# Flat vector is a list of properties, not a word > Asking for "vector style" gets you a rendered illustration with smooth shading. Asking for closed shapes, flat fills, one outline weight and no gradients gets you the actual thing. August 17, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/flat-vector-look-prompts Two bears on one screen. The left is rendered — fur, soft shadow, a gradient in the background. The right is flat: closed shapes, solid fills, one heavy outline, no texture anywhere. Asking for the right one by name usually gets you something closer to the left. The word "vector" describes a file format, and the model isn't producing files, it's producing an image. ## What is the flat vector look, precisely? Five properties, and naming them works where the label doesn't. - **Closed shapes.** Every element is a defined area, not a soft mass. - **Flat fills.** One colour per shape, no shading inside it. - **A single outline weight** around the subject and its main parts. - **No gradients, no texture, no noise.** - **Simplified anatomy** — features reduced to the fewest shapes that still read. Ask for those and you get the bear on the right. Ask for "vector illustration" and you get a render that has vaguely learned what vector art tends to look like, which is not the same and never quite lands. ## Why doesn't the style name work? Because a style name is an average, and this style is defined by absences. Style words describe a general direction — the model resolves them toward the centre of everything tagged that way, which includes a great deal of semi-rendered work. The distinguishing features here are all things that must *not* be present: no gradient, no texture, no soft edge. Absences aren't averaged well. That's the same mechanism as everywhere else in this area: [concrete properties land, category words drift](/stories/why-a-wolf-gets-the-average-wolf). ## Why does it suit garments so well? It's very close to the ideal print by construction. Hard edges, flat colour, a limited palette, a strong silhouette and no fine detail — that's the list of things that survive [the resolution of the cloth](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric) and read at ten feet. The style evolved for signage, decals and cheap reproduction, all of which have the same requirements a shirt does. It also scales without redesign: the same artwork works as a chest print and as a small mark, which almost nothing else does. ## Does flat mean simple? No, and the assumption limits people. Flat vector can be extremely dense — mid-century advertising art, transit maps, complex crests, scientific diagrams. What's constant is *how* the information is delivered (shapes and fills), not how much of it there is. The bear is simple because a mascot should be. A flat vector cityscape can have four hundred shapes in it and still print perfectly, because every one of them is a solid area with a hard edge. ## How thick should the outline be? Consistent, and heavier than default. The outline is doing most of the reading work at distance, so it wants real weight — and, more importantly, it wants to be the *same* weight throughout. Variable-width outlines read as hand-drawn, which is a different tradition; uniform weight is what says "vector". The exception worth knowing: dropping the outline entirely and letting colour boundaries define shapes is a legitimate variant, closer to [the arcade-cabinet tradition](/stories/arcade-cabinet-art-style). Choose one or the other rather than mixing. ## What about shading? Two flats, if any. Flat vector handles volume by adding a second, darker version of a fill — a hard-edged shadow shape rather than a gradient. One step, sometimes two. The moment it becomes three or four the style drifts back toward rendering. Naming this explicitly helps: *shading as a single darker flat shape with a hard edge, no gradients*. That one clause fixes most of the drift. ## When is it the wrong choice? When the subject's identity is in its texture. A specific person, a specific animal, anything whose recognisability lives in surface and detail loses that in translation to shapes. Flat vector abstracts, which is exactly right for a mascot, an object or an icon and exactly wrong for a likeness you need to hold — [a photograph wants a different register](/stories/pet-portrait-styles). ## How do I order? Describe the subject at [JustOG](/) and the properties — flat fills, one outline weight, no gradients, how many colours. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). "Vector" names a file. The look is five properties, and they can be asked for directly.