Designing Podcast Cover Artwork That Gets Clicks

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We are breaking down everything you need to know about designing podcast cover art that actually attracts listeners! From choosing the right fonts and images to understanding episode artwork specs, we cover it all.

In this episode, we talk a lot about visuals, so we recommend you listen in a podcast app that supports chapter images! Here's a list of our recommendations:

• TrueFans 
• Podcast Addict
• Podverse
• Fountain
• Castamatic

Topics we cover:

• Why good podcast artwork matters more than you think
• Common design mistakes to avoid 
• Tools and templates to create stunning artwork in minutes 
• How to make episode and chapter art enhance the listener experience
• Tips on fonts, file sizes, and how to stand out in your category

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Buzzsprout/Canva integration
• OnlyPod's Podcast Cover Art Size Preview

Let us know for next time: How to keep coming up with episode ideas, content planning, and avoid podfade.

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Episode Transcript

Kevin (00:00):
Alban.
Welcome back.

Alban (00:01):
Kevin.
Thank you for having me back.

Jordan (00:03):
Wait a second, Kevin, you're the one that's back.

Alban (00:06):
I don't feel like we never said that I was gone, so I
don't know if people

Kevin (00:09):
Well, you were out of Jacksonville, so, like, welcome
back to Jacksonville.
Thank you.
We were supposed to record yesterday in which I was
going to give you a heads up.
It is like the same temperatureas what
I imagine the surface of the sun is.

Alban (00:28):
We walk out of the airport and the second I step
out I go oh, we're home.
Yeah, because you get hit withan oppressive wall of humidity.
Yes, and I'm a Florida man, soit now just that's home.
But 86 degrees and 86 degreesare nowhere close to the same
feeling.
When one of them is highhumidity and the other one's low

(00:49):
, it's like 20 degrees different.
It's just a totally differentexperience, and I was like I
can't wear pants anymore.
Like pants, are off the tablefor a couple of months.

Kevin (01:01):
I know I started to stress because I was like, if
it's this hot here, I imagineTexas is pretty darn hot too,
and I was like we're like twoand a half weeks out from
podcast movement.
And I know, Jordan, you do notlike the heat,

Jordan (01:13):
No.

Kevin (01:14):
And I looked right now.
I can only see like the 10 dayforecast and it's like a hundred
, a hundred in Texas, no, yep,so I don't know exactly what
it's going to be at podcastmovement, but I'm hoping they
get a little cold front orsomething

Alban (01:25):
Now the benefit is, I think it's at the Gaylord Palms,
which is like they have thatgiant dome and it's kind of like
a little city under a dome.
Yeah it is.
You think Pauly Shore is there.
It's like a biodome, but wedidn't record yesterday and I
think we needed a moment ofsilence because oh, my God.
I can't believe this happened.
This is so upsetting.

(01:46):
10 years ago we bought a SamsonQ2U and then I just went on
this whole thing about praisingthis mic.
It can go through anything, itnever breaks.
It's so amazing.
Samson's the greatest companyand Jordan and I recorded a
episode on Friday.
It worked great.
And then yesterday, which wasTuesday, it would not work and

(02:10):
we sat there and we tried.
We reset computers, we tried todo any number of things got the
defibrillator out, perform CPR.
And the capsule is just dead.

Kevin (02:20):
I thought about that afterward, after we decided to
call it on the recording.
I was like why didn't we justtry banging on it Like just
smack the hammer.
It works.

Alban (02:27):
Sometimes it does.
You know, it's funny.
As I was packing, I wasdebating.
Do I even take this home?
Do I just throw it in the trash?

Jordan (02:34):
Yeah.

Alban (02:35):
And it's such a core memory having that mic, I had to
bring it home, so it's with me.
I've also bought a new SamsonQ2U to replace it for when we
travel.
But I might maybe I'll startbanging on this and see if I can
get it to come back to life.

Kevin (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that ironic.
I just said two weeks ago howthis mic is indestructible.
It's a kiss of death.
You can't say that.

Jordan (02:57):
It's not just that we said it was indestructible, it's
that we based an entire episodearound.

Kevin (03:02):
how awesome the Q2U was yeah, talk about stuff that
doesn't age well.

Jordan (03:06):
Yeah.

Alban (03:07):
And it also wasn't.
It wasn't like I banged it atany point.
It sat there on the desk andthen I folded up the little
tripod feet and I put it in thedrawer and I took it out of the
drawer and it was done.
No clue what happened alongthat journey.

Kevin (03:20):
And you hadn't used it for almost a year before that.
Right Right, Since the previouspodcast it was almost like it
was just hanging on.
This thing had any bit of soulto it.

Alban (03:33):
It was just like I got one more in me.
I heard Jordan and I do theepisode.
It was part of the StephenColbert got canceled episode and
the mic's just like I'm done.

