The same laptop-on-a-desk photo, on every blog in your industry.
Stock libraries are a shared wardrobe. Everyone shops in the same aisle, so every article about productivity gets the same sunlit desk and the same anonymous hands on the same keyboard. It is not that the photos are bad — it is that they say nothing, and readers have learned to skip them.
Generated imagery does not automatically fix that. Generated imagery with a fixed house style does, because after ten posts the picture starts doing the job a masthead does.
Write the style once. Vary only the subject.
This is the whole technique. A fixed prefix that never changes, a variable subject that always does, and one approved image passed as a reference on every call.
“Flat vector editorial illustration, cream background, two-tone palette of warm yellow and near-black ink, thick uniform strokes, generous negative space, no text, no gradients, no photorealism”
…of a padlock dissolving into a flock of birds
…of a bridge being built from both ends at once
…of a filing cabinet with one drawer full of light
…of a hand pulling a single thread from a tangle
💡 The subject line is a metaphor, not a summary
“An article about API rate limiting” produces a picture of a computer. “A queue of paper planes waiting at a narrow gate” produces something a reader remembers. Ask for the image, not the topic.
Where it fits in a publishing flow
Drafting, in the editor
The agent writing the post generates the featured image from the metaphor you gave it, drops it into the frontmatter and compresses it. The post is complete when the draft is.
Cursor setup →At build time
A build script checks each post for a missing image, generates one from the title and style string, and commits it. Nothing ships without a header.
Image generation API →Backfilling an archive
Two hundred old posts, one multicall batch at a time, all sharing the reference image. The archive stops looking like five different eras of the same blog.
Batch endpoint →The images inside the post matter more than the one on top
A featured image gets a glance. An illustration halfway down is what a reader stops at — and it is the thing that gets screenshotted and shared with a link back to you.
- Section dividers — A small vector mark per section, generated as SVG, weighing almost nothing.
- Concept illustrations — One per major idea. Same house style, so the post holds together visually.
- Screenshot frames — Put a real screenshot into a generated device or environment with edit_image.
Blog imagery questions
How do I keep two hundred posts looking like one publication?
Write the style once as a fixed prefix, keep it in your CMS or your repo, and append only the subject per post. Then pass one approved image as a reference on every call. The style string handles the medium and palette; the reference handles everything a sentence cannot describe.
Should the post title be in the image?
No. Baked-in text cannot be translated or edited, models still mangle small type, and the title is already in the page. Generate a text-free image and render the words over it in HTML or at build time — that also gives you a proper OG image for free.
What size should a featured image be?
16:9 covers the article header and the social preview in one asset. Generate at the model’s native size, and only upscale if your theme actually renders it full-bleed on large screens.
Can I generate diagrams this way?
For decorative or conceptual illustration, yes. For a diagram that has to be technically correct — an architecture graph, a sequence of steps — generate the vector styling and keep the structure authored, or use a diagramming tool. A generated flowchart looks right and says nothing.
What does a post cost?
One featured image on a standard model is 15 credits, plus 1 to compress. Two inline illustrations take it to about 47. A weekly publishing cadence lands comfortably inside the free tier’s bigger sibling rather than needing an enterprise plan.