Let’s talk about podcast art. When it comes to podcasting, there are two primary types of graphics you should consider: Cover Art and Episode Art.

Cover Art: When you think of an album or CD you think of its cover. The artist is usually on the front with the title of their album. Cover Art for your podcast is similar in that it has your podcast name (logo) and some kind of eye-appealing design. Podcast Cover Art is the thumbnail image listeners will see when they scroll through podcast apps or like/subscribe/follow your show.

Episode Art: Episode art is an image that promotes individual podcast episodes—typically used for social media posts or email marketing campaigns. It takes aspects of your Cover Art branding, but the purpose is to promote individual episodes as opposed to the entirety of the podcast.

The design for these two types of art should differ slightly because the goals for each type of graphic are different!

This week we’ll be talking about Cover Art.

The goal of Cover Art is to catch a user’s eye quickly as they scroll podcast apps. The image is often small so should be easy to read and give someone somewhat of a sense of what they’ll get from the podcast.

Your cover art is an extension of what listeners can expect from your show. Spend some time creating an appealing graphic. While the saying goes “Don’t judge a book by its cover…” when it comes to podcast cover art and apps—if your art is ineligible, overwhelming, or erratic—potential listeners are going to scroll right on by.

The text on the graphic should be clear and minimal. Far too often, I see podcasters create cover art and try to put not only the title on the graphic but the subtitle and hostname too. It’s just too much—and likely, the text won’t be legible in apps. Keep the text to the podcast title and the host’s name, if the host is known or holds some kind of notoriety.

Contrasting Colors

Text and background should have contrasting colors so the cover POPS. Use a color wheel to find contrasting colors that complement each other. Here’s one I found after doing a quick search on the web: https://brightside.me/articles/the-ultimate-color-combinations-cheat-sheet-92405

Use graphics on the cover sparingly including photos of hosts and/or clipart/drawings. Oh, and if you can spare it, nix using a microphone or headphones on podcast cover art to symbolize your show is a podcast. If your cover art is in a podcast app platform, people realize it’s a podcast.

You can see some examples of cover art on my website here: https://www.darlenevictoria.com/podcast-services.

You’ll see that most follow the tips above and for the ones that are a little too wordy, you can see why I suggest minimalism is best! ;)

You can DIY or hire someone to design podcast cover art for you. If you go the DIY route, Canva or Adobe Photoshop are both valid design options.

You should also keep in mind the size specifications of the image—different apps have different specifications. But you can still create one image that should work for most. At minimum cover art should be 1400 x 1400 pixels and square.

Oh! And here’s some good news: you can update your podcast cover art at any time. If you re-brand or just decide the original design wasn’t showcasing what the podcast is about, you can change it up. Many podcast hosts make updating cover art fairly easy.

If you are currently designing cover art or amid a re-brand and looking for some feedback, you are always welcome to email it to me and I’ll be happy to offer some insight.