Does anybody here know what knolling is? It is definitely not something you have to keep secret or hide away with. It’s a photography technique we are all familiar with, seen somewhere for sure, but the name. If you happen to have an Instagram account then you must have seen at some point that one friend who made their holiday packing an art, arranged everything in a neat and extremely well-organised way, put together different objects so that they are parallel or at 90 degree angles from each other, then photographed them from above. That is called knolling, or ‚flat lay’ if you like.

The history of the name is equally interesting as the name itself. Andrew Kromelow, a janitor at Frank Gehry’s furniture-making shop, once everybody went home used to find any left out tools and rearrange them on a flat surface so they were at right angles to one another and everybody could see instantly what they need when they are back. He called this process knolling because it reminded him the deign of Knoll chairs famous for their angular design. His way was later popularized by a well known and accomplished designer Tom Sachs who made it one of his studio’s trademark and used to work with Gehry’s. He even adopted the phrase “Always be knolling” (ABK) as a motto for his work*

Other advertisers quickly noticed the benefits of using the technique and used it to create clean, noticeable images in their campaigns. And then when Instagram was born, the trend exploded with popularity and one of your friends did knolling while packing his stuff on a trip! There you go.

“Always be knolling” is taken from the “Ten Bullets” video, a studio manual by Tom Sachs, 2010. It requires viewing by all employees and studio visitors / source: Web

Now, you don’t have to go on a trip, or pre-pack anything or even arrange objects in Kromelow’s manner to knoll nowadays. No object are necessary either! All you have to do now is prompt the knolling out like Chase Lean (@chaseleantj), an AI enthusiast did!

artist: @chaseleantj / prompt: knolling of a [JOB/PROFESSION] / source: Twitter

As Chase noticed, there are some practices that make it easy to knoll things, or thing with people to be precise.

‘Sometimes a person won’t appear in the picture. For example, “knolling of a chef” doesn’t show an actual chef. It only shows food. You can fix it by adding “person” at the end of the prompt. New prompt: knolling of a chef, person’

Let’s what others did. You can read the whole thread here.

artist: @MathisYanis / prompt: knolling of a plumber / source: Twitter

artist: @MMieditto / prompt: knolling of a graffiti artist / source: Twitter

artist: @FollowAurelius / prompt: knolling of a rapper / source: Twitter

artist: @SuperTightWoody / source: Twitter

artist: @LearnAI_MJ / prompt: knolling of a zookeeper on outdoor picnic blanket in a lion cage, studio light, ultrahd 8k, majestic vista / source: Twitter

artist: @BobbyLancasterX / prompt: Knolling of an Alchemist / source: Twitter

artist: @tilmann_eth / prompt: Knolling of an dentist / source: Twitter

artist: @AAVV92722803 / prompt: Knolling of Santa, person, red background / source: Twitter

You can literally knoll out anybody, or anything. If you wish to see more of the great artworks make sure to visit Chase Lean (@chaseleantj) thread here.