One City, One Number

One City, One Number

Produce ONE image: a modernist poster designed as one of a numbered run. 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 six lines only

• The subject, set large: {the name, in capitals} e.g. VIBARY
• The local name and the region: {a second name, and a place} e.g. the library district · built on the open web
• The number in the run: {nn of nn} e.g. 02 of 40
• The photograph, hard-cut: {what it shows, cut from its ground} e.g. a tall studio window at dusk with one lit desk behind it, cut out cleanly along the frame's edges, no background left attached
• The caption: {one or two sentences} e.g. A place assembled out of descriptions, where the plans stay visible after the thing is built.
• What holds still, and what may change: {the fixed list, and the free list} e.g. fixed: a warm bone ground, one grotesque family, the number at the upper right, the caption at a third of the width · free: the accent colour, the geometry, the crop

The series law

Templates in this style describe one beautiful sheet. That is why the second poster never matches the first: nothing was declared constant, so every choice gets remade.

The last field is the design. It names two lists, and the poster must honour both:

• Fixed — the ground colour, the type family, the corner the number sits in, and the width the caption sets to. These are identical on every poster in the run, whatever the subject.
• Free — the accent colour, the geometry, the crop, the photograph's placement. These change every time, and they are what stop forty posters looking like one poster reprinted.

A series is defined by what does not change. Decide it before the first poster and the next one is easy; leave it implied and there is no run, only a resemblance.

Neither list is printed. They are the specification the poster is built to, not content — a poster carrying its own build notes is a spec sheet. The only texts on the page are the four named under The type.

The photograph

• Hard-cut, never faded. The subject is silhouetted crisply against the ground with no vignette, no feathered edge, no gradient fading it out. Its own light and colour stay intact.
• One photograph only. It sits off-centre and overlaps the type, passing in front of some letters and behind others, which is what builds depth without any effect being applied.
• Nothing of its original background survives the cut.

The type

• The subject in a heavy grotesque, set enormous — wide enough that the photograph interrupts it. Letters may be partly hidden; the word must still read.
• The overlap falls between letters, never across one. The photograph's edge passes through a gap in the word, so every letterform survives whole even where the picture sits in front of it. An image cutting through the middle of a letter is how a name loses one: two runs of this template returned VIDARY and VIBRY, both times at the exact point the window crossed a stroke. Place the cut in a space, and count the letters in the result before shipping.
• The local line small beneath the cut, in the same family, tracked wide.
• The number in the corner the fields name, the smallest type on the page, set as an index — "02 / 40" — hard against the margin.
• The caption in three or four lines at the stated width, low and to one side, ragged right, set at reading size rather than captions size.

The ground

• A pale, low-saturation colour: bone, cool white, fog blue, sand, pale grey-green. Flat, or with the faintest smooth tonal shift.
• Nothing aged. No paper texture, no speckle, no grain, no film noise, no print distress. This style is clean by definition, and every one of those effects is the failure mode it is defined against.
• One flat geometric block or arc in the accent colour, placed to anchor the photograph — behind its lower edge, or aligned to one side. One only.

Never

• ✕ vintage texture, distress, grain, torn edges, aged paper
• ✕ a soft-edged or faded photograph
• ✕ a second accent colour, or a gradient
• ✕ the number set as decoration rather than as an index
• ✕ extra text — no strapline, no logo row, no date block, and never the fixed or free lists themselves
• ✕ a misspelt subject: the name is the poster, so check it letter by letter before shipping the run
• ✕ changing anything on the fixed list between posters in a run

The result

A poster that is legible alone and unmistakable in a row: a hard cut, a name set large enough to be interrupted, a caption that reads like a paragraph, and a number small enough to trust — with the parts that must not move written down where the next designer can see them.