Jordan (03:42):
I can't exist anymore in this world.

Alban (03:44):
That was the last one I could handle.
Here we go.

Jordan (03:53):
Welcome back to Buzzcast , a podcast about all things.
Podcasting from the people atBuzzsprout Boo boo, boo, Alban.
Sorry, I'm going to cut thatbecause that's not going to make
any sense to anybody.

Kevin (04:04):
You got all you knew.

Jordan (04:05):
Leave it in, leave it, leave it in I was doing finger
guns and I had to make noisesfor it uh, jordan put in a psa
here and I'll read it for you.

Alban (04:13):
This is an episode where we're going to talk a lot about
visuals from a podcast artworkand so, for the best experience,
you should use a modern podcastapp that supports chapter
artwork.
And Jordan put down a list ofthese great apps that show
chapter artwork, and they areTrue Fans, Podcast Addict,

(04:34):
Podverse, Fountain andCast-O-Matic.
Those are ones that you will beable to see the visuals we're
talking about and you'll get abetter experience.

Jordan (04:41):
Yeah, and maybe we need to be really specific here
because these are the podcastapps that support the like
podcast namespace chapters.
We did get a message from alistener in the UK that said I
wish you supported chapter onApple Podcasts and I guess Apple
Podcasts does also displaychapter artwork.

Alban (05:00):
Yeah, kind of.
So the way that Apple does it,I think Spotify doesn't support
any right.

Jordan (05:06):
I don't think so.
No, I haven't seen it.

Alban (05:07):
The way that Apple does.
It is if you embed the artworkin the MP3 file and the downside
there is that everybodydownloads the artwork, no matter
whether they look at it or theydon't.
It's not a great experience,and so you end up either
compressing the artwork downreally tiny so it kind of
doesn't look good, or you justleave it out.
And so you end up eithercompressing the artwork down
really tiny so it kind ofdoesn't look good, or you just
leave it out, and so we leave itout.

(05:29):
I mean, apple could update itso they pull from the other ways
that podcasting 2.0 has come upwith and they only download if
people are using an app thatactually wants to see the
artwork.

Jordan (05:39):
Well, the reason why we're talking about how this is
a very visual episode is because, really, in podcasting, the
only visuals you get for themost part are going to be the
podcast cover artwork and theepisode artwork and chapter
artwork, stuff like that.
So we will be displayingartwork in the chapters.

(06:01):
So if you want to switch toanother podcast app while you
listen to this episode, go aheadand do that right now.

Kevin (06:13):
Now I'll tell you I really do love this when I
listen to.
A large percentage of thepodcasts I listen to I listen to
when I'm driving around, andnot many podcasts do chapter art
, but I think it was Overcastwas the last one I was doing.
I don't know if Pocket Castdoes this, but every once in a
while I'll be driving in my carusing CarPlay and I think the
Overcast CarPlay app displaysthe chapter art right there as

(06:33):
I'm driving, and so I love it,Like I'm driving around
listening to a podcast and thenI'll see something flash.
I'll glance over and it's likethe thing they're talking about.
They'll show like, show likewhatever you know, a picture of
a circuit board or somethinglike that.
I was just listening to thismarathon podcast that I think
I've talked about on this showbefore is six hour podcast.
I made it through and you knowthree and some change, but they
referenced a lot of visuals andthey didn't use chapter artwork.

(06:55):
And they've totally could have,because everything that they
were talking about I think itwas actually like screen sharing
and stuff, but it would havetotally got the gist if they'd
just taken a screenshot of itand used it as chapter art.
So it can be a little bit moretime intensive on the creative
side.
Like Jordan, for this episode,you are going to have to take
some time at the end of theepisode and go back and, when
you're doing the chapters, grabimages and attach them to each

(07:17):
one of the chapters.
It does take a little bit moretime.
But for special episodes, whenyou have things that are
enhanced by, if you couldactually see the thing that
we're talking about, I think itmakes a lot of sense and it's a
nice thing to do for youraudience.

Alban (07:28):
Yeah, and to riff on Kevin's point a little bit, so
you're talking about thisepisode, six hour DHH marathon
episode.
They also made a fulltranscript.
There's all these chaptersalready baked in.
They've got timestamps forevery, like you know, main point
.
It's like really really long.
They took the time to make atranscript.
It wouldn't have been too muchmore work to take a handful of

(07:49):
screenshots of oh, here's whatwe're talking about and add it
to those chapters.
Yeah, I'm not sure what podcasthosts they're using, but I
think most probably supportadding artwork to the chapters,
or at least they should.
So I'm a proponent.
I think it's probably more alack of knowing that that
functionality exists rather thanthem not wanting to take the

(08:09):
extra time.
Yeah, but I've been drivingbefore and I was listening to an
episode I think it was onPocket Casts and as they were
talking about it, I saw theartwork changed on CarPlay and I
glanced over and went oh, thatmakes a lot more sense now that
I've got one little visual.
It's a very small update, but Ithink when it's used it's like

(08:30):
really tasteful.

