The Desk From Above

The Desk From Above

Produce ONE image: a photograph looking straight down at a working desk. 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 subject: {whose portfolio or cover this is} e.g. Vibary's pattern portfolio
• The big title, edition and byline: {one short word, a year, a credit line} e.g. title: MOTION — edition: 2026 EDITION — byline: Built by vibary.ai
• The category row: {five or six short capitalised terms} e.g. INTERFACE MOTION · EASING · PARTICLES · WEBGL · SHADERS · AI PROTOTYPING
• The work mat: {the trade's own mat, and the markings on it} e.g. a dark slate desk mat printed with a fine pixel grid and circular easing-curve reference arcs
• The machine corner: {a machine from that trade, partially shown} e.g. the side edge of a mechanical keyboard, only a corner of its keys showing
• Under the magnifier: {one small tool or icon, and its material} e.g. a glossy indigo play wedge icon, rendered as smooth moulded plastic
• The sticker and the blurred thing: {what the sticker says, and what is caught in motion} e.g. a red Hello sticker handwritten VIB — and a stylus caught mid-motion with two thin indigo guide lines

The shot

• Landscape 3:2, shot from directly overhead — a true top-down photograph of a desk, not an angled one.
• Photorealistic 3D materials throughout. Every object obeys real physics: real reflectance, real contact shadows, real falloff. Nothing flat, nothing cartoon, nothing vector.
• Warm light from the upper left, with natural gradation across the surface and honest shadows beneath everything.
• The eye lands in the middle: the title and the mat own the centre.

The title

• Set in a very heavy grotesque, milled from brushed silver metal and lying on the desk as a physical object.
• It spans at least seventy percent of the image's width.
• Soft ambient gradients rake across the letter faces; every edge drops a small real shadow, so the letters read thick.
• Directly above it, centred: a small black chip carrying the edition in white type.
• Directly below it, centred: the byline, small, white, plain sans.

The mat

• A professional work mat from the subject's own trade, laid under the title and filling the centre-lower area.
• Printed with that trade's real measuring markings — a grid, a scale, reference circles — subtle, not decorative.
• Its colour is the second-largest field of colour in the image after the desk itself.

The four corners

Each corner of the mat carries exactly one thing:

• Upper left — the machine. Only a side, an edge, a corner of it enters the frame. Never the whole device.
• Lower left — the magnifier. A black-handled magnifying glass; inside its lens, one small tool or icon blown up large, rendered in glossy glass or moulded plastic.
• Upper right — the sticker. A red HELLO-style name sticker with a short handwritten name on it, lying slightly askew.
• Lower right — the blurred thing. A small object from the trade caught in motion blur, with one or two thin diagonal guide lines beside it.

The top edge

• One row of very small white sans-serif words along the top of the frame, evenly spaced, listing the subject's fields.
• Small enough to read as navigation, never as a headline.

Colour

• A dark desk, the mat's own colour, and silver-grey metal type as the base.
• Small accents only — the red sticker, and one thin coloured guide line. Nothing else is saturated.

Every part must

• ✓ read as a real photographed object with real material
• ✓ sit at a slight natural angle, never perfectly square to frame
• ✓ cast a contact shadow where it touches the desk
• ✓ stay in its assigned corner — one prop each, never two
• ✓ let the title dominate

Never

• ✕ flat illustration, cartoon shading, vector shapes, or icons drawn rather than rendered
• ✕ an angled or three-quarter camera — this is straight down
• ✕ the whole machine shown, or a second machine
• ✕ extra props scattered outside the four corners
• ✕ a saturated background, gradients in the desk, or neon
• ✕ text beyond the title, edition, byline, sticker and top row

The result

A cover that reads as a photograph of somebody's actual desk on the day they finished the work — the trade named by its mat, the tools where hands left them, and the title lying there in steel.