Woven Through the Figure
A flat clash-colour poster where one word passes behind the figure and another passes in front, so the type and the person are interlocked rather than stacked. Six fields.
Two runs of the same template. A designer with BUILD threading past a swung arm beside a fisherwoman with LANDED threading past a coiled rope — different worlds, same three depths, and in both the crossing word is split by a limb.
Generated from this template with the fields shown above — and the crossing word does what the whole skill exists for: BU sits behind the swung arm while ILD lies across the trousers, one word on both sides of the body. VIBARY stands clear above the figure with every letter on bare ground, MAKE IT and SHIP IT sit clear on top, and the stamp overlaps nothing. Every type colour appears on the clothing. The reference's own baseline shows the failure this replaces: its figure covered the entire title, leaving fragments of four characters, while the side texts floated fully in front — obscuring all or nothing, with no interlock anywhere. Run-to-run quirks: which letters fall on which side of the limb shifts, and the garment patterning invents more detail than the fields ask for. This run took four attempts, and the reason is worth having. Every earlier one misspelt the word behind — VIBABY for VIBARY, once alongside BUIILD for BUILD — always by doubling a letterform already drawn rather than finishing the interrupted one. Spelling the word out in the field did not help. Asking for the figure to cross between letters rather than into one did not help. What worked was taking the figure out from behind that word altogether, which is what the second run had been doing all along without anyone noticing. The interlock the skill is named for is carried entirely by the crossing word, and it loses nothing.
Generated for this library
Input
Figure a designer mid-turn, oversized indigo hoodie, wide
ochre trousers, one arm out with a glowing panel
Behind VIBARY, huge, sky blue
Crossing BUILD, ochre, across the waist
Front MAKE IT · SHIP IT, small down the right edge
Ground aged bone paper · blue, ochre, indigo from the clothes
Seal vermilion square with a play wedge, lower right
Returned 1 poster · 2:3 · flat fills, aged paper, no gradients
behind VIBARY set enormous across the upper half in sky blue,
the figure's shoulder and raised arm covering parts of
three letters - the word still reads
crossing BUILD runs left to right at waist height in ochre: its
first two letters pass behind the swung arm, the rest
sit in front of the trousers, so one word is on both
sides of the body
front MAKE IT and SHIP IT stacked small down the right edge
in bone, over everything, touching nothing
figure flat colour, no modelling, the hoodie's hem and the
hair carried outward by the turn
seal one vermilion square at the lower right, the only mark
that overlaps nothingYou fill in 6 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The figure
- 2The word behind
- 3The word crossing
- 4The words in front
- 5The ground and the palette
- 6The seal
Woven Through the Figure
Produce ONE image: a flat clash-colour poster in which type and a figure interlock. 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 figure: {who, mid-motion, and what flies} e.g. a designer mid-turn in an oversized indigo hoodie and wide ochre trousers, one arm swung out holding a glowing panel, hair lifting with the movement
- The word behind: {one word, largest} e.g. VIBARY, huge, in bright sky blue
- The word crossing: {one short word, and where it crosses} e.g. BUILD, in warm ochre, running across the figure's waist
- The words in front: {one or two short lines} e.g. MAKE IT · SHIP IT, stacked small down the right edge in bone white
- The ground and the palette: {the paper, and colours from the clothing} e.g. warm aged bone paper · sky blue, ochre and deep indigo taken from the clothing
- The seal: {a small stamp, and its corner} e.g. a small vermilion square stamped with a play wedge, lower right
The three-depth law
Templates in this style say the type should be "partly obscured by the figure to create depth". A model reads that as one stacking order and puts the whole figure over the whole title, so the poster has a front and a back and nothing in between. Its title is sacrificed and no interlock exists.
Three depths, each stated, each doing a different job:
- Behind — one word, the largest on the page, set across the upper half. The figure's body and limbs cover parts of it. It must still read: cover at most a third of any single letter, and never a whole one.
- Crossing — one short word at the height the fields name. Part of this word is hidden by the figure and part of it sits in front. A raised arm passes over its first letters; the rest lie across the clothing below. This single word is what turns a stack into a weave, and it is the one the genre never delivers.
- In front — one or two short lines, small, along an edge. Nothing covers them.
The crossing word is the test. If it is entirely in front or entirely behind, the poster has one layer wearing three.
The figure
- Flat illustration: solid colour, clean edges, no modelling, no gradient, no rendered light. Patterned fabric is welcome; shading is not.
