The art of the perfect cover

The Advocate typically produces two possible types of cover images. The first – and most common – is taking a photo of a real local person or persons as it relates to our cover story. The second type of cover is what we call a concept cover. This is typically a computer-generated image that connects to the theme we are writing about.

We choose to use concept covers for several reasons. Sometimes we believe our topic can best be visually conveyed with a powerful image over the use of a person’s photo. And sometimes we just can’t get someone to agree to be on our cover in time before deadline.

In 2024, our 12 covers featured nine that were photos of local people, and three concept covers. Of the three concept covers, our December edition featured a painted cover by a local artist.

Last month, our cover story was entitled Small town, big dreams: How do we save our sense of community? It was a popular edition and got people talking – and writing lots of letters to the editor, which we love. A handful of people asked why we used artificial intelligence to produce the cover image, rather than a local artist, which showed a woman staring at a split image of a small town on the left and a town undergoing rapid development on the right.

It’s interesting because no one ever asked about our use of computer-generated stock imagery in the past, which we’d purchase from Adobe. But I chalk this up to the incredible pace of accelerated change under AI.

And yet every age is threatened by innovation. Early office computers and word processing software were seen as “typist-killers.” Everyone worried about secretarial roles, and yet these jobs were transformed into administrative assistants, with more time freed for scheduling, project coordination, and communications.

In my profession, professional typesetters and paste-up artists feared total displacement with the use of layout software. And word processor programs like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect introduced built-in spell checkers and a thesaurus. Some journalists and publishing professionals were worried these tools might undercut the need for human editors.

According to Nielsen BooksScan, in Canada about 25,000 thesauruses are sold each year, which marks an 80 per cent drop since 2000. (And I bet the remaining sales are just gifts from well-meaning grandparents, but I can’t prove it.)

AI has become a tool for media organizations, just like spellcheck, built-in thesauruses, layout programs, and stock imagery. A newsroom is a busy place, especially a small local one with limited resources. Producing online media, a weekly newspaper, plus several magazines, means we sometimes need to make quick decisions and can’t always use local artists for a rapid turnaround.

Admittedly, AI is a new frontier. All innovations are. In this case, its power is truly transformative because its potential application is so all encompassing. I fervently hope governments will provide safeguards for its use. We cannot just leave it in the hands of a cadre of billionaires.

In the meantime, we will continue to make judicious use of AI in our profession, in full recognition of its threat – and incredible opportunity.