Minimalist

On YokoFolio, pick the style Minimalist and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. To judge a portfolio, look at the balance as much as the line: good minimalist work leaves room around the design, and that room is composed, not left over. Look for clean shapes, right proportions, circles that are really round, straight lines that are really straight, and pieces that hold without a single extra detail. Healed photos beat fresh ones — a simple design hides nothing, and healing shows whether the lines stayed crisp. Ask the artist how small your design can go and still read in ten years, and whether they would simplify it further: a good minimalist artist will often suggest taking something away rather than adding.

Designs you recognize at a glance: a butterfly, a cat, a flower cut down to a stem and two petals, a cross, a mountain, a wave, a crescent moon, a date, initials. What matters isn't the subject but what you take away: keep the shape that makes it recognizable and drop the rest. If you're torn between two versions, take the barer one — it's the one that will age best and still look right. Be careful with text and numbers at very small sizes: letters close up as the lines spread, so a word or a date needs a little more room than a symbol. To see how different artists reduce the same subject, search YokoFolio by keyword, such as “moon” or “wave”.

It's one of its most common uses, and it suits it well: two simple designs that answer each other, or the same design at two sizes. A few practical notes. First, pick something that stands on its own — a design that only makes sense next to the other one gets awkward if life pulls you apart. Second, get them done by the same hand on the same day if you can: two different artists never draw the same line. Third, choose the placement together: matching spots, like the two inner forearms, make the pair read as a pair. And keep in mind that very small designs in high-friction areas, such as the fingers, fade first, which matters even more when two people want theirs to stay alike.

Fine Line is defined by the thinness of the line, not by how little is drawn: a Fine Line piece can be detailed, a whole bouquet with veins in the petals and light shading. Minimalist is defined by reduction: very few elements, a simple outline, sometimes a small solid fill, and lines that don't have to be very thin. When a Minimalist design is done in very thin lines, it can carry both styles on YokoFolio. Ignorant Style is small and simple too, but its line wobbles and looks scribbled on purpose, its proportions are wrong and its subject is often a joke, while a Minimalist line is exact and its spacing composed. On YokoFolio the two never go together. If the design is cut down to a few clean, exact elements with space around them, it's Minimalist.