Below is a breakdown of two of the thousands of images I’ve created for DailyCoin over the years. The Cutout, Collage style was developed to achieve both efficiency, each piece completed in under thirty minutes, and creative flexibility. However, most of the work went into researching and analyzing the article’s subject matter to ensure each visual accurately reflected the story’s core message.
These images were crafted to enhance the articles through key psychological functions such as attention, emotion, comprehension, framing, memory, and cultural connection. A more detailed explanation of this process is provided later in the section. Because visuals occupy such a prominent position on news websites, they must perform at a high level. Many publishers make the mistake of relying on stock or AI-generated imagery—an approach that may save time initially but can ultimately cost them audience trust, traffic, and brand recognition.
Let’s explore the process in more depth.
I wanted to create an image that burns in your mind as much as it burns on screen. The act of destroying a passport isn’t just political — it’s existential.
The flames are real emotion; the smoke is consequence; the digital collage is legacy. Together, they tell the story of one artist turning protest into permanence.
Visual hierarchy and focus
-
The hand and passport occupy the center — human agency is key here. This reminds viewers that this is not random destruction, but a deliberate artistic act.
-
The passport’s flames are the brightest element — warm colors against a cool blue background naturally draw the eye.
-
The hollow burned out building puts everything in context. War and destruction.
-
The smoke forms a visual halo around the act, framing it in chaos and moral tension.
Psych effect: The composition makes the viewer witness an “event” rather than an object — creating drama and urgency.
Political and moral subtext
-
The Russian passport immediately locates the protest within a geopolitical context — but the artist’s hand in grayscale universalizes the message. It’s about moral stance, not nationality.
-
The smoke implies aftermath, consequence, and the spread of impact — the political and emotional fallout of the war, extending beyond the object itself.
-
This keeps the image anchored in protest while maintaining artistic neutrality: it’s about a political act, not propaganda.
Psych effect: provokes thought rather than prescribing opinion — it encourages readers to engage with motivation and symbolism.
This image was designed to condense protest, destruction, and digital transformation into a single visual act — the burning of identity (passport) as both a political statement and an artistic gesture. It visually echoes the tension between national identity and global conscience, exactly what the article explores through the artist’s action and NFT sale.
-
The passport is a universal symbol of national belonging, legality, and personal identity.
-
Burning it represents renunciation, protest, and liberation through destruction — a deeply emotional act that anyone, regardless of politics, instinctively understands as final and defiant.
-
This makes the story’s concept instantly legible even before a reader sees the headline.
This image visualizes market manipulation as orchestration, showing how influencers “conduct” market movements like a maestro leading an orchestra.
The conductor symbolizes charisma and control, capturing how public figures can sway emotions and prices without directly touching the instruments (the trades).
The chart background replaces musical notes, turning financial data into a performance and reinforcing the idea of coordinated volatility.
Using a monochrome palette keeps the tone serious and regulatory, while the expressive pose adds just enough irony to reflect influencer theatrics.
Overall, the image transforms a complex legal issue into a clear, memorable metaphor about influence, control, and spectacle in crypto markets.
“I wanted to show how the markets can be played like an orchestra — with influencers waving their digital batons while prices rise and fall on cue. The goal was to visualize manipulation not as brute force, but as performance and persuasion.”
Emotional tone: witty yet serious
-
The concept borders on satire — a playful analogy for something ethically dubious.
-
But the monochrome palette and structured composition keep it grounded and professional.
-
That balance reflects the article’s tone: serious legal implications, but about personalities and spectacle.
Psych effect: the humor disarms the viewer, making them more open to the article’s critique before moral defensiveness kicks in.
Strong visual metaphor: “conducting the market”
-
A conductor doesn’t play instruments — they direct others’ actions.
-
That perfectly parallels what crypto influencers are accused of doing: guiding or influencing others’ trades, not directly manipulating code or infrastructure.
-
The conductor’s expressive motion implies control, coordination, and flair — exactly how influencers present themselves online.
Psych effect: the metaphor transforms a technical accusation (“market manipulation”) into a simple, story-like image the viewer feels immediately.
