Five Pins, One Street

Five Pins, One Street

Produce ONE image: a wide daylight photograph of a place, annotated with five small pins. Follow every line below. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these seven lines only

• The place: {where, and when} e.g. the Vibary studio street on an ordinary Tuesday
• The photograph: {the scene, wide, with depth} e.g. a wide brick lane in flat daylight, workshop doors open along both sides, a bench under a tree at the near end, people walking mid-distance, sky filling the top quarter
• The five things, and where each sits: {five subjects, each with a position in the frame} e.g. the open door of the print shop, near left · the bench under the tree, near right · a chalkboard outside the cafe, middle · a bike rack against the wall, middle right · the arch at the far end, distant centre
• The five labels: {five short bracketed lines} e.g. (2 min) posters printed · (0 min) somewhere to sit · (3 min) coffee and a plug · (1 min) leave the bike · (5 min) the whole street
• The headline: {one line, all caps} e.g. EVERYTHING HERE IS FIVE MINUTES AWAY
• The mark and the sub-line: {a name, and a short descriptor} e.g. VIBARY · the studio street
• The closing line: {one or two short lines} e.g. come down · work outside for once

The depth law

This is the rule the poster lives by, and it is the one every template in the genre omits.

A street photograph has a near, a middle and a far. Pins gravitate to the middle — that is where the shopfronts and signage are, and it is the easiest band to label. The reference's own baseline put all four of its pins on the same row of shops, leaving the women talking in the foreground and the whole far end of the lane unannotated. The result claims a place is walkable while only ever pointing at one distance.

At least one pin is near, at least one is far. The near pin sits on something in the foreground — a bench, a doorway, people already there. The far pin sits on something at the end of the view — an arch, a corner, a tree. The middle takes the rest.

Spread through depth, five pins describe a street somebody could walk down. Strung across one band, they describe a shelf.

The pointing law

Every pin sits on a subject that is actually in the photograph, and the fields name both the subject and its position. A ring rests on the open door, the bench, the chalkboard — on the thing itself, not in the space beside it.

The label describes the thing it sits on. If the pin is on a bench, the label is about sitting down. A label about groceries on a pin resting on empty pavement is the failure this rule exists to stop.

Check the finished poster ring by ring: follow each one to what it touches. A pin whose subject is absent means the field was written as a service rather than as an object.

The photograph

• Wide, open, in flat natural daylight. No hard shadows, no golden hour, no dramatic weather.
• The top quarter is sky — clean, with one or two soft clouds, and no wires, poles or roofline clutter crossing it. The headline lives here.
• The lower three quarters carry the place, receding, with visible depth. People appear small and unposed, doing ordinary things.
• Its own colour is kept, slightly bright and clean, never graded or filtered.

The pins

• Each is a thin white ring, small, unfilled, sitting directly on its subject.
• Beside each ring, one short line in white: the bracketed duration first, then what the thing is.
• Text is small — annotation size, not signage size. If a label competes with the headline, it is too large.

The type

Four texts and no more, all white, all sans, none stroked, shadowed or outlined:

1. 1The headline across the upper third, over the sky, the largest type on the page, set in two or three staggered lines.
2. 2The mark at the upper left, small, with its sub-line beneath.
3. 3The five labels, beside their pins.
4. 4The closing line at the lower right, above it a thin drawn arrow.

Contrast comes from placing text over bright, uncluttered ground. No outline, no shadow, no scrim, no darkened band behind the type.

Never

• ✕ a pin resting on empty space, sky, or a blank surface
• ✕ a label naming something not visible in the photograph
• ✕ all five pins at the same depth
• ✕ outlines, drop shadows or dark bands added behind white type
• ✕ a sixth pin, a QR code, a logo row, a price
• ✕ heavy grading, filters, vignettes, hard shadows or dusk light
• ✕ posed people looking at the camera

The result

A poster whose claim can be checked from the poster itself: a real street in plain daylight, five things you can see, and five short lines that say how long each takes to reach.