Name Every Shape
A bold flat-colour conceptual poster in three inks — where every shape on the sheet is named with what it means, so nothing is there because the style has diagonals in it. Five fields.
Two runs of the same template. The same discipline on a harbour: the sweeping arm is the breakwater, the upright form is the mooring, the black bars are ropes under tension. The bars pass behind the cleat and stop cleanly at its edges, so the order holds here where the first run broke it. The figure standing on the breakwater is doing the work the scale rule asks of it - without it the green form is a stripe rather than a sea wall.
Three shapes and every one answerable: the head is the listener, the column is the building, the fine lines are the sound leaving. What matters is what is absent - the reference run laid four yellow wedges across its poster that stood for nothing, and there is no equivalent here, no bar or dot grid added to fill space. One genuine slip against the order law: the column is in front of the head, and the ear has been drawn on top of the column rather than hidden behind it, so at that one crossing the stack reverses.
Generated for this library
Input
Idea sound builds spaces you can stand inside
Shapes a huge head in profile, cut at the neck - the
listener · a tall tapering column with an arch at
its foot - the building · a bundle of fine curved
lines from the ear to the right edge - the sound
leaving
Inks cobalt blue, vermilion red, black - warm cream
Anchor one small standing figure in black at the column's
foot
Type top left ARCHITECTURE OF SOUND · top right 2026 ·
down the left edge THE LISTENING ROOMS
Returned 1 poster · 4:5 · flat inks on cream
shapes three, and each one answerable - no wedge, slash or
bar that stands for nothing
order head behind column, lines in front of both, held
everywhere they cross
scale the figure makes the column a building rather than
a stripe
inks three plus the paper, and the paper counted as one
of them
type four short lines at the margins, none of them
crossing a shapeYou fill in 5 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The idea, in one sentence
- 2The shapes, each with what it means
- 3The inks
- 4The scale anchor
- 5The type
Name Every Shape
Produce ONE image, 4:5 portrait: a conceptual poster in flat inks on paper stock. Follow every line. 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 five lines only
- The idea, in one sentence: {what the poster claims}
- The shapes, each with what it means: {a shape — what it stands for}
- The inks: {two or three colours, and a stock}
- The scale anchor: {one small thing of a known size}
- The type: {two to four short lines, and where each goes}
The naming law
This style is easy to make handsome and hard to make mean anything. The failure is always the same: the real shapes get drawn, then the composition looks a little empty, and slashing diagonal wedges arrive to fill it.
Every shape on the sheet is one the fields named, and it appears because of what it means. Nothing is added for balance, rhythm or because the style tends to have such things in it.
A reference run of this style built a fine poster — a blue head for the listener, a red column for the building, fine black lines for the sound — and then laid four yellow wedges across the whole thing. They were not planes, not light, not sound, not structure. They were diagonals, because the style has diagonals.
Point at every shape and finish the sentence "this is the ___". Anything that cannot be finished does not go in. An emptier poster is the correct outcome.
Emptiness
The paper is one of the inks. Large clear areas are the intended result of removing what does not mean anything, not a problem to be solved.
At least a third of the sheet stays bare stock, and the bare areas are shapes in their own right — deliberate, not leftovers.
Order
One stacking order, stated once and held everywhere. If the head is behind the column, it is behind it at every crossing on the sheet. Where two shapes meet, the front one occludes the back one cleanly: no shape passes in front in one place and behind in another.
Inks are opaque. Overlaps do not make a third colour unless the fields ask for it.
Scale
The anchor is small and unmistakable — a person, a door, a chair — placed against the largest form.
It is drawn in one flat ink, in full silhouette, with no interior detail. It is the only thing in the picture at human size, and it is what turns the shapes into architecture.
Style
- Flat inks, cleanly cut, with a printed quality: a consistent press texture across every colour — coarse halftone, ink grain or slight edge break — applied the same way to all of them.
- Forms are simplified hard: a head is a silhouette with one interior feature, a building is a tapering slab with one opening.
- A ground line at the foot, so the large forms stand on something.
- No gradients, no rendering, no photographic elements, no drop shadows.
Type
Small, quiet, at the margins, in one plain sans:
- Set at a size that never competes with the shapes.
- Placed in the bare stock, never crossing a shape.
- A line may run vertically down an edge.
- Only what the fields supply. No invented venues, dates or names.
Never
- ✕ a shape that cannot be named
- ✕ wedges, slashes, bars or dots added for composition
- ✕ a stacking order that changes between crossings
- ✕ a sheet with no bare stock left in it
- ✕ no scale anchor, or an anchor with interior detail
- ✕ press texture on some inks and not others
- ✕ gradients, shadows or rendering
- ✕ type crossing a shape, or type the fields did not give
- ✕ more than three inks plus the paper
The result
A poster you can read out loud: this is the listener, this is the building, this is the sound leaving — and nothing else on the sheet at all.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the five FIELDS lines. Write the shapes field as shape, then dash, then meaning — if you cannot finish the sentence after the dash, that shape does not go in.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the poster.
- Point at each shape before shipping and say what it means. Anything you cannot name is the thing to delete.
What you swap
- The idea, in one sentence
- sound builds spaces you can stand inside
- The shapes, each with what it means
- a huge head in profile, cut off at the neck — the listener · a tall tapering column with an arch at its foot — the building · a bundle of fine curved lines running from the ear out to the right edge — the sound itself, leaving
- The inks
- cobalt blue, vermilion red, black — on warm cream stock
- The scale anchor
- one small standing figure in black at the foot of the column
- The type
- top left ARCHITECTURE OF SOUND · top right 2026 · down the left edge THE LISTENING ROOMS
Before it runs
- An idea you can say in one sentence. If you cannot, the shapes have nothing to be named against and the poster becomes decoration.
- Fewer shapes than you want. Three that mean something beat six where two are filler, and the filler is always the one you added last.
- Something to give scale. Abstract forms have no size until a person, a door or a chair tells you what they are.
When to reach for it
Culture programmes, festivals, lectures, exhibitions — anywhere a poster has to carry an idea rather than an offer. Templates in this style produce something genuinely handsome and then fill the gaps with slashing wedges that stand for nothing, which is the difference between a poster and a poster-shaped image.
What changes
- One conceptual poster on warm paper stock: three flat inks, big shapes, generous emptiness.
- Every shape declared with its meaning, so the composition can be read as a sentence rather than admired as an arrangement.
- A scale anchor that turns abstract forms into things of a size.
- Consistent occlusion — one stated front-to-back order, held everywhere the shapes cross.
- Type set small and quiet at the margins, letting the shapes do the talking.
Pairs with
- Something Has to Be BothA quiet metaphor poster where one everyday thing turns into another — with the middle of the change actually drawn, instead of the two halves being cut and abutted. Five fields.
- Bolted to the SkyA mascot built as real signage — a face on a plate, one wider name plate under it, and visible hardware holding both to the pole. Six fields.
- Cut, Not FilledA copperplate-engraved city poster in one ink — where every tone is line density, nothing on the page is a flat fill, and the bare paper is a shape rather than a margin. Six fields.