Readers who have access to The Straits Times’ mobile app can discover a series of curated stories daily through a section on the homepage called ST Picks. In this section, readers can swipe left and right on a gallery of square cards to get a quick glimpse of featured articles. We believe that good journalism is about not just writing a good article, but also serving readers with great visuals that captivate them and improve narratives.

Here are some top picks from our team according to visual appeal and catchiness, or something we personally like.

Visual aesthetics alone are not the only factor that entices a reader to click on ST Picks images. Sometimes, it could be a catchy headline, or a topic that is of public interest. Here are the top six ST Picks that drew the most traffic between Aug 25 and Sept 23, 2024.

ST's Digital Strategy editors look at the best features, explainers, interactives, analyses and commentaries produced across the newsroom and pick five stories to highlight the next day.

They give the headlines a new spin - snappy, playful and eye-catching titles work well - and collaborate with designers on finding the right images.

As this is something that we do on a daily basis within a short timeframe, the design treatments we choose to implement on images should ideally not be time-consuming, yet be able to showcase the design team’s creative flair and increase readers’ interest in our stories.

One technique we use often is the masking of images.

Sometimes, we come across stories that are sensitive in nature and the photos we are allowed to use may be limited. In these instances, illustrations are a good option.

Other design treatments we often use include applying duotones or gradients to images, as well as collages.

All the ST Picks images you see are created in Canva. As ST Picks involves cross-collaboration between the editorial team and design team, efficient work tools are important. Canva is not only user-friendly, but also allows multiple users to work together in real time.

ST Picks is powered mainly by a bunch of creative design interns on rotation. We created a style guide to ensure consistency in the visuals that we produce. We came up with templates and tested out different font sizes to make sure they read well on different devices. All headlines follow the same set of padding and line heights throughout the templates. We also stick to a recommended palette.

We do all these to ensure best practices, so that we don’t lose track of ST’s brand identity and colours in the creative process.

Look out for these curated images the next time you open the ST app.