Minimalist Composition: Geometric Shapes, Central Alignment, Calm

Minimalist illustration looks effortless, which is exactly why it is hard. With three colors and six shapes there is nothing to hide behind, and a composition either settles or it does not. Sandra Staub, who teaches the Minimalist Art Bundle on Twotap, has a set of moves for making a spare image feel calm and deliberate rather than empty, and most of them are about what you leave out.

Skipping perspective is a decision, not a shortcut

Staub studied the traditional way, sitting outside with a drawing board and multiple vanishing points, rendering the concrete library at her university. She enjoyed it, and simultaneously realised she was not the kind of illustrator who wanted to build deep, detailed scenarios. At the time she assumed that meant she could not succeed.

Ten years later a commission from UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, asked her for a series of minimalist illustrations explaining financial products through storytelling. These needed full scenes, offices and buildings, not a single central object. So she researched how other illustrators handled it and came back with two rules:

• Minimalist illustration is very often characterized by the absence of perspective, with all objects in a scene placed on one horizontal line.
• As a consequence, objects are drawn in frontal view, lateral view, or three-quarter view.

No vanishing points, no converging lines. Depth is handled by choosing a view, not by constructing space.

Choose the view that makes the object legible

Her chair demonstration is the whole principle in one object. Drawn frontally, with no perspective, a chair barely reads: the seat and backrest become two stacked rectangles. In lateral view it is instantly a chair, because the angle between seat and backrest communicates sitting, and the armrests and legs finish the sentence. That is why lateral view carried so much of the bank commission.

Three-quarter view is the compromise, a lateral drawing with a compressed frontal view added to the side, which suggests dimension while still ignoring the vanishing point. All the legs stay on one horizontal line, where a perspective drawing would offset them.

Her rule for deploying it is about attention:

"Use the three-quarter view in illustrations of only a few elements, making the object the protagonist of your composition. The more lines and shapes you have in your artwork, the harder it will be to read them."
Sandra Staub, in the lesson Exploring Perspective & Depth from the Minimalist Art Bundle

One object gets the three-quarter treatment. Everything else drops to lateral or frontal so it stays quiet.

When the elements float, put a shape behind them

Staub describes a specific feeling that anyone who has made a spare illustration will recognize: the objects are fine individually, but they seem to be floating around, unconnected, and something is missing.

Her default response is to place a geometric shape in the background. A circle, an arch, a square, a moon. Her reasoning is that geometric shapes are subtle and harmonious, so they gather the elements of a composition together without stealing attention from the main objects, which is what guiding the viewer's eye actually means in practice.

For shape ideas she looks to symbolism, and names alchemy symbols as a favourite because of their simplicity.

Decoration is allowed, if it has a job

The word decorative usually functions as an insult in minimalism. Staub disagrees, with a condition attached: decorative elements are perfectly allowed if they serve a purpose, and in her work that purpose is balancing the composition and guiding the eye.

Smaller scattered elements do a second job too. She makes sure they add to the storytelling or the ambience, and her reasoning is about the viewer's behaviour: people are curious, so a few intentional, well-designed objects give the eye something to explore and make a simple image intriguing rather than bare.

She is honest that knowing what to add and what to leave out is intuitive and improves with practice. Her suggested exercise is to study how other minimalist artists use apparently decorative objects, then test shapes, sizes and placements against your own drawings.

Shadows: drama, depth, or none at all

Shadow is another classical principle minimalism mostly discards, and Staub frames it as three options rather than a technique. Use shadows for dramatic effect, to suggest a time of day and a mood. Use them to give otherwise flat objects some depth. Or skip them entirely, which is what she most often does.

The distinction worth knowing is between the two kinds. A core shadow sits on the object itself. A drop shadow is what the object casts, usually onto the floor, and it can carry meaning on its own: she points to an artwork where the drop shadows are drawn as skyscrapers.

Her method keeps both tied to the existing palette. Core shadows are a shade of the object's own color, drawn on a separate layer set as a clipping mask so it cannot spill past the object's silhouette. Drop shadows take a shade of whatever they fall onto instead, so a mountain's shadow on an ocean background uses a shade of the ocean.

And the restraint, which is the actual lesson: she does not shadow everything. Shadows go where they enhance the protagonist or add needed complexity. Adding both core and drop shadows to every object clutters the piece and undoes the style.

The question behind every one of these choices

Staub returns to the same test again and again, for perspective, for shadows, for detail: can this artwork do without this? Minimalist composition is mostly the discipline of asking that honestly and accepting the answer.

What is left after all the subtraction still has to hold together, which is why the positive moves matter: a background shape to gather the elements, a considered view to keep objects legible, a few curiosities for the eye, and shadow only where it earns its place.

Sandra Staub teaches the full minimalist system, composition, perspective, shadow and palette, in the Minimalist Art Bundle on Twotap.