Jordan (08:31):
I've actually listened to a few podcasts where they are
playing the recordings of alive show that they did, and
maybe they did like a specialepisode, where it's like a game
show version.
And it's so cool because whenyou pull up the chapter artwork
and you can like see these twothings that they're discussing
and it's almost like you're inthe audience because they're
like putting the slides up asthe chapter artwork and that is

(08:52):
just so cool.
I love it when people do that.
Okay.
So podcast cover artworkthere's kind of like two camps
when it comes to podcast coverartwork that I see a lot with
new podcasters.
You get either the people thatare like, well, if my audio is
good, then it doesn't matter, ifI have really good podcast
artwork and you know you neverjudge a book by its cover and

(09:12):
then you have the other peoplethat are like the podcast
artwork is the most importantthing, and I'm not really going
to pay attention to the content,because as long as, like, the
artwork is good, it's going tobring in the people I want to
listen to the podcast, and so Idefinitely want to address why
podcast cover artwork is soimportant, even if it is just a
tiny little thumbnail on amobile screen.

(09:34):
And, Alban, I actually pulled alot of these points from a talk
that you did a few years backat Podcast Movement, so I
definitely think that it's goingto be a huge advantage for me
to be able to pick your brain onthis.

Alban (09:48):
One of my favorite slides actually from that talk was I
always thought it was such astrange phrase don't judge a
book by its cover.
And I'm like, of course youjudge a book by its cover.
And I looked up the origin andit's from like the 1830s or
something.
I don't know the exact date,but it was old enough that I was
like oh, it's from like the1830s or something, I don't know
the exact date, but it was oldenough that I was like oh
everything was a leather boundbook.
Yeah, like everything looked thesame.
So it wasn't really you weren'tgoing to learn a lot from the

(10:12):
cover.
But you do it now.
You judge books by its cover.
You judge podcast artwork.
It's your first impression.
If there's good artwork, itkind of shows the person who
made it has good taste and youimagine the good taste of the
artwork is going to show up inthe good taste of audio content.
I think that often there's atleast a correlation.

(10:34):
Even if it's not always ahundred percent correlation,
there is a correlation and likeit elevates the brand.
So I know if I see bad artworkI'm less likely to listen.

Jordan (10:46):
Yeah.

Alban (10:46):
And I think we ran a survey at one point and 62% of
podcast listeners said they'remuch more likely to click play
for the first time on a podcastif they like the artwork.
I think that's got to be, ifanything, that's underselling it
.
If you see bad artwork, you'rejust not going to click play.
If you see something that looksattractive, it catches your eye
for half a second.

(11:07):
That's enough that you mightread the title and the
description and maybe give it atest.

Jordan (11:12):
Yeah, there's been a few podcasts I've come across where
I happened to hear the audiobefore.
Seeing the podcast artwork is avery rare scenario, but
sometimes I'll listen and it'slike such a good episode.
And then I'll be like, okay,I'm gonna go find that on the
podcast app and then I'm goingto share it with like a friend
or a family member.
And then I see the podcastartwork looks like a little

(11:35):
janky and I'm just like, oh crap, now my friend's not going to
listen to this because they'regonna be like why are you
sharing this with me?
And so it almost gives me likesecondhand embarrassment.
If I'm really into a podcastthat has really bad cover art.
I don't know if that resonateswith you.

Kevin (11:50):
I do agree with what you all are saying, but I will offer
a slightly differentperspective, and that is that I
really enjoy independentpodcasts, and I enjoy them
oftentimes more than likemainstream stuff.
Yeah, so stuff that's, you know,like the Dateline series of
podcasts and like Wondry I'msure I haven't jumped ahead in
the outline yet, but I'm sureyou're going to feature some

(12:11):
Wondry, like they're notoriouslygreat for having fantastic
artwork and stuff, and so I dogive the podcasters oftentimes a
benefit of the doubt, when I'msearching for something new or
on a recommendation, that if thepodcast artwork doesn't look
super professional, superpolished, that's not a huge
turnoff for me right away.
I do think there is a line,though, like it does have to be

(12:31):
good.
I think, as Alban said andJordan you alluded to, I do want
to get at least an impressionthat the person's podcast I'm
about to listen to has sometaste like and they do care
about this, you know productionthat they put out there, and so
they at least did something good, but it doesn't have to be
award-winning graphic design.

Jordan (12:53):
Yeah.

Kevin (12:53):
And so, like I think that should be the measure for most
people who are starting apodcast is try to do something
good.
Again, you don't have to go andspend a lot of money to hire a
professional designer.
There are some very good tools.
You don't have to go and spenda lot of money to hire a
professional designer.
There are some very good toolsavailable to be able to, and
templates available so that youcan get something good even if
you don't have a lot of designskills, and so I'm sure we're
going to cover some of thatstuff.

