It strikes me as very much a current aesthetic in younger companies or smaller startups, maybe highly influenced by Notion. No one makes a list or page or calendar invite in my current company without choosing an emoji for it.
It never caught on but I always liked setting the jumbo header images on Notion docs to creepy, unsettling pictures from Unsplash.
Need to write a document about converting a Rust project to Typescript? A picture of an abandoned warehouse full of expressionless baby doll heads fits perfectly.
