CoBrA (1948–1951)

Artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam — Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Constant — reacted against post-war rationalism with expressive imagery drawn from Nordic myth, folk art, and raw gesture. Figures look simultaneously like children's drawings and ancient cave paintings; colour is vivid and unmodulated; the brushwork is urgent and physical. Short-lived but intensely distinctive.

Fête poster

This time it settled on a frontal, brightly painted bird-beast, surrounded by blocky information panels. Run it again and the tradition holds while the details move: expect a different beast.

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT:

Brindlewick Village Fête
Saturday 6th September, 12 noon – 5pm
Brindlewick Cricket Club, Hawthorn Lane, Brindlewick
In aid of St. Peter's Church Restoration Fund

Attractions:
- Grand tombola
- Homemade cakes, jams and preserves
- BBQ and refreshments
- Plant and produce stall
- Children's games and bouncy castle
- Ferret racing
- Live folk music from The Muddy Boots
- Local craft and maker stalls

Free entry. All welcome. Organised by Brindlewick Village Community Association.

---

Design this poster in CoBrA style (1948–1951).

1950s avant-garde exhibition poster — painted with the urgency of the movement itself

Visual traits:
- childlike or mythic figures with bold outlines
- vivid flat or semi-flat colour applied with visible energy
- heavy gestural line that defines form expressively
- animal, mask, and totemic imagery
- composition without Western academic perspective

Typography:
- hand-painted or roughly stencilled title
- text integrated into the image rather than set formally

Palette: vivid unmodulated colours — cobalt, vermillion, ochre, viridian, black, white
Layout: figure or figures filling the field; text in a bold painted band
Subject: this tradition has its own canonical subject — the one named in the visual traits above. Use it; it is what the poster is for. The event supplies the words and the occasion, not the imagery. Render it as well as the tradition demands, and do not substitute something cleverer.
Mood: raw, mythic, child-like vigour, post-war energy, Nordic

Avoid: Swiss or Bauhaus rational geometry, photographic realism, decorative polish, artificial yellowing or ageing

Before drawing, read the event copy above and decide the following.
State your decisions in one short paragraph, then generate the poster.

1. The hook.
Find the single line a passer-by needs in order to know whether this is for
them. It is usually what the event would be called in conversation — "the
village fête", "the plant sale" — not who is organising it, not who it is in
aid of, not the ticket price, not the promoter. If two lines compete, choose
the one the reader would most miss if it were removed. That line is the
poster.

2. The tiers.
Sort the remaining copy into two further groups: what someone needs in order
to turn up (day, date, time, place), and everything else (prices, credits,
beneficiaries, lists of what's on, small print). Every line of copy appears on
the finished poster — the hierarchy governs size and position, never
inclusion. Make the steps between the three tiers unmistakable: the hook
should be several times the size of the small print, not one notch larger. If
a fact the second tier needs is missing from the copy, leave it out and say
so — do not invent it.

3. The subject.
Whatever the Subject line in the style block calls for, there is only ONE of
it: one thing the eye lands on, in front, sharp, unambiguous.

A setting is allowed beneath it. A single coherent place — one continuous
scene, held back in contrast and detail — earns its keep, because it
establishes where and when in a single move. The test is continuity: a street
of shopfronts behind the subject is one place. A bicycle, a coffee cup, a dog
and a shop sign arranged around it are an assortment, and an assortment is the
failure this brief exists to prevent. If the secondary imagery cannot be
described as one place, cut it.

Everything else is type. Names, dates, times, addresses, prices and web
addresses are read, not depicted — never illustrate them. A list of what's on
exists to answer questions once someone is already reading; it is not a
specification for one small vignette, badge or icon each.

Small marks tied to individual lines of small print — a device beside the
address, a mark beside the beneficiary — are typographic furniture, and are
fine. A grid of icons standing in for the list of what's on is not.

Do not invent logos, crests, badges or sponsor marks for the organisations
named in the copy. A real committee will otherwise be handing out a poster
carrying a coat of arms their club does not have.

The image should not merely restate the hook. A poster headed "Spring Plant
Sale" showing a spring plant sale has said one thing twice.

One piece of wit is permitted, and only one. It belongs inside the single
subject or at its edge, never as a second element competing beside it. If it
cannot be placed within the composition, leave it out.

Draw only what you can be sure the event has.

4. Names.
A name may be played on, but only when all four of these hold:

- It is part of the hook — the act, the show, the occasion. Never the venue,
  the promoter, the charity, the sponsor or the town. Those live in the small
  print, and a poster that illustrates its small print is advertising the
  wrong thing. The exception proves it: if the occasion genuinely is the venue
  — a first night at a famous hall — then the venue has risen into the hook,
  and it qualifies.

- It is not a personal name. Surnames and forenames label people; they do not
  describe them. A band called Carver is not about carving, and illustrating
  it makes the poster about a butcher. Evocative common nouns and phrases are
  fair game.

- You take the register of the word, not the object it denotes. A band called
  The Undertow is not asking for a picture of an undertow. It is offering
  scale, pull, the sublime, being out of your depth — find a real image inside
  that, rather than the first noun.

- It becomes, or inflects, the single subject, fully committed. A visual pun
  is a whole picture or it is nothing: never a token in the corner, never a
  garnish beside the type. Where the style dictates its own subject, the name
  may colour that subject but never replace it, and where the style calls for
  no subject at all, the name introduces none.

The test: the image must work for someone who never makes the connection. If
it is only good once explained, it is not good.

5. Space and ornament.
Empty space is a design element, not a gap to fill. Leave areas genuinely bare
wherever the style allows, and resist decorating the margins. Ornament may be
dense; information may not. If the style is an ornamental tradition, let the
ornament be as rich as the tradition demands — but keep one subject, one
dominant line of type, and everything else subordinate. Patterns may repeat.
Subjects may not.

