Retro Modernist Editorial Poster

Retro Modernist Editorial Poster

Use the system imagegen skill and image-generation tool. Treat each uploaded photograph as the edit source. Preserve the hero through silhouette, scale, rhythm, and color while translating it into a concise print system.

Output contract

• Produce one independent raster poster for every uploaded photo. Never combine photos into a collage, contact sheet, comparison layout, diptych, or shared canvas.
• Use a 3:4 portrait canvas with one exact horizontal 50/50 division. Keep truthful photography in the upper half and the retro-modernist illustration in the lower half. Do not let either medium invade the other.
• Preserve immediate correspondence through the hero's silhouette, proportion, posture, direction, key structure, and narrative relationship.
• Use three to five active colors total, including background and structural ink.
• Keep primary text in the user's requested language or current input language. Use another language only as a tiny optional editorial accent.
• Return every poster as a separate image. Keep user-facing commentary to one short status sentence only when necessary.

Preserve the photographic upper half

Keep the source recognizably photographic. Preserve subject identity and count, anatomy or construction, proportions, pose, silhouette, direction, spatial relationships, real materials, natural light, and the original color atmosphere.

Apply only restrained art-magazine, independent-publication, or exhibition-photography color correction. Do not redraw, vectorize, beautify, materially relight, or apply flat shapes, print texture, typography, or graphic overlays to this region.

Crop deliberately for the upper half. When more area is needed, extend only plausible sky, ground, wall, water, foliage, or environmental background. Never stretch, warp, mirror, duplicate, or redesign the subject.

Extract a modernist source map

Before prompting, privately identify:

1. the one hero subject or inseparable relationship carrying recognition;
2. its decisive silhouette, posture, proportion, movement, openings, and structural turns;
3. three to six identity features that must survive flattening;
4. the dominant mass, one or two subordinate masses, and the minimum environment needed for space or narrative;
5. the visual center of gravity, important scale contrast, and useful crop, offset, or overlap;
6. the upper photo's most spirited color, one dark structural color, one light background, and one or two supporting/contrasting hues;
7. one concise main title plus two to four microtext groups in the user's language.

Delete small detail and texture that do not contribute to recognition, action, relationship, depth, or graphic rhythm. Do not expose this analysis or repeat the user's design brief.

Flatten with graphic force

Translate the hero into a clear silhouette, broad geometric color fields, hard cut planes, concise curves, and a few precise internal divisions. Preserve the source's most important proportions, contour changes, gesture, direction, and relationships.

Use hard or gently softened shape boundaries according to material. Merge small details into larger masses. Use negative space for openings and separation. Add only a few supporting planes, platforms, shadows, landscape strips, or environmental shapes to establish front/back order.

The lower scene may enlarge, crop, offset, overlap, or partially stack the hero. Let one dominant form lead and subordinate shapes answer it through scale, direction, or color.

Do not trace realistically, model light and volume, outline every part, use many tiny facets, fill the background with scenery, or reduce the subject to a generic icon.

Compose with modernist hierarchy

Build the layout from one center of gravity, one dominant scale, clear foreground/background order, strong positive/negative shape, and repeatable geometric rhythm.

Use asymmetry when it fits the source. Crop deliberately at one or two edges, offset the hero, overlap a title or shape, or let a structural line continue through a color field. Preserve large quiet areas.

Set a strict but source-responsive grid: identify a primary axis, one baseline or vertical spine, a few alignment edges, and consistent margins or deliberate edge violations. All type and auxiliary forms must use this structure.

Avoid even distribution, rigid centered symmetry, many equal panels, decorative geometry, arbitrary circles and diagonals, dense collage, and reusable poster templates.

Present the result as a flat print artwork. Do not add a frame, wall, desk, book mockup, branding presentation, device, packaging, gallery room, or product card.

Build a 3–5 color print palette

Derive all colors from the upper photograph, then purify and compress them into:

1. one principal color with the most identity and life;
2. one deep structural ink;
3. one light background or paper color;
4. optionally one neighboring support color;
5. optionally one small contrasting accent.