(13:14):
But, just like my opinion islike don't set the bar by
looking at the best podcastartwork in the world and say
that's what I have to be able toachieve for my own podcast
before I launch.

Jordan (13:24):
Yeah, and.

Kevin (13:25):
I don't want anyone taking that message away.

Alban (13:27):
Yeah, maybe what we should do is well, we really
can't do this.
It would be nice to look atlike the worst 20% of artwork,
because that's what turns me off.
If I see something that's got abig podcast microphone and it's
got like the whole podcast name, and then it's got like a guy's
face and it's got a bigsubtitle and it's got like an

(13:47):
award badge on there, likethere's just so much going on, I
go this is in the bottom 10% ofartwork.
This is probably a bad podcastand that is enough to get me to
tap out.
I think if you're following thetips we talk about here, you're
going to pass the threshold ofif this is on point with
something I'm interested in.

Jordan (14:12):
I'm willing to click play.
Yeah, I think for me, like the,the podcast artwork that I've
come across where I'm just likewhoa, this is not good is random
pictures.
So with like no text, nocontext, it actually doesn't
like go with the theme of thepodcast.
But sometimes you'll get peoplewho just post like their selfie
from social media and that'slike the thumbnail for their
podcast, because they're justlike well, it's me talking, so

(14:32):
I'm going to like post myprofile picture as my cover
artwork and I go no, don't dothat, like nothing else, I think
.
I think that's that, along withwhat you're talking about,
Alban, with like social medialinks and like the website,
they'll have all these likethumbnails and stuff on this,
like tiny little artwork.
I think those are in the samecategory of like.

(14:52):
Don't do this for me.

Alban (14:55):
Yeah, the reason I say we can't give good examples here
is because I wrote a post yearsago on, you know, tips for
podcast artwork.

Jordan (15:02):
And.

Alban (15:03):
I gave some examples of like hey, look at these podcasts
that have microphones and allthe artwork.
It's terrible.
And then we sent it out in ournewsletter.
Apparently, one of them was abuzzsprout podcaster and I just
found them and they wrote backand they're like, oh well, we
met to update it and I was like,oh my gosh, I can't believe I
did that.
I feel so bad, so never again.

Kevin (15:24):
One of the best ways to learn good design is by looking
at bad design, and there used tobe a website that was called
webpagesatsuckcom and early inmy web design career we'd
reference this often.
They'd post websites thatsucked daily, and so you'd go
and check it daily and see baddesign and it would give you
some ideas of things to steerclear of when you were designing

(15:45):
things.
But, as Alban said, it isoffensive.
I think the webpages that suckthing actually got big enough
that it was a little bit of a Iwouldn't say a badge of honor.
Gosh, I don't know how it couldever been a badge of honor, but
maybe like a wake up call orsomething.
Yeah, and it was the whole weblike it was anonymous enough,
but doing it across podcastartwork doesn't really feel
right.
These are people who care a lotabout the craft that they're

(16:07):
doing and they might not havehad great design skills.
I might not have understood theimportance of having decent
artwork and, honestly, theymight not have just cared that
much.
They just wanted to launch yourpodcast and there's nothing
wrong with any of that stuff.
What we're trying to do is givetips to get the best podcast
artwork you can, if that'ssomething that's important to
you and we think it's importantbut if you don't, it's your
creation, it's your artwork,it's your passion project, and

(16:29):
so please don't take offense ifwe say anything that says like
oh, we don't like podcastmicrophones in podcast artwork
and you have one.
Please don't take that as anoffense, it's just a general
rule of thumb.

Jordan (16:46):
That we're saying like this is a little bit overused.
And you want to stand out?
Yep, all right, caveats aside,let's jump into it.
Okay, and before we get intothe weeds of how to design
podcast cover art, you reallyneed to go into it with like a
clear idea of what you're tryingto achieve with your podcast
artwork design.
So there are a few things thatyou want to keep in mind when
you are designing it or playingwith the idea or just kind of
like ruminating on how you wantyour podcast artwork to look.

(17:07):
And the first is to justconsider the tone of your
podcast.
A lot of times, if you see,like, for example, true crime
podcasts and they have like pinkor bubbly artwork, you can
somewhat assume that that isgoing to be a comedic view of
true crime, right?
Because something reallyserious, like Up and Vanished or

(17:29):
something like that.
It has kind of like moody tonesto it.
There's like these dark, foggypictures and the font is like
white or black or red and itjust it has that like mood to it
.

