Podcast cover art is the visual image that helps your audience to identify a little information about your podcast visually. Your podcast cover design represents the show’s brand or logo. You should display appealing podcast cover art to attract new listeners and gain new subscribers.
An almost entirely audio experience is podcasts. You establish a close bond with them by essentially whispering in your audience’s ears for an hour. Your podcast cover art is one place where the visual is equally as essential as the text before it reaches your listeners’ ears.
Podcast cover art that catches the audience or viewer’s eyes is important. In life, the famous saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, doesn’t only apply to thumbnails and cover art. To understand, there is so much content out there, so you need something to stand out and motivate your viewers to stop scrolling.
Listeners often browse a library or category of various podcasts in the world of podcasts. They might perform a search for a subject they’re interested in and then scan the content that comes up. The design of a podcast cover art is the first thing viewers notice. One can presume that a podcast’s excellence will be reflected in its attractive cover art. As soon as they see the cover image, people will start to judge and evaluate your work.
While the podcast cover art content keeps the listeners coming back for more while the podcast cover art performs as the hook for new listeners. For people to subscribe or come back, there needs to be a good reason for people to stick around, so your podcast cover art needs to be of that high quality. Now that you have understood podcast graphics’ importance, do you want to know how to make them stand out?
For creating an excellent visual boost podcast cover art(podcast cover design) that stands among others, you should check out and follow the following steps mentioned below:
Study or Know Your Competitors
Before you start creating your podcast cover design journey, look closely at your competitors. Understand how your competitors approach thumbnail design, from the imagery to the color palettes to the fonts. This is the time to get inspired and be creative, learn about how you’re up against, and be mindful about dominating different categories.
You might think that understanding your competitors is about the emulate cart-topping podcasts in your field, but the thing here is you will learn to study your competitors and apply some norms and principles in your work.
The best way to study your competitors’ podcasts is by scrolling or going through specific genres, whether it is health, education or business. Also, remember to take notes of the podcast cover art or podcast cover design that stands out for you and find out why. The best way I have found to date is by opening the Spotify or Apple podcasts, then clicking on a random genre or section, and begin scrolling until something catches your eyes.
By following this, you will undoubtedly be able to know or figure out what is something that stands out for you. Whether it’s the color combination or the unique font placements. Always note it down as mentioned above and apply it to your own podcast cover design or cover art. But while doing this, you should be sure that the colors and the overall aesthetic matches the subject matter of your podcast cover art.
Get Your Specifications and Dimensions Right
The size of your podcast cover design truly matters. Suppose you want your podcast cover art to be viewed over numerous platforms. In that case, the podcast cover design you are designing requires you to follow the specific image guidelines and dimensions.
The best place to begin with to get your dimensions and specifications correct is by ensuring your podcast cover designs within the parameters Apple Podcast sets. The podcast feed consists of artwork with a minimum size of 1400 * 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 * 3000.
Your podcast cover art should always be designed in a 1:1 or square format. Once you are completed and ready to export your podcast cover design, set the export to screen resolution at 72 DPI. And remember to select the file format to a PNG or JPG for best image compression displays.
Deliver your Podcast’s Message
A podcast cover design should cover the whole theme or topics discussed on the podcast, taking the help of color, graphics, and typography. If your podcast explains the details about the health industry, then the message must be apparent in your podcast cover design. Stick to iconography, imagery, colors, typography, and copy that conveys your message.
While this mentioned thing applies to all visual components, the key is to come up with the title that resonates with the nature of your podcast9podcast cover art and podcast cover design). Go with a few words that easily convey what your podcast episodes might be all about.
Avoid wording that’s too vague or too particular because your audience will not just have an idea about what you are looking at; the same vague, cool-looking imagery doesn’t relate to anything you are making.
In the past, I’ve clicked on numerous podcasts because of their podcast cover art and was always disappointed with the actual product due to the misleading podcast cover design. Many people are tuned into this aspect of browsing. So, treat your audience respectfully instead of using anything creative and not trying to mislead them.
Stick to not more than Two Fonts
A podcast cover art is no different from other designs in that it benefits from using one or more typography to convey a message. Having three or more different fonts can make the visuals and tone challenging to read because many podcast thumbnails are so small.
It’s important that the fonts you select for your podcast cover design blend well together. Your podcast cover design can quickly advance if you learn the technique of font pairing.
The ideal strategy is to pick two fonts in sharp contrast to one another. If you insist on using a script font for the title copy, choose a straightforward sans serif to go with it. Find the exact opposite of the appearance of a font.
It is advisable to mix a geometric font with an organic one and a bold font with a lower weight. Create numerous iterations of your design using various typefaces if you’re unsure of what would work for it, and then go from there.
In the world of podcasts, words are all we have. So, for your podcast cover art, words play an essential role. The perfect podcast cover design(logo) consists of a multitude of elements geared towards a singular goal that communicates with your audiences about who you are and why they should be listening to you.