Assign each color a clear area role. Use the principal hue for the hero, the dark ink for structure and type, the light hue for breathing room, and optional colors for depth or one focal event.

Preserve the source's warm/cool character. Keep colors warm or cool as appropriate, vivid but controlled, and slightly print-like. Avoid gray dirt, full-poster desaturation, neon, gradients, rainbow palettes, equal-area multicolor, generic primary-color modernism, candy color, and low-cost cartoon palettes.

Use only subtle physical print character: matte ink, slight paper grain, very restrained registration drift, and occasional tiny ink variation. Avoid heavy distress, sepia aging, halftone-photo effects, torn paper, or complex texture.

Build multilingual editorial hierarchy

Derive one concise main title from the source's identity, action, emotion, place, material, or metaphor. Keep it in the user's preferred or current language.

Add two to four microtext groups chosen from supported information:

• a short phrase, state, or direction word;
• a place or object descriptor;
• a number, sequence, classification, or chapter label;
• a micro-explanation or material term.

Do not use years. Do not invent locations, sequence facts, measurements, archive data, categories, or materials. Another language may appear only as a very small editorial echo and may not replace the primary language.

Use bold or medium modernist display type for the title and slender sans serif or restrained serif type for microtext. Establish hierarchy with size contrast, weight, tracking, orientation, and spacing.

Make typography structural

Align, cut, nest, wrap, press into a corner, run vertically, cross a color field, or pass between forms according to the shared grid. Let typography extend an axis, stop a mass, create a counterweight, activate blank space, or clarify scale.

Use one clear reading path from title through illustration to microtext. Keep micro-information small but legible. Avoid conventional centered headings, repeated equal captions, dense body copy, fake data decoration, UI panels, commercial slogans, logos, brands, signatures, pseudo-language, or watermarks.

Compile the image-edit prompt

Write one source-specific production prompt per input photo containing:

1. one independent 3:4 portrait output and the exact 50% photography / 50% retro-modernist split;
2. the upper-half preservation invariants, restrained color correction, crop, and any safe background extension;
3. the lower hero, relationship, silhouette, posture, proportion, direction, three to six identity features, dominant mass, and subordinate forms;
4. the exact geometric color fields, hard planes, curves, negative spaces, front/back order, deleted detail, crop, offset, and overlap;
5. the center of gravity, scale hierarchy, primary axis, baseline/spine, alignment edges, margins, edge violations, and quiet-space shape;
6. the exact three-to-five source-derived colors, area roles, warm/cool relationship, matte ink, paper grain, and restrained print variation;
7. the exact main title in the user's language and its source meaning;
8. the exact two-to-four microtext groups, their factual support, and any tiny optional secondary-language accent;
9. every text group's font role, size, weight, tracking, orientation, grid alignment, nesting, crossing, corner, or negative-space function;
10. hard exclusions: no multi-photo layout, no altered or redrawn upper subject, no approximate split, no realistic lower illustration, no many tiny facets, no 3D, no complex texture, no arbitrary geometry, no more than five colors, no gradient, no generic vector scene, no UI, no year, no false data, no fixed English requirement, no commercial template, no logo, and no watermark.

Use concrete silhouette, plane, color role, grid, hierarchy, and typographic function rather than relying on adjectives such as “premium,” “retro,” “modernist,” or “stylish.”

Inspect and correct

Review every result at full size and thumbnail size. Verify the exact split, truthful upper photography, immediate lower recognition, bold but restrained flat shapes, one visual hierarchy, source-derived 3–5 color system, modernist grid, primary-language title, two-to-four microtext groups, and absence of stock-vector or UI cues.

If recognition is weak, restore the silhouette, proportion, and three strongest identity features. If the illustration looks generic, reconnect every plane and curve to a source structure. If color feels cartoonish or random, reduce it and reassign area roles. If typography looks pasted on, align each group to the grid and give it a compositional job. If another language dominates, restore the user's language as primary. Regenerate with one targeted correction when needed.