Alban (17:40):
You know the tone of the podcast.
Are you trying to be funny?
Are you trying to be serious?
Are you trying to be serious?
Yeah, is it professional?
These are the things to kind ofload into your brain before you
start coming up with ideas.
So, like, what's the tone?
Another one I think about a lotis who's the audience for the
show and what kind of images arethey going to recognize.
I think the example that I gaveat one point was, if you're

(18:03):
doing a podcast about Star Warslike there's a lot of like
images that you can put in therethat look like Star Wars and
maybe like the rebel symbol or alightsaber or something that
stuff should be in the artworkbecause you want this super fans
to recognize.
Okay, I know what this is.
This is for me.
We have an example here from apodcast called the Thing About

(18:26):
Austin, which Sarah from WishI'd Known Then podcast sent over
.

Jordan (18:30):
Yeah.

Alban (18:30):
And it looks literary, it looks calming, it kind of is
reminiscent of the Victorian era.
So it instantly gets you intothis mindset of oh, it's a
modern podcast about Jane Austen.

Jordan (18:49):
This is a very good example that Sarah sent us,
because, yeah, you have likethis image of Jane Austen, but
then there's also just that sortof like postmodern like stamp
across her face and then there'slike a squiggle outline thing
and the colors are punchy, eventhough it's like this old
imagery, and so it really doesgive you the impression, without
even looking at the podcastitself, it does give you the

(19:10):
impression that this is like, asyou said, a modern take on Jane
Austen.
You know, maybe they have likea little bit of like irreverence
to it or they're looking at itin like more of a funny manner.
But yeah, I think this is areally good example of
considering the tone, who theaudience is and then also the
imagery that they're going torecognize.

Kevin (19:28):
I know nothing about this podcast, but have either of you
listened to it?

Jordan (19:31):
I have not.

Alban (19:32):
I actually don't know that it's about Jane Austen.
I guess I assumed it's JaneAusten.
It says the thing about Austen,but when I see you know black
and white, what are these calledJordan?

Jordan (19:42):
lithograph yeah.

Alban (19:43):
It's like a lithograph or like some whatever.
It's like a dithered do a toneimage old timey dithered two
tone image.
According to Kevin, did I seean old timey looking image and
it says thing about Austin.
I go yeah, it's probably JaneAustin and it's a good reminder.
Like you don't have to putevery single word on there, you
can actually imply things withyour images.

Jordan (20:04):
Yeah.

Kevin (20:04):
And I think the way they did the treatment of the word
Austin over her eyes makes itfeel like they're going to give
you, like I don't know, somesort of background information,
like she's like anonymous or youdon't know the backstory.

Jordan (20:16):
Sorry, not anonymous.
Oh, I love that.

Kevin (20:18):
Yeah, right, they're going to reveal her identity
through the podcast.

Jordan (20:21):
Yes, reveal her identity through the podcast?
Yes, all right.
And then the last thing thatyou should think about is how
could your podcast stand out inits category?
So, really, the easiest way todo this is to go to the category
that your podcast is going tobe in and just browse other
cover art.
You know what are they doing.
How are?
Um?
I saw on Reddit the other daysomeone posted and they were
like why is red the most popularcolor in podcasting?

(20:45):
You see it in every singlecover art.
Like every cover art uses red.
Well, I mean, if that's thecase, maybe stay away from red.
I love this family message thatwe got from Salem, oregon that
says there are many categories,so I feel it is important to
match that too.
For some, it's like choosing awine Is it the name, brand,
company, type of wine, or maybethe label design?

(21:06):
For me, 90% of the time,choosing based on the label has
served me well, and I think thatthis is another example of like
choosing a book by its cover.
I will fully agree that when Ido choose wine, I usually go for
the really cool ones.

Kevin (21:20):
Yeah, 100%.
There's nothing thatdisappoints me more than if
you're looking at like a winelist, that I'm in at a
restaurant and you order what itsounds like a fancy wine and
it's expensive, and then itcomes to the table and the label
is like I was going to say, Iwas going to use a teenage term
for what it is.
My kids say buns.
If it's buns, it's buns.

Jordan (21:39):
What does that mean?

Kevin (21:40):
Kind of like your rear end.

Jordan (21:42):
Oh, okay, on the wine label.

Kevin (21:45):
No, it's not literally buns, they just say that's a
term they use for when somethingis not good.

Jordan (21:50):
Oh, gotcha, it's not good it stinks right.

Kevin (21:54):
It's a bummer, it's a disappointment.

Jordan (21:55):
I like the ones that are like really cool, like 19
Crimes has the coolest ones, Idon't know.
Yeah, you can actually likehold your phone up to them and
it'll be like Harry Potter style.
They'll actually start talkingand stuff.
What did you do?
Yeah, did you know that?
No it is so cool.

Alban (22:11):
How many bottles of wine had you drank when this happened
?
They start talking to you.
You're like I held my phone upand the wine bottle started
talking.

Jordan (22:23):
It's really cool, I swear.

Kevin (22:26):
We'll check this out at Podcast Move.
We'll find one of these bottles, All right.

