Lambert here:
We are in the process of revising the Naked Capitalism newsletter in the hopes that we can turn it into a real circulation builder, instead of simply a service to readers. To that end, we want to make it weekly or fortnightly, give it a more professional look, shorten and tighten up the prose, and (we hope) add graphics. We have an example newsletter to follow that we like: The Cradle. It looks like this:
Our problem is the graphics (and not the layout, or the type, or the black, white, and red color scheme). As you can see, for the graphics the Cradle has used a collage technique, layering together a number of photos. If we publish one newsletter a week with five items, that’s twenty collages a month, with proof cycles to match. That’s a big burden. Every two weeks is ten pieces, still big.
We could reduce the burden. One approach would be to create an inventory of generic and topical graphics, as opposed making custom graphics for each story. (The topics we use in Links might be a starting point.) We might also simplify the graphics and perhaps alter their size. So, for example, as opposed to creating, on demand, a large graphic of a Yemeni container port overlaid with a head, flags, and a dagger, we might have a generic image of boats on the Red Sea overlaid with a dagger, also using less vertical space. We could then take generic graphic out of inventory when we had a story under that topic. We woudd create the generic, topical inventory in bulk, and draw it down. This approach would greatly simplify the editorial cycle as well.
However, I have always been on the production side of the house, and so that solution is how I think. If you are an artist, you may have a completely different idea of the right approach (although your idea would also have to meet our deadlines). Another production-oriented solution would be AI, but every AI image I’ve ever seen has been uncanny and ugly. If you really have those prompts mastered, you could change our mind, though!
If you want to put forward a solution for our newsletter problem, please comment (and please put a working email address in your comment so we can get in touch with you; we don’t ever share them, and nobody can see them).
Thank you!
