One Thing You Know the Size Of
A miniature-scene poster — tiny figures building something among real objects — anchored by an item whose true size the viewer already knows, because without one the joke never lands. Six fields.
Two runs of the same template. An open paperback anchoring a reading corner beside a brass compass anchoring a boatyard — a book you have held and an instrument you have held, each taller than every figure beside it. Two subjects, one mechanism, and in both cases the size reads before anything else does.
Generated from this template with the fields shown above — the real paperback lies open at the left with its printed page and paper grain visible at that magnification, rising well above every figure, and one of them is climbing the slope of pages carrying a book. All four are mid-task: unrolling the rug, steadying the lamp, shelving a volume, hauling the load. The book is sharp, the scene is sharp, the ground falls away soft. The reference's baseline is unusual in this library because it got the central thing right, and the law was written from watching what made it work rather than from a failure: a real oil lantern towered over its figures while the tent beside them was plainly a model, and that contrast is the whole conceit. Its actual fault was the margin — it cut its own year, series name and running head off the right-hand edge, which is the second time in this library a layout has lost its corner notes to the trim.
Generated for this library
Input
Building a reading corner on a desk - a rug unrolled, a low
shelf, a lamp being set upright
Anchor a real paperback lying open at the left, its pages
rising over them like a white hillside
Figures one unrolling the rug · one carrying a book up a
slope of pages · one steadying the lamp · one
shelving a tiny volume
Title BUILD A CORNER - a reading room the size of a desk
Notes 2026 · The Library Series · Make somewhere small to
sit, and the day gets longer.
Ground warm bone, soft daylight from the left, one amber
Returned 1 poster · 9:16 · warm bone, macro depth
anchor the open paperback at the left, taller than every
figure, its paper grain visible at that distance
figures four, all mid-task, none standing still
depth the book sharp in front, the scene sharp in the
middle, the ground falling soft behind
type title upper left, notes upper right, closing line
lower right - all inside the margin
light one soft source from the left, one warm point from
the lamp itselfYou fill in 6 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1What the figures are building
- 2The scale anchor
- 3The figures, and what each is doing
- 4The title and the line under it
- 5The corner notes and the closing line
- 6The ground and the light
One Thing You Know the Size Of
Produce ONE image, 9:16 portrait: a miniature-scene poster. 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 six lines only
- What the figures are building: {the scene}
- The scale anchor: {a real object, and where it sits}
- The figures, and what each is doing: {three to five, each with a task}
- The title and the line under it: {a title, and a phrase}
- The corner notes and the closing line: {small type, and a sentence}
- The ground and the light: {a colour, and a light source}
The anchor law
This is what makes the picture work, and it is the thing these templates never name.
A scene of small things is a doll's house. A scene of tiny people beside something whose real size everybody knows is a miniature — and the difference is entirely down to one object.
- At least one object in frame is real, at real size, and it is something nobody has to be told the size of: a book, a match, a coin, a cup, a flower head, a pencil, a leaf.
- It sits next to the figures, not across the frame from them, so the comparison is immediate.
- It is taller or wider than every figure, unarguably.
- It is rendered with real material detail at that magnification — paper grain, wax, glaze, petal veins — because the texture is half of what says *real object*.
Everything else in the scene may be a model. The anchor may not.
The figures
Three to five, and every one of them is doing something: hauling, hanging, unrolling, planting, carrying, steadying, kneeling to place a thing. Caught mid-task, with weight in the pose.
They are building the scene the poster is about. A group standing and looking pleasant is a display case — the charm of the genre is that somebody appears to be making the picture from inside it.
Their tools and props are model-scale and match the work.
Depth
Three layers, and the camera behaves like a macro lens:
- Front: the anchor and one or two other real objects, large, sharp, cropped by the frame edge.
- Middle: the miniature scene and its figures, sharp.
- Back: bare ground and light, falling soft and out of focus.
An evenly sharp image reads as a rendering rather than a photograph of small things.
The page
- Title upper left, in brush lettering or a high-contrast face, with its phrase beneath.
- A small round stamp or seal under it.
- Corner notes upper right: a year, a series name, a short line.
- The closing line lower right, two or three lines, ragged.
- A row of tiny labelled icons may run along the foot.
Everything sits inside the margin. This layout habitually pushes its corner notes to the trim and loses them — a reference run cut its own year, its series name and its running head off the right-hand edge. Hold a clear margin and put every word inside it.
Colour and light
A warm pale ground — bone, oat, pale apricot, or a cool grey for a colder subject. One soft directional light, plus at most one small warm point from something in the scene. Low saturation, nothing heavy, no dark corners.
Never
- ✕ a scene with no real object to judge size against
- ✕ an anchor smaller than the figures, or far from them
- ✕ figures standing still or posed facing the camera
- ✕ an evenly sharp image with no depth falloff
- ✕ any word clipped by the frame
- ✕ dark, heavy or high-contrast grading
The result
A picture that reads its own scale in a second: one object you have held in your hand, four people the size of your thumbnail building something beside it, and enough shallow focus to make you believe the camera was really that close.
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 six FIELDS lines. Choose the anchor first — everything else scales off it, and a scene without one has no size at all.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the poster.
- Check the corners before shipping: this layout puts small type at the outer edges and loses it. Every word should sit inside the margin.
What you swap
- What the figures are building
- a reading corner on a desk — a rug unrolled, a low shelf, a lamp being set upright
- The scale anchor
- a real paperback lying open at the left, its pages rising over them like a white hillside
- The figures, and what each is doing
- one unrolling the rug · one carrying a book up a slope of pages · one steadying the lamp · one shelving a tiny volume
- The title and the line under it
- BUILD A CORNER — a reading room the size of a desk
- The corner notes and the closing line
- upper right: 2026 · The Library Series · foot: Make somewhere small to sit, and the day gets longer.
- The ground and the light
- warm bone, soft daylight from the left, one amber from the lamp
Before it runs
- An object whose size is common knowledge. A book, a match, a cup, a coin, a flower. Something invented or unfamiliar anchors nothing.
- A task the figures can be caught in the middle of. Building, hauling, hanging, planting — a scene where everyone is finished is a display case.
- A shallow depth of field you are willing to commit to. The macro look is what sells the size, and an evenly sharp image reads as a rendering.
When to reach for it
When a theme wants warmth and craft rather than volume: a season, a shop, a programme, a small brand. Templates in this style ask for miniature figures and a lovely scene, and never say what makes a viewer read the figures as tiny rather than the scene as a doll's house.
What changes
- One warm poster: a handful of miniature figures caught building a scene, shot close with real macro depth.
- A scale anchor in frame — a real object whose size nobody has to be told — so the size contrast is instant rather than inferred.
- Figures caught mid-task, hauling and hanging and kneeling, since the genre dies the moment they stand and pose.
- A layered read: giant real objects in front, the tiny scene in the middle, bare ground behind.
- Type placed inside the margin, because this layout habitually loses its corner notes off the edge.
Pairs with
- 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.
- Every Bar Is a MultipleA barcode poster in two colours — with the code built on a base module, guard bars and a numeral row, so it reads as a scanned object rather than a stripe field. Five fields.