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The Cooper — Art Briefs
Illustrations for article and category images. Style reference: The New Yorker cover illustrations — editorial, slightly satirical, rich in detail, muted or earthy color palettes.
Deliver as .jpg, minimum 2400px wide.
Aspect ratios
Images are cropped automatically via CSS object-fit: cover, so compose with the safe area centered. Each image appears at multiple crops depending on context:
| Placement | Aspect ratio | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage hero | fills half the viewport | Article #1 only. Compose for a tall, roughly 1:1 safe area — image fills a large panel. |
| Homepage cards | 4:3 | Articles #2–5. Landscape thumbnail. |
| Homepage interview | 3:4 | Article #6 only. Portrait crop. |
| Category page list | 4:3 | Small landscape thumbnail beside text. |
| Topic tiles | 16:10 | Category images only. Wide landscape banner. |
| Topics overview page | 16:9 | Category images only. Slightly wider banner. |
Recommendation: Deliver all article images at 4:3 landscape (e.g. 2400×1800). The hero and interview images will be center-cropped from this, so keep the focal point centered and avoid important detail at the extreme edges. Deliver category images at 16:9 landscape (e.g. 2400×1350).
1. The Man Who Decided Your House Isn't Worth Insuring
File name: house-isnt-worth-insuring.jpg
Subject: A 1960s-era insurance executive in a wood-paneled office, drawing thick red lines on a large city map spread across his desk. On the map, some neighborhoods are colored green ("preferred") and others are marked with red X's. Through the office window behind him, we see the actual neighborhoods he's marking — row houses, apartment buildings, ordinary life. He doesn't look up.
Key details: The contrast between the clinical, comfortable office and the real neighborhoods visible outside. The red lines on the map should feel deliberate and permanent. 1960s attire — narrow tie, white shirt, heavy-framed glasses.
Mood: Bureaucratic cruelty performed with complete indifference.
2. How a 1945 Law Let Insurers Do Whatever They Want
File name: 1945-law-insurers.jpg
Subject: A group of insurance executives in 1940s suits gathered in the halls of Congress, shaking hands with senators. One executive holds a rolled-up document (the McCarran-Ferguson Act). In the background, a massive vault door is swinging open for them while a long line of ordinary citizens — families, small business owners — are held back behind a velvet rope.
Key details: The warmth and ease between the executives and politicians versus the frustrated, ignored crowd. The vault represents the antitrust exemption. 1940s fashion — double-breasted suits, fedoras, wide ties.
Mood: A backroom deal presented as perfectly normal.
3. The Flood Maps Are Wrong and Everyone Knows It
File name: flood-maps-wrong.jpg
Subject: A suburban family stands in their front yard holding a FEMA flood map that shows their house in a white "safe" zone. Behind them — unseen by the family but visible to the viewer — floodwater is cresting over a levee and rushing toward the neighborhood. The map is dry. The reality is not.
Key details: The family looks relaxed, trusting the map. The floodwater should be close, ominous, inevitable. The map they're holding should look official but visibly outdated (yellowed edges, old typography). Maybe a "Last Updated: 1998" label visible on it.
Mood: False security about to shatter.
4. Why Your Health Insurance Doesn't Cover That
File name: health-insurance-doesnt-cover.jpg
Subject: A 1940s factory floor, workers assembling something on a production line. A foreman is handing out small cards (health insurance cards) from a stack, the way you'd hand out ration cards. Above the scene, a large banner reads "TEMPORARY WARTIME MEASURE." Below the banner, a calendar on the wall shows 1943. But the workers' shadows on the floor stretch impossibly long, morphing into modern silhouettes — someone at a desk, someone on a phone, someone in a hospital gown — suggesting the "temporary" system stretching into the present.
Key details: The wartime factory setting (rivets, machinery, uniforms). The health cards being distributed casually, as an afterthought. The long shadows connecting past to present.
Mood: A small, improvised decision casting an enormous, permanent shadow.
5. The Memo That Killed Long-Term Care
File name: memo-killed-long-term-care.jpg
Subject: A single sheet of paper — a typed memo — pinned to the center of the image. Around it, domino-like, elderly people's walkers, wheelchairs, and pill bottles are toppling outward in a spiral. At the top of the memo, barely legible, the heading: "PRICING ASSUMPTIONS." The paper looks crisp, clinical, unbothered. Everything around it is in chaos.
Key details: The memo should be pristine — neat type, clean margins, official letterhead. The surrounding collapse should feel physical and human (reading glasses, family photos, a Social Security check mixed in with the falling objects). The contrast between the tidy document and the devastation it caused.
Mood: A small, dry, bureaucratic document with catastrophic human consequences.
6. We Solved Insurance in 1752 and Then Forgot
File name: solved-insurance-1752.jpg
Subject: Split composition. Left side: Benjamin Franklin stands in front of a simple wooden building (the Philadelphia Contributionship), surrounded by neighbors shaking hands, passing coins into a shared pot. The scene is warm, communal, lit by candlelight or golden daylight. Right side: a modern glass skyscraper with the same insurance company's name on it, but now the building is surrounded by a maze of velvet ropes, and tiny figures at the bottom are being turned away by security. An executive at the top floor looks out the window at a stock ticker.
Key details: The left should feel human-scale, cooperative, warm. The right should feel cold, corporate, inaccessible. Franklin should be recognizable but not cartoonish. The transition from left to right should feel like a gradual loss.
Mood: Something good that was quietly taken away.