Two Things, One Edge

Two Things, One Edge

Produce ONE image, 3:4 portrait: a poster carried entirely by a single enormous image that is two things at once. 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 it announces: {the exhibition, film, season or occasion} e.g. Vibary's first open season
• The feeling: {one emotion, not a message} e.g. quiet ambition — the hour before you start
• The two things the image is at once: {the thing, what it becomes, and which part is which} e.g. a long library shelf of glowing spines that is also a city skyline at dusk — each spine is a tower, the shelf edge is the street
• The figure: {one person, how small, and what they are doing} e.g. one person at the far left, the height of a single spine, walking in with a bag
• The title, and the small lines: {a short title, and the facts} e.g. OPEN SEASON / vibary.ai · a vibe library · 2026
• The palette: {one dominant tone, and one accent} e.g. warm bone, deep indigo, one amber

The contour law

This is the difference between a metaphor and a collage, and it is the only thing that matters here.

Every edge must be readable as both things at once. The shelf's top line is also the skyline. The rope's coil is also the harbour wall. There is no point in the picture where one thing stops and the other starts, because there are not two things — there is one surface that answers to two names.

Test it by pointing. If you can put a finger on the seam and say "book here, mountain there", the run has failed. A reference run of this style shows exactly that: its left side was genuinely book-as-mountain, its right side was a book, and the middle was a set of separate painted peaks floating in mist that belonged to neither. Beautifully made, and still a collage.

So: no mist, no glow and no shadow may be used to hide a join. Those are how a run avoids solving the problem. If a transition cannot be drawn honestly, the two things do not share a shape and the field needs rewriting.

Scale

The transformed thing is enormous — half to four fifths of the frame. Everything else is small.

One figure, and it must be inside the metaphor, not beside it: walking on the shelf as though on a street, standing in the coil as though on a quay. A person placed next to the image is a size reference; a person placed inside it is the way in.

Make them genuinely small — a few percent of the frame's height. The gap between the huge thing and the tiny person is the feeling.

Space

Half the poster is quiet. Empty ground, plain air, unbroken tone. Push the subject off-centre and let one large region carry nothing at all. Nothing decorative may enter that space — no scattered leaves, no birds, no particles, no texture.

The title

• Set in a hand-drawn or brush-drawn Latin lettering with real stroke variation — pressure, speed, a dry edge where the stroke lifts. Clean, never messy, never a default script font.
• It follows a line already in the picture — the shelf edge, the ridge, the water, the rope — rather than sitting centred on top of the image.
• The small lines are the opposite: tiny, very light, wide-tracked sans, set quietly at one edge. Never centred, never large.

The title and the small lines are the only text in the image. No lettering invented onto the objects themselves — no titles on spines, no signs on buildings, no names on hulls. A run of this template lettered nine book spines with words nobody asked for and misspelt two of them, which is what invented text does: it is unchecked by any field, so nothing catches it.

Colour

One dominant tone across the whole poster, one accent used in a single place, and nothing else. Clean and low-saturation. No cheap gradients, no muddy greys, no second accent.

Never

• ✕ a visible seam between the two things
• ✕ mist, glow, blur or shadow covering a transition
• ✕ a figure beside the metaphor rather than inside it
• ✕ a second large element competing with the subject
• ✕ decoration in the empty space
• ✕ the title centred over the image like a caption
• ✕ any lettering on the objects in the picture
• ✕ a second accent colour

The result

A poster that reads twice: an object from across the room, a place when you get closer, and a person in it small enough to make the whole thing enormous.