- Mid-motion, turning or striding, with the thing the fields name carried outward — a hem, a coat, hair, a scarf — sweeping a long curve across the frame.
- Occupying roughly two thirds to three quarters of the height, positioned so a limb naturally falls across the crossing word's path.
The type
- Heavy blocky sans throughout, no serifs, no script.
- Every colour comes from the figure's own clothing, named in the fields. Type in a colour that appears nowhere on the person sits on the poster rather than in it.
- Letters may be cropped by the frame's edge. They may not be outlined, shadowed or given a stroke to lift them off the ground.
- The word behind stands completely clear of the figure. Every one of its letters sits on bare ground, with the figure beginning below it. Only the *crossing* word is crossed — that is what the three depths need, and it is enough.
This is the rule the whole template turns on, and it cost four runs to find. The word behind kept coming back misspelt — VIBABY for VIBARY, then BUIILD for BUILD — the model doubling a letterform it had already drawn instead of finishing the one it was interrupted in. Two fixes were tried and neither worked: spelling the word out letter by letter in the field, and asking for the figure to cross between letters rather than into one. Only moving the figure fully below the word fixed it, and the run that had always been correct turns out to have been composed that way from the start. Interruption is what breaks the letter, so remove the interruption rather than describing it.
The ground and the seal
- Warm aged paper with a faint fibre and a slight unevenness. No scene, no landscape, no props, no background objects at all.
- One small seal, vermilion, in the corner the fields name. It is the only element on the poster that overlaps nothing — and the only place a fourth colour is allowed.
Never
- ✕ the crossing word entirely in front of or entirely behind the figure
- ✕ a whole letter of the rear word hidden, or the word made unreadable
- ✕ type in a colour absent from the clothing
- ✕ outlines, drop shadows or strokes added to lift type off the ground
- ✕ modelling, gradients or rendered light on the figure
- ✕ background scenery, props, or a second seal
- ✕ a misspelt name, and above all a doubled letterform standing in for a different letter
- ✕ the figure overlapping any letter of the word behind
The result
A poster with real depth rather than a stacking order: a name behind the shoulder, a word threading through the body, and two quiet lines on top — interlocked closely enough that the figure and the type cannot be pulled apart.
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. Decide the crossing word first and pick the body part it passes behind — that single choice is the whole effect.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the poster.
- Check the crossing word letter by letter: some of it must be hidden and some of it must be on top. If the whole word is in front or entirely behind, the poster has one layer pretending to be three.
What you swap
- The figure
- a designer mid-turn in an oversized indigo hoodie and wide ochre trousers, one arm swung out holding a glowing panel, hair lifting with the movement
- The word behind
- VIBARY, huge, in bright sky blue
- The word crossing
- BUILD, in warm ochre, running across the figure's waist
- The words in front
- MAKE IT · SHIP IT, stacked small down the right edge in bone white
- The ground and the palette
- warm aged bone paper · sky blue, ochre and deep indigo taken from the clothing
- The seal
- a small vermilion square stamped with a play wedge, lower right
Before it runs
- A figure in motion with something that flies — a coat, a skirt, hair, a scarf. Still figures give the crossing word nothing to pass behind.
- Three texts of different lengths. The crossing one should be short enough to be interrupted once and still read.
- Colours taken from the clothing rather than chosen separately, or the type will sit on the picture instead of in it.
When to reach for it
For youth culture, a dance night, a street festival, a cultural crossover — anything wanting a person and a shout on the same page. The style is common and its depth is almost always fake: everything is simply layered over everything.
What changes
- One flat illustrated figure mid-motion on aged paper, occupying most of the frame with clothing carried outward by the movement.
- Three type layers with stated depths — one behind the figure, one crossing it, one fully in front — so the poster has real interlock rather than a single stacking order.
- The crossing word is the one that does the work: it passes behind an arm and in front of a skirt within the same word, which is the move the genre describes and never executes.
- A clash palette taken from the figure's own clothing, so the type belongs to the picture instead of being applied to it.
- One small seal as the only mark that touches nothing, sitting where a stamp would.
Pairs with
- One Line, One SentenceA black-line concept illustration for a product page, where the connecting line is a sentence — a source, a thing carried, a destination — rather than a decorative swoop. Six fields.
- A Shape You Can NameA flat illustration held inside one big silhouette, with the scene breaking out through its edge — where the shape has to mean something and the crossings have to be real crossings. Six fields.
- A Whisper and a ShoutMatte black, white type, nothing else — a thin quote holding the top against one enormous rounded word below, with the three sizes fixed by ratio rather than by eye. Five fields.