CoBrA — fête poster example, version 2 prompt

Gig poster

This time it drew a frontal, brightly coloured animal-mask figure with long ears, two staring eyes, a toothy mouth and two raised hands. Run it again and the tradition holds while the details move: expect a different beast.

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT:

Pale Light Promotions presents:

CARVER & THE FLOOD
with support from Mena Grace

Friday 19th September, doors 7:30pm
The Anchor Rooms, 14 Tallow Lane, Bristol WX4 2JQ

Tickets: £12 advance / £15 on the door
Available from The Anchor Rooms bar or pallightpro.co.uk

All ages. Bar until midnight.

---

Design this poster in CoBrA style (1948–1951).

1950s avant-garde exhibition poster — painted with the urgency of the movement itself

Visual traits:
- childlike or mythic figures with bold outlines
- vivid flat or semi-flat colour applied with visible energy
- heavy gestural line that defines form expressively
- animal, mask, and totemic imagery
- composition without Western academic perspective

Typography:
- hand-painted or roughly stencilled title
- text integrated into the image rather than set formally

Palette: vivid unmodulated colours — cobalt, vermillion, ochre, viridian, black, white
Layout: figure or figures filling the field; text in a bold painted band
Subject: this tradition has its own canonical subject — the one named in the visual traits above. Use it; it is what the poster is for. The event supplies the words and the occasion, not the imagery. Render it as well as the tradition demands, and do not substitute something cleverer.
Mood: raw, mythic, child-like vigour, post-war energy, Nordic

Avoid: Swiss or Bauhaus rational geometry, photographic realism, decorative polish, artificial yellowing or ageing

Before drawing, read the event copy above and decide the following.
State your decisions in one short paragraph, then generate the poster.

1. The hook.
Find the single line a passer-by needs in order to know whether this is for
them. It is usually what the event would be called in conversation — "the
village fête", "the plant sale" — not who is organising it, not who it is in
aid of, not the ticket price, not the promoter. If two lines compete, choose
the one the reader would most miss if it were removed. That line is the
poster.

2. The tiers.
Sort the remaining copy into two further groups: what someone needs in order
to turn up (day, date, time, place), and everything else (prices, credits,
beneficiaries, lists of what's on, small print). Every line of copy appears on
the finished poster — the hierarchy governs size and position, never
inclusion. Make the steps between the three tiers unmistakable: the hook
should be several times the size of the small print, not one notch larger. If
a fact the second tier needs is missing from the copy, leave it out and say
so — do not invent it.

3. The subject.
Whatever the Subject line in the style block calls for, there is only ONE of
it: one thing the eye lands on, in front, sharp, unambiguous.

A setting is allowed beneath it. A single coherent place — one continuous
scene, held back in contrast and detail — earns its keep, because it
establishes where and when in a single move. The test is continuity: a street
of shopfronts behind the subject is one place. A bicycle, a coffee cup, a dog
and a shop sign arranged around it are an assortment, and an assortment is the
failure this brief exists to prevent. If the secondary imagery cannot be
described as one place, cut it.

Everything else is type. Names, dates, times, addresses, prices and web
addresses are read, not depicted — never illustrate them. A list of what's on
exists to answer questions once someone is already reading; it is not a
specification for one small vignette, badge or icon each.

Small marks tied to individual lines of small print — a device beside the
address, a mark beside the beneficiary — are typographic furniture, and are
fine. A grid of icons standing in for the list of what's on is not.

Do not invent logos, crests, badges or sponsor marks for the organisations
named in the copy. A real committee will otherwise be handing out a poster
carrying a coat of arms their club does not have.

The image should not merely restate the hook. A poster headed "Spring Plant
Sale" showing a spring plant sale has said one thing twice.

One piece of wit is permitted, and only one. It belongs inside the single
subject or at its edge, never as a second element competing beside it. If it
cannot be placed within the composition, leave it out.

Draw only what you can be sure the event has.

4. Names.
A name may be played on, but only when all four of these hold:

- It is part of the hook — the act, the show, the occasion. Never the venue,
  the promoter, the charity, the sponsor or the town. Those live in the small
  print, and a poster that illustrates its small print is advertising the
  wrong thing. The exception proves it: if the occasion genuinely is the venue
  — a first night at a famous hall — then the venue has risen into the hook,
  and it qualifies.

- It is not a personal name. Surnames and forenames label people; they do not
  describe them. A band called Carver is not about carving, and illustrating
  it makes the poster about a butcher. Evocative common nouns and phrases are
  fair game.

- You take the register of the word, not the object it denotes. A band called
  The Undertow is not asking for a picture of an undertow. It is offering
  scale, pull, the sublime, being out of your depth — find a real image inside
  that, rather than the first noun.

- It becomes, or inflects, the single subject, fully committed. A visual pun
  is a whole picture or it is nothing: never a token in the corner, never a
  garnish beside the type. Where the style dictates its own subject, the name
  may colour that subject but never replace it, and where the style calls for
  no subject at all, the name introduces none.

The test: the image must work for someone who never makes the connection. If
it is only good once explained, it is not good.

5. Space and ornament.
Empty space is a design element, not a gap to fill. Leave areas genuinely bare
wherever the style allows, and resist decorating the margins. Ornament may be
dense; information may not. If the style is an ornamental tradition, let the
ornament be as rich as the tradition demands — but keep one subject, one
dominant line of type, and everything else subordinate. Patterns may repeat.
Subjects may not.

CoBrA — gig poster example, version 2 prompt