Alban (22:29):
Jordan.
Please post an image of this inthe chapter artwork of the wine
bottle.
But yeah, I think the point iswell made that the right colors
are going to match your tone.
You're going to want to pickartwork that kind of hits the
tone.
It hits the images.
Who's the audience?
We got all.
We're thinking about all that.
But also, just go look at thecategory and don't do the exact

(22:51):
same thing as everybody else,because the place this really
matters is when someone says Iwant a business podcast, and
then they go click on thebusiness section and they scroll
through and if everybody hassuper minimal orange artwork,
you don't want to be anothersuper minimal orange artwork.
You want to be something thatstands out and is a little bit

(23:12):
different, so it catchespeople's eye.
So it might be better to bedifferent.

Kevin (23:16):
That can be challenging, so don't take.
What we're saying is that wehave no empathy for the
situation that we're trying toput you in, like business
specifically, all of the artworkis that we have no empathy for
the situation that we're tryingto put you in.
Business specifically, all ofthe artwork is going to have a
similar tone and vibe, becausethe first thing that we talked
about was match the tone andvibe of your podcast.
Well, other people are probablydoing that as well, and so when
you go look at the businesscategory, the majority of the
titles of the podcasts that arewritten across the artwork are

(23:38):
going to be in a sans serifblock font.
It's going to be prettybusinessy.
It's not going to have a lot of, you know, flair and poppy,
beautiful colors and stuff likethat, but there is still
probably some opportunities tostand out while doing that.
So you do want to fit in, but atthe same time, you know you,
you want to.
I've got the worst analogiesthat pop into my head.

(23:59):
I don't know.
You want to go to a fancywedding and everyone's going to
be wearing fancy clothes.
You want to have a little flair.
You want to have a littlepocket square with a little dash
of color because everyone'swearing, you know, a dark suit,
and then you throw a littleorange pocket square in your
blazer and all of a suddenthere's you know who's that guy
across the room.

Alban (24:16):
I'm so terrible.
All right, there's somebodyright now who went that's going
to help me.
Now I know what to do with myartwork.
I want to be the cute guy atthe wedding wearing a pocket
square.
That's right.

Kevin (24:27):
That's what we're aiming for Right Accessorize that
podcast artwork.

Alban (24:31):
All right, let me bring us back down to earth for a
second.
What are the artwork sizes?
What are the specs?
Give me the facts.

Jordan (24:38):
Okay, so you need your classic square show artwork.
This is going to be 3000 by3000 pixels, one-one ratio it's
a perfect square and it's goingto be in JPEG or PNG format with
72 DPI resolution, which soundslike a lot of jargon and
nonsense, but there's honestly alot of templates available

(24:59):
online that you can draw from.

Alban (25:01):
The best being the Buzzsprout Canva integration.

Jordan (25:04):
Yes, it is.

Alban (25:05):
You know, the things we saw that were most common were
if you get over like 500kilobytes, you start running
into some issues, and it justseems like every once in a while
Apple will have a little bit ofa problem ingesting the artwork
, and so we always try to keepyou below that number and you've
really got to be an exactsquare.
Almost every directory is goingto throw a fit if it's not an

(25:26):
exact square.
So if you use the BuzzsproutGamba integration, we will only
let you create artwork thatmatches all these requirements,
and so you don't really need tothink about it.
You just click, you pick one ofthem, that kind of look close,
you change colors, you adddifferent elements, make
something you love, you clicksend to Buzzsprout, and you
never have to think about filetypes, size, all the other

(25:47):
things.

Jordan (25:48):
Which is so nice, and then you can also use that for
episode artwork and this is theexact same specs as show artwork
, but you want to tweak it foreach episode.
Don't.
Don't use the episode artworkto like upload the exact same
cover art every single time.
That's too much work.
When you put your cover artworkinto Buzzsprout in your podcast

(26:09):
info, that's going to populatefor every single episode on
every podcast player.
It's a one and done deal.
Now, if you have a reason to doepisode artwork, a great example
of this is actually from Jaredfrom hey Chaplain, the police
wellness podcast.
He sent us fantastic podcastartwork and it's the illusionist
and this is a podcast I haveheard of.

(26:30):
But when I was looking intothis a little bit more, they
actually use episode artwork insuch a creative way.
So the illusionist it's aboutlike words and stuff like that,
and they have a classic bogglesquare as their cover artwork,
which is really cute.
But then when you go into theirindividual episodes, they will
use Boggle to write out the word, the word that the episode is

(26:53):
like based around, and thenthey'll take a photo of it and
because the Boggle game thing islike a perfect square, that's
their episode artwork and Ithink it's so cool.

Kevin (27:02):
It is.
It's very creative.

Jordan (27:04):
Yeah.

Alban (27:04):
And it's probably pretty easy.
They do a lot of work on eachof these episodes and then they
go and they pull out the bogglesquare and they write the word
Valentine and they take a photoand that's the artwork and
they're done.

