers
upon the plains of oblivion; and
i hear her in my mind, the
imaginary preaching:
i will count the strands of your
hair which are the days of your
calendar, beautiful boy

This is one of my oldest poems, circa 2011-2012, and also one of my most remarkable ones considering how it was created. I wrote this in probably 5 minutes. That's certainly atypical brevity for a serious creative endeavor, and every poem I've written since this that wasn't a practice haiku has taken longer, often much longer.

I do remember that day clearly though. I had graduated high school early so I was at home at my desk with nothing but free time. I started thumbing through a copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) that I'd just bought and came across the names Lethe, Sisyphus, Charybdis, Scylla. Then I opened my computer to write a poem and entered a creative flow state that I've never quite been able to reach again.

What I mean is that I don't remember much thinking going on at that point, just instinct and vision coming together. It does haunt me a bit that I've never seemed able to reach that level of full flow ever since, though the creative equivalent of beserk mode definitely isn't necessary to create meaningful things, and I'm just grateful to have felt that magic at least once.

Anyways, I was surprised at the piece after I finished it in that 5 minute burst, and it still surprises me today. Then and even now when I read it in retrospect I get the impression that it was beamed over to my mind from somewhere else and that I just received it and jotted the message down on my computer. I would say it's far from perfect, especially compared to truly masterful poems, but it's clean and without glaring flaws in a way that makes me proud, which is not common for me since I have Imposter Syndrome when it comes to anything artistic.

All that said, this was the opposite of a meticulously architected poem. It was automatic writing that happened to turn out well. But that's why it's even more interesting to me that there's a cohesive narrative in this piece, especially compared to some of my later more experimental poems. My take is that it's about a boy falling in love with a girl—truly falling in love for the first time ever—so he's anxious about letting go to this powerful feeling of temptation that he's never known before.

Butterflies in the stomach, simply put. And admittedly the poem was something of a mirror to my personal experience at the time, as I had just started dating my high-school sweetheart KP (now my wife, bless her) and I was feeling some type of way. But again, these feelings came out unconsciously in that flow state because I creatively blacked out during the writing process, though the parallels are why I've always dedicated this piece to KP. Perhaps it's one of my early love letters, so to speak.

Yet in zooming out, there are other things I love about this poem, namely the stylisms I used in it that I've embraced in my poetry ever since. Every line's first word is lowercased (I'm an e. e. cummings and European student in this way, European poets hate how Americans tend to capitalize every line in their poems), enjambment abounds (i.e. incomplete syntax at the end of most lines), and musicality that's not defined by hard rhymes (free verse rhythm, baby).

All in all, this is a special poem to me. Not perfect, sure, but tight and full of sincerity. And that's what I look for in any poem, so I'm glad to have lived up to this vision at least once.

My favorite interpretation of "Nounish" came via the Nounder 4156 in October 2022: 

4156

@punk4156

do good with no expectation of return, create positive externalities, embrace absurdity & difference, teach people about nouns & crypto, have fun

388

11:18 AM • Oct 4, 2022

That’s how I see things here at least. But the operative word in my first sentence is “interpretation.” 

I say that because there is no canonical definition of Nounish. There are no official docs or lines in the Nouns protocol’s smart contract code that outline the concept, for example. 

Instead, it’s been an emergent social notion in the collective with no central organizing force or universal, fixed meaning. It rather loosely describes a tendency in Nouns to support experimentation, difference, novelty, playfulness, and even absurdity at times. 

In other words, and roughly speaking, being Nounish is like being playfully altruistic with a flair for the eclectic. It’s a sort of sympathy and joyful exuberance for the creative, the charitable, and the otherwise overlooked. 

Yet my explanation here is just an approximation: ultimately the Nounish concept is multiplicitous and indeterminate, as again, there is no centralizing force behind it. 

In funding a wide variety of projects, Nouns resists an overarching brand mission and instead positions itself to back divergent, often playful explorations. In this milieu, “being Nounish” defies a single, rooted definition or identity. 

This is all to say that Nounishness is less a rigid state of mind than a flexible, adaptable approach that celebrates and encourages diversity of thought, action, and purpose. 

To be Nounish, then, is to embrace a networked, non-hierarchical mode that allows each community member to interpret and express “Nounishness” as they see fit. 

This openness gives rise to an ethos where Nouners feel connected, not so much by a set of fixed beliefs, but instead by a shared inclination to support experimentation and navigate ambiguity together.

Another way of looking at this? The meaning of Nounish is perpetually deferred, constantly reinterpreted through each new Nounish initiative. It’s constantly becoming—an iterative, playful exploration of different forms of value and social impact.

The unwritten rule here, then, is somewhat paradoxical: “to be Nounish is to embrace non-definition and to find unity in difference.”

It’s no surprise that we have this spirit in Nouns, though. We find it fundamentally reflected in the Nouns’ CC0 art approach. The Nounish aesthetic spreads through symbols—like the Nouns glasses—that don’t point back to a single, authoritative meaning.

The Nouns glasses are put on, remade, redrawn. The meaning floats. But the core signal says: see it and say it and shape it.

The collective throws seeds out, and doesn’t worship harvests but rather the love of sprouting into the unknown. And in this frontier, what is “Nounish” isn’t set in stone but is continuously cultivated through the decentralized creative efforts always ongoing around Nouns. 

I, for one, think this openness is part of why Nouns is so special, and why its possibilities stretch to the horizon. The group revolves around “play” at multiple levels, and one of those levels is philosophically. 

In other words, there is no fixed center for what is Nounish—variation and reinterpretation reign supreme. This bold, experimental approach is a major contrast to what we see around traditional brands and springs from that foundational Nouns vision: embrace many narratives.