Podcast Cover Art: 3 Ways to Thumb-Stopping New Listeners

Podcast Cover Art is the one shot have at capturing your listener’s attention on Spotify, Apple, or whatever platform they use. This is worth investing in to create something thumb-stopping that helps your podcast growth.

Podcast Transcript:

What’s up everybody. My name is Ms. Behak. Welcome back to pod Mahal today. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you can maximize your podcast artwork. So this is really important because if you think about it, when people are scrolling in whatever directory they might be listening to, whether that’s apple, that’s audible, that Spotify and Stitcher, Google play, uh, on your website, you name it.

They’re going to basically judge the book by its cover at first, right? You have to kind of anticipate, uh, people who are going to do that because I do it too. You do it as well. We all do that, right? So we want to make a good impression. And we want something that is some stopping, right? So when you’re scrolling or when you’re sliding, you’re checking out new stuff. You want something that has bright colours that would actually make you go, what’s that right?

The next thing that you want to pay attention to is basically, uh, the amount of text and the font that you’re kind of using. So making sure that maybe the name of your show, is visible and you can establish an impression in somebody’s head. That’s like, okay. Pod Mahal, right. As something that’s catchy, it tells you a little bit about, what I might, do enough that it might make you actually click and read the description, which is kind of the next pathway for a podcast listener. Right? So, those two things are important to keep in mind, make sure that you’re using bright colours, make sure that your font is appropriate to something that you like. And that gets your name across.

The next thing that you want to think about is the images that you’re kind of using, right?

So do you want to use an outline of yourself? Right. So, you see this on my channel, probably see it all over YouTube, where on the thumbnail of YouTube videos. For example, your body’s outlined and kind of cut out, and then there’s maybe a different colour background or some elements there. That’s a format that people like to use as a real-life picture of them that’s outlined and, shaped up to be like, this is the host of the show. This is, who you’re going to be building a relationship with. Right. The other option is using something that’s a little bit more digitized, right? So that’s maybe a little bit more cartoony or sketchy.

I do a comedy show with a comedian named, uh, Ryan wrens and, uh, it’s called tough times. And our logo for that is very cartoony and, you know, stands out in that way.

But then if you take a look at something like Padmahal, you know, it’s very simplistic, it’s minimalist. You know, that type of design is the logo itself, and I didn’t really need to change much to make it my podcast. You know, cover art, something you’re going to have to keep in mind as dimensions. Right? So make sure that basically for a lot of what you’re going to be using, it will probably be about, and this is changing and evolving from time to time. But anywhere between 1500 by 15 pixels to, the max is about 3000 by 3000.

So this is something that you can resize in Canva or probably some other online software out there. Um, when it comes time for you to upload it directly into whatever RSS feed, you know, you’re kind of using what I guess I want to make sure to get across is that it is worth it to spend a little bit of money upfront, uh, to get somebody, to do your logo, to do a good job designing, uh, that stuff.

Especially if you’re starting fresh, like you don’t have to, you can make it yourself on Canva. But there is an advantage to your branding. Obviously, when you come up with a name that is directly signifying, you might be discussing what you might be doing on that show. And at the same time, the same way we’re trying to kind of when people hear your voice. They’re going to kind of be reminded of what your show is and what you talk about. And there’s this association with you, right? Same way people will have that with your artwork, right. When that pops up or when that logo pops up, uh, you know, on a t-shirt or on a social media post or something like that, it’s visible. And it reminds somebody that, okay. Yeah, this is, Ms Michelle.

And I wanna, you know, haven’t checked it out in a while. Let me go see what’s happening. I feel as though there have been times where I didn’t pay somebody, I did it myself and I kinda went with that for the album artwork. And then there have been more times than not where I have actually made sure that a designer understands the art style. What I’m doing, helps to develop that you want something that feels good. Something that looks good, because ultimately, later on, you’re going to be using this logo for different purposes and you might be getting merchandise like t-shirts right. You might be getting coffee mugs and water bottles, who knows, but it’s cool to have something that from the beginning, you’re set up for that.

If that’s ever a route that you decide to go coming back full circle, to our point about judging a book by its cover, right.

We try not to do it. We hope that our listeners aren’t doing that with us, but you know. A large percentage of people, you know, do that. And we can prepare for that on the backend, by just putting a little bit of time, energy and resources into, you know, what your podcast cover AR is gonna look like. If you have any questions, if you need any help with deciding, which route to go, what colours to choose, you know, any guidance in that way at all, you can leave a comment. You can reach out to me at connect at Mizhq.com hit me up on Instagram. If that’s easy for you, I really appreciate you, watching and tuning in.

Thank you so much to those of you who are listening. If you’re on the podcast platforms and, yeah. Make sure you like, and subscribe, leave a review on that stuff always helps, but hit me up. If you have any questions on this, I’d love to help out. Thanks again for watching. My name is Misbah Haque and I’ll see you.

Bite-sized action items to go from dreaming to streaming your podcast.

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