We Rejected Eight Topshots For One Story, Check Out All The Rejects: Tales From The Slack

The “topshot,” aka the photo at the top of a post, is extremely important. It sets the tone for the entire piece. It’s what people see on social media. You basically have two ways to market a story to someone: the headline and the topshot. A good headline and topshot combo can be worth a 400-1000% difference in traffic. A bad headline or topshot can kill a good story.

We have an entire room in Slack, our communication app, devoted entirely to headlines. Here’s a glimpse:

It’s an art, and it’s something we’re fairly good at having done it a bunch of times. I’ve probably written or edited 30,000 or more headlines at this point. 100,000? A lot.

Topshots are an art, as well, and Jason is probably the master of them. I try. I do. But Jason is the best. We once got 5 million views+ on a post at the old site and my belief is that it was one of the biggest reasons why was his excellent photoshop skills.

I did the topshot for this post and, actually, I’m realizing I forgot to fix the windows on the Tesla and CLS. I’m going to just leave it that way since it’s instructive. So how did we get here? Here’s the journey. From first to last.

ATTEMPT #1

Reason it was rejected: You can’t really tell it’s a CLS.

ATTEMPT #2

Reason it was rejected: The text, actually, should be about the CLS.

ATTEMPT #3

Reason it was rejected: Text is better, but can you tell that’s a Tesla?

ATTEMPT #5

Reason it was rejected: That’s cool, but the Fusion thing is off. It should be a CLS, since that’s what the story is about.

ATTEMPT #6

Reason it was rejected: Looks better. Has the right text. Technically, the wrong CLS, but that’s fixable. You can’t really tell they’re the same car and you lose the Fusion angle.

ATTEMPT #7

Reason it was rejected: Better, but what about putting a blueprint on the background?

ATTEMPT #8

Reason it was rejected: So close. I forgot to fill in the windows on two of the cars. (Those are actually schematics from something not at all automotive, but it works. I didn’t make the windows transparent, though).

ATTEMPT #9

ACCEPTED! I could have done a better job on the windows, but it’s good enough for government work.

8 thoughts on “We Rejected Eight Topshots For One Story, Check Out All The Rejects: Tales From The Slack”

It’s amazing how it takes 8 people so many hours and repetitions for a decision that one guy could make in 5 minutes and never think about it again and never have one single regret about.

But enough about my job. You guys rock!

As others have said, it is good to see some of the behind the scenes thought that goes into a site like this. Although it leaves me wondering if too much committee oversight stifles art and individual expression or just slows down the game.