The Biggest One Is Named

The Biggest One Is Named

Produce ONE image, 3:4 portrait: a natural-history exhibition poster built as an annotated specimen plate. 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

• The exhibition subject: {what is being shown}
• The specimens, largest first, each with the name it carries: {each one — its name}
• The titles: {a large title — a secondary title}
• The exhibition name, set small: {a line}
• The dates, times and place: {when and where}
• The year, and the palette: {a year — a ground and three or four colours}

The label law

This is the rule the plate stands on, and it is the one that goes missing.

The largest specimen carries a label. It is the reason the poster exists; it sits lowest and largest and most finished; and it is the first thing to end up anonymous while every small specimen around the edge gets named. A reference run of this style handed correct Latin binomials to a cowrie, a nautilus, a coral and a weed — and left the enormous shell in the middle of the plate with nothing on it at all.

Every leader line ends on the thing it names, touching its outline. A hairline that stops in blank paper is a label with no specimen.

Every label is a name from the fields. No label is invented, and no label is attached to decoration — a contour squiggle, a wash, a construction circle is not a specimen and does not get annotated.

All labels are the same kind of name. If the fields give species names, every label is a species name. Do not top the list up with descriptive phrases when you run out; draw fewer labels instead.

Leaders

• Hairline grey, much lighter than the type.
• One or two straight segments meeting at a right angle. No curves, no arrowheads, no dots.
• The label sits at the free end, the specimen at the other.
• Leaders do not cross each other and do not cross the titles.

The plate

• Watercolour and pencil. Washes with visible blooms and pigment grain, black sketch lines, pencil underdrawing left showing, passages deliberately unfinished at the edges.
• Specimens scattered around the edges and middle, several cut by the edge of the sheet.
• The largest sits low and central, most finished, most detailed.
• Nothing photographic, nothing rendered in 3D.

Ground

Aged paper — cream, oatmeal or bone — with paper tooth and a faint worn-print quality. Quiet, dry, no gloss.

Type

• The large title runs down the right, set vertically. If the script does not stack, rotate the whole line 90° so it reads bottom-to-top.
• The secondary title runs alongside it, smaller, in a fine modern sans, letterspaced evenly.
• A heavy short rule above and below that title pair.
• The exhibition name runs down the left, in a slab or typewriter face.
• Everything in one dark ink. No colour type.

The foot

• The year is enormous — a heavy high-contrast serif, filling the lower left, far larger than any other type.
• A rule above and below it, running the full width of the sheet.
• Dates, times and place sit to its right in small type, mixing a fine sans with a small serif, with thin rules and brackets between the items.

Never

• ✕ the largest specimen left unlabelled
• ✕ a leader line ending on blank paper
• ✕ a label on a wash, a contour or a construction line
• ✕ names the fields did not supply
• ✕ two registers of naming in one plate
• ✕ labels arranged into a table or a key
• ✕ photographs, 3D, cartoon styling or fluorescent colour
• ✕ a year at the same size as the rest of the foot

The result

A plate that identifies its own subject: the big one named on the longest leader, every hairline landing on something real, and a year at the foot heavy enough to date the whole sheet.