Jordan (27:16):
Yeah.

Alban (27:16):
It's really nice because it's a consistent treatment and
so it's very obvious like oh,that's an illusionist episode
and it's a little bit different,and so you're going to get some
nice episode artwork.

Jordan (27:28):
It's very like Wes Anderson coded.
Another thing that people useepisode artwork for a lot is if
you have a guest on and you wantto put the guest headshot in
the episode artwork, you can dothat too, especially if you have
like a template saved in Canvathat you're going to access
through Buzzsprout every timeand then you can just like slap
that headshot into the templateand then they'll save as your

(27:48):
episode artwork and it displaysreally nicely in the podcast
apps, all right.
So there is actually a thirdpodcast artwork type that we're
going to touch on.
This is more advanced.
You don't have to do this, butit does create kind of like a
cool professional sort of thingin certain podcast apps.
Basically, as of right now, theonly podcast app that I believe

(28:10):
supports this is Apple Podcasts,and that is the full page show
art.
So this is different than thatsquare cover art that you see
when you're browsing podcasts.
This is like when you'rebrowsing Apple Podcasts you
click on, let's say, like codeswitch and you click on it and
then it changes to this likefull screen thing and it's.
It's really cool Cause it kindof fades into the episodes, is

(28:32):
very professional.
You'll see this with all of thelike professional podcasts and
you can do this.
It is very difficult.
It has to be done in Photoshop,because they only accept PSD
files, and it has to be likelayered, and you have to submit
it through their promotion form,which is such a weird way of
doing it.

(28:52):
Yeah, so you have to apply forpromotion in order to get your
show page to all art, even ifyou don't want to be promoted on
Apple podcasts.
It's very interesting how theydo it.

Kevin (29:01):
Yeah, that can be confusing especially because
they did add a lot of artworkrequirements around podcast
subscriptions and when youcreate a channel in podcast
subscriptions they have a bunchof different formats for artwork
that you can upload to makeyour channel stand out and then
your specific podcastsubscriptions within those
channels.

Alban (29:21):
And so this is, if you thought there's a good chance,
my show is going to be featuredin Apple Podcasts new and
noteworthy, so you want to goand create this artwork.
But I mean, this is custom,this is something you're only
going to make for Apple.

Kevin (29:32):
I think it has to be right.
Didn't Apple change therequirements that says you have
to provide this if you want tobe eligible to be featured?

Alban (29:38):
Yeah, or am I making that up?
To me that's actually a way ofsaying we kind of want to put a
little bit of a burden on thepodcasters so that we don't get
flooded with requests.
You know, you have to put alittle bit of effort into
getting in.

Jordan (29:52):
They actually upped it even more, because now it's like
you have to have the full pageshow art and then you also have
to have what they call a heroimage in order to be featured.
Yeah, there's a lot of hoopsyou have to jump through, and
then, in addition, as you said,Kevin, with the like, the
subscription artwork.
So really, if you wanted tolike, just go crazy, you could
create like six different kindsof cover art for your podcast.

Alban (30:15):
But if you're a podcaster , maybe the thing I'd say, 99%
of that effort, let's put it onthat main artwork, that one
three thousand by three thousandshow art, and then, if you want
to go above that, maybe youmake some for the episodes.
Yeah, maybe, but the, the fullshow are.
I mean it's cool.
It's just, you don't want toadd so many things that you

(30:36):
don't do anything.
You know you have so many otherthings going on.
I would.
This isn't where I wouldprioritize, unless you've got
you know, we've got a $10,000budget and we've got a team
working on this show and I thinkApple's actually going to pick
it up.
That's the only time I thinkI'd be building this out.

Jordan (30:52):
Absolutely so, john T, via fan mail.
I hope I said that right.
I'm so sorry if I did not saythat.
Right Says is it possible tomake any podcast artwork really
stand out or just avoid beingawful, and are there any
noticeable trends in podcastartwork?

Kevin (31:08):
Yeah, I think there's definitely an opportunity to
make podcast artwork reallystand out, like.
I think the answer to thatquestion is yes.
The question I put back at youis do you have the skills to do
that and would that belife-giving for you to do?
Like, are you a graphicdesigner and do you really enjoy
design and so you really wantyour podcast artwork to stand
out?
Because, at the end of the day,it's probably not necessary

(31:31):
Like the return on investment isgoing to be low in terms of
just getting good, high qualityartwork out there, versus really
stand out the highest quality,the top 5% of artwork across all
of the podcast ecosystem.
If you want to be in that, itbetter give you something just
for you.
You're getting something out ofthat beyond it actually helping
your show, because people don'treally share podcasts just

(31:53):
because it has amazing podcastcover artwork, just like you
wouldn't listen to an album justbecause it has an amazing album
cover.