Even after you find out the perfect typography, never forget legibility. Please don’t make your fonts size too small so the audience will not be able to read it. Also, if the font size is too large, then the words will dominate and overwhelm the imagery.
Use the Appealing Visual
Choosing between using a photograph or a drawing as your podcast cover art should be one of your first priorities. Additionally essential: of what will it be a picture? We naturally believe a photo portrays something real since photography has a tendency to convey a sense of reality.
Hard news, science, and other fact-based podcasters undoubtedly want the audience to believe the material they are presenting is authentic. However, even if you’re making a fiction-based podcast, images can still give it a sense of reality.
While it’s true that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, when choosing a podcast cover art from a library, listeners undoubtedly pay close attention to the graphics. First impressions matter, and a fascinating thumbnail are essential to attracting more listeners.
Use distinctive images, typography, and imagery in your podcast cover design to entice readers. Consider how each component of your composition fits with the others. Simple lettering and simple silhouettes frequently blend in with other podcast cover art.
While Using Colors, be mindful
After the visual and typography, an essential matter to take into consideration is color while designing your podcast cover art. Understanding color psychology and theory is imperative to get the right mood, message, and tone to the listeners of your podcast cover art.
Color theory dictates that each color represents particular psychological states of being and emotions. Color temperature affects the mood, like cool colors make people calm, serene and at peace or relaxed, whereas warm colors are connected with energy, action and brightness.
The theme of your podcast must relate to the shade or tone of color used in your Podcast cover art or podcast cover design. For example, using a neon color palette is not the best idea for a business podcast. Instead, go for a harmonious palette that evokes professionalism.
However, avoid using the expected color choices when choosing the hues. Having a predictable palette means your podcast cover art will clash with competitors. While choosing the colors, it can be sometimes frustrating to test and decide which colors work best together that stand out for your podcast cover art.
Honestly, I have mapped everything out in my head but only found the colors don’t work together once I’ve brought it all into Photoshop or Illustrator. It’s a visual thing, so don’t be afraid of mixing the colors or trying color combinations because you can never predict what can work out.
Source High-Quality Illustrations and Vectors Images
A high-quality image design goes a long way. It helps to differentiate your podcast cover art from others in the visuals alone. Lucky for you, various online sites offer you illustrations and vector images. But the question is, which sites provide high-quality illustrations and images, and how can you get them?
Then don’t you worry because here we have come up with the solution ?illustAC has made a collection of high-quality illustrations, vectors, photography, and background images for your guys to download for free.
You can easily go through all of these images in our free illustAC editor program and download them to apply them to your podcast cover design.
You can easily find the right images, illustrations, vectors or clipart from illustAC with the right keyword. It has provided a collection of categories to choose from like people, stationery, flowers, and so on. You can easily download these high-quality and stock images with one click on the right image, and the download button appears.
After downloading these graphics, you can use them in your podcast over design and also, using these illustrations and vector images from illustAC can never be a disappointment. As illustAC’s images always stand out and get high engagement from people.
illustAC also helps you find the desired shape, color or size of the illustrations, and vector images with the facility offered, i.e., filter search and image search. You will surely get the desired images( artwork) needed for your podcast cover design from illustAC within minutes.
Also, if you want to enjoy various other facilities of illustAC, you can be its premium user. And, it doesn’t cost you a lot, i.e., just $12.2 and $132 monthly and yearly. After being a premium member of illustAC, you can easily enjoy its other services like unlimited downloads, no attribution is required, new design packs are offered regularly, zip numerous images, and many more.
You can trust illustAC for high-quality illustrations that gain high engagement from people using them in your podcast cover design or podcast cover art. As you can see, illustAc has achieved the trust of over seven million people.
Choosing illustAC for your podcast cover design or podcast cover art can be the best decision for you in gaining subscriptions as high-quality images easily get attention.
Choose a style for your cover
Line, Shape, Texture, Framing, Color, and Type are the six fundamental components of podcast cover design. Your podcast cover design’s style is determined by how you use them.
We’ll rapidly glance over the line and shape of your artwork because those elements are likely to be determined by the theme. Just keep in mind that the object’s lines will draw the viewer’s attention in the direction you want it to go. No matter how stylized the shape of the boat is for your sailing podcast, it must still communicate the concept of a “boat.”
The actual size of the podcast artwork will once again have an impact on the texture and frame. A music player’s small screen will become a confusing mess if there is too much shading and texture. A face or body can only be framed in so many different ways inside a square image.
The critical point here is to pick a style that relates to your podcast cover design. For an inspirational podcast, fun and colorful is appropriate. Moreover, a retro look is highly likely to appeal to lovers of vintage cars, but not the high tech.
Conclusion
When people search for your podcast on their phones, they will first notice its cover. It serves as a visual introduction to your podcast and the message you want to communicate. Another requirement to get your podcast cover design noticed on different platforms has quality podcast cover art.
We hope reading the article was helpful for you to understand how you can make a fascinating podcast just in these simple steps.