loading images defined in an exported const, see sveltekit blog example

[Phosphoenix]

Probably noob question as I'm just starting with sveltekit although really enjoying it.

I'm trying to implement the blog example from the tutorial but I run into problems when i want to store images in the data.js file.
I have my images stored in /lib as suggested here and try to import them as
img_fname: '$lib/design2'.

This is the same question on stack overflow but the only existing answer doesn't resolve the problem. Or is this a problem that runs deeper?

Thanks!