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The Harsh Truth About Podcast Cover Art · Your Mic

• 0:00
  Scroll any podcast app for 30 seconds and you'll see it, blurry selfies,
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  five different fonts, fighting to the death, and stock microphones slapped over generic
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  gradients like it's 2014. Then hosts wonder why nobody clicks on their podcast.
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  Your cover is the hey look over here of your entire show. It's the first thing somebody sees
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  in Apple podcasts, Spotify or a TikTok YouTube embed. If it doesn't grab them in a half a
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  second or less and I do mean in a half a second or less and tell them what world they're stepping
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  into, they keep scrolling. Directories also shrink that art down to the size of a postage stamp
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  on mobile. If your design only works full screen, it doesn't work. And if it looks amateur at that
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  tiny size, people assume the audio is amateur too, even if your content is a hit. And when it comes
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  to podcasts, covers these are the worst sins I have seen so far. Word salad, titles and taglines
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  and names and season numbers and slogans and logos. You've got a novel inside a 3000 by 3000
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  square that shows up on somebody's phone smaller than a quarter. They can't read it and they won't
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  try, which means they will not listen to your show. Mike and headphone clip art. I must
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  preface this by saying yes, my podcast cover has two mics on it, but hello, I have a podcast
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  production company. The name of my show is your mic and it's for new and aspiring podcast hosts
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  who shocker talk into microphones. So unless your show is literally about podcasting the mic,
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  it's not going to help your topic. It's like putting a picture of a DVD on a movie poster.
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  Listeners do not care that you own a microphone. They assume you do and they also assume that your
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  audio is not going to suck. Also, grocery store tabloids selfies, dark, low res photos, bad lighting,
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  busy backgrounds, your face jammed into the corner like a Facebook profile pic from 2010.
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  You're asking people to trust you with their time and maybe their business in your cover looks
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  like a drunk screenshot. And quite possibly the worst one, genre confusion. Siri is B2B shows with
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  cartoon fonts, comedy shows that look like a law firm logo, true crime podcast that look like
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  meditation apps. The art and the title are telling two different stories in that is what's going
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  to kill trust, no matter what your podcast is about. So what do you do about it? I'll tell you,
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  without turning into a design nerd. Get the text specs right first, square image, 3,000 by
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  3,000 pixels, JPEG or PNG under 512 kilobytes. Make sure it looks crisp on mobile, light mode,
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  and dark mode. That's the boring part. Do it once. Never think about it again. Five words or less.
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  On the cover itself, you're going to get show title, maybe your name. And that's it. No taglines,
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  no paragraphs. If your title doesn't explain what the show is, your art should do it visually,
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  not with more text. Then design for the scroll, not the billboard, print your art small and tape it
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  to your screen or zoom out until it's tiny and ask yourself, can I read the title? Can I tell
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  the vibe? If not, you're decorating a square, not building a hook. What you also want to do is make
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  the subject obvious at a glance. If it's comedy, it should look fun. If it's horror, it should look
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  like a problem. Maybe even give you nightmares. What you also want to do is use real branding, not chaos,
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  one or two fonts, one main color with one accent, same palette as your website and social. Make
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  sure you are what they call on brand. When people see a clip in their feed, they should instantly
• 3:53
  think that's that show before they even read the words. Bottom line is your cover art is your
• 3:58
  handshake. If it's limp, sweaty and confusing and trust me as a Texan, I know that limp, sweaty
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  and confusing handshakes are the worst in the business world. And if your podcast is a business
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  and your cover art is like a weak handshake, people pull back before you can ever say a word.
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  Now, you don't need award-winning illustration. You need something clean,
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  legible and honest about what the hell your show is about. And if you want help tying the
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  visual side to the strategy, who the show is for, what it sells, how it grows, grab the speak
• 4:32
  podcasting roadmap. I'd love to send it over to you. Freddie, with a Y at SpeakPodcasting.com,
• 4:39
  send me an email and I'll be glad to help you out. And if you got any value from this episode,
• 4:43
  please share with the aspiring podcast host in your life. Thanks so much for listening.