I think it’s easy for tech media to take itself too seriously. Often, if I make a custom hero image like many you see below, it’s because I had a funny idea while writing a story. Other times I just know I want something interesting and try to follow my instincts — occasionally to a dead end. Whether I’m taking pictures of related products and slapping them on a background, playing with colors of a close-up of a logo on my laptop, drawing with a Wacom tablet, slapping a Twitter Blue Verified dbrand sticker on my city garbage can for an Elon Musk story, or just editing sly (and not so sly) references to my favorite movies into a product shot, I want to make interesting, funny, and eye-catching imagery for my articles.
And naturally, if the hero image just needs to be a bunch of product cutouts over a gradient background, I’ll do that, too.
