Monzo art direction things to avoid

Summary

A photography "things to avoid" slide: eight rejected example images laid out in a four-by-two grid, each marked with a red cross and a short rule it breaks.

Visual description

Pale mint background with the same "Art direction" pill top-left and page number "56" top-right. A large near-black headline "Things to avoid" sits above a muted sub-line "Our art direction don'ts." Below, a grid of eight rounded photos in two rows of four. Each cell is headed by a small red circular cross icon and a one-line caption naming the fault: overly staged, cold, doesn't connect to message, over-saturated or over-done lens flares (top row); pixellated, type over busy photography, generic and stock (bottom row, one cell left empty). The example images include a pink flatlay with a colour fan, hands at a laptop, a teal poster with green-tracksuit figures, an over-bright beach portrait, a red card at the beach, a burger composition with text overlaid, and a piggy bank.

Key takeaway

Showing the failure modes as a dense grid of real rejected images, each tagged with a red cross and a precise caption, so the negative rules are unmistakable. Mirroring an earlier do-this slide with this don't grid gives reviewers a fast before/after mental model.

Reuse notes

A reusable don'ts layout for any imagery or photography guideline section. The red-cross-plus-caption pattern scales to four, six, or eight examples. Pairs naturally with a matching do's slide of the same grid shape.