Alban (32:00):
So Jonti asked if there's any notable trends in podcast
artwork and I think I would justsay these are the same trends
that you're going to see ingraphic design in general.
A lot of artwork has gotten alittle bit more simple because
we're seeing it on small screens, medium screens, large screens
and the best way to handle thatis to kind of simplify the

(32:21):
artwork, have fewer elements onit.

Jordan (32:23):
Yeah, I mean, I think that actually segues nicely into
imagery.
If we want to talk aboutimagery and like those elements
that you want to include,probably the most important rule
of thumb here is to make surethat the image that you're using
is high resolution and like,not pixelated.
Unless you're trying to go for,like a Minecraft sort of vibe
and you know you want pixelated,that's fine, but otherwise you

(32:45):
want to make sure that all theimages you're using are high
quality and high resolution.

Kevin (32:52):
Now this can be a bit of a challenge because we did
mention earlier when we'retalking about specs.
So one of the issues that youmight run into is that we're
talking about using high qualityimages so you don't get like
pixelation or kind of noise inthe final image.
That can be hard to do and alsostay within the spec that we
mentioned earlier of keeping thefile size below 500 K.

(33:12):
So I would tell you that the500 K thing is sort of something
that we use as atroubleshooting step when you
have an issue with your podcastartwork specifically not showing
up in the Apple Podcast app,like the podcast artwork that we
use for Buzzcast.
I do not believe that's under500K, I think it's bigger than
that.
We've never had an issue, sowe've never had to troubleshoot

(33:33):
it.
But if we did start having anissue, it's one of the things we
would do is we would open thatimage up, we would choose a
lower quality JPEG setting forthat, try to compress it a
little bit more to get it under500K, then re-upload it and see
if we can get Apple Podcasts toupdate.
So I think it's safe for you tostart again, especially if
you're using a photograph aspart of your artwork.
They're notoriously hard tocompress and so the file size is

(33:56):
going to be bigger, and I thinkit's okay to start off with a
file size that's a little bitover 500K if you need to to get
the high quality image.
Most of the time you won't haveany problems.
Most of the time that's goingto go in just fine.
If you have a problem, you canalways write our support team
and then that's one of thetroubleshooting steps that we
might help you walk through isgetting the image size a little
bit smaller to see if we can getApple Podcasts to update.

Jordan (34:18):
One of the things that I've used in the past is tiny
PNG.
It's just this website with acute little panda bear and you
drop your PNG image in there andhe'll compress it down for you
into a smaller file size.
It's free, it's great, sothat's a.
That's something that I've usedmany a time.

Kevin (34:36):
Yeah, it's a very helpful tool, yep.

Jordan (34:38):
Yeah.

Alban (34:38):
So one of the things we like to look at is we try to
keep ourselves limited to likeone main image.
Yeah, One of the big mistakeswe see are people who will post
in, like the Facebook group.
They're like, hey, which ofthese should I go with?
And they're trying to do toomany things in the artwork
because they think of it as likethis is my one canvas and I got

(34:58):
to paint my masterpiece for allof my podcast listeners and
really this is going to be areally small thing on their
phone.
It's going to be a medium thingon CarPlay.
People are not going to see aton of detail.
And so really try to limityourself to one main thing on
the screen.
So sometimes that's an image ofyou to host, maybe if you're

(35:23):
like a celebrity.
A couple examples we had herewere Huberman Lab and Mel
Robbins podcast, where if youknow who the host of the show is
and that's actually a draw,then maybe put them on the
artwork.
If people would not recognizethe host specifically the
audience you're trying to reachit's a good indicator you

(35:43):
shouldn't be on it.
So Kevin and I have never putourselves on this show.
Jordan's not on this show.

Jordan (35:49):
I'm not.

Alban (35:50):
We know if you saw us you wouldn't go.

Kevin (35:53):
oh, Kevin Finn got to make sure I listen to him,
because you probably don't knowwhat we look like very much yeah
right Now, there is the case inwhich you want to start
building your personal brand, soyou may want to start speaking
at conferences that are alignedwith your category.
Whatever you're talking about,like realtors, for example,
their image and likeness is avery big part of their brand to

(36:13):
stand out in the realtor space.
They want people to get to knowthem personally.
If you have any sort of videocomponent whether your audience
is going to see you on a regularbasis then that might be an
exception.
You know you're not a celebrity, but your image is part of the
brand you're starting you'retrying to establish more so than
like a logo, mark or certaintypography, and so we're not

(36:33):
saying don't ever do this orthere's no opportunity to do it
unless you're a celebrity, butjust be intentional about it.
If you have a picture ofyourself on there and I were to
ask you why do you have apicture of yourself on there?
And I were to ask you why doyou have a picture of yourself
on your podcast artwork, youknow have an answer like oh,
I've thought about this and Iwant to.
X, y, z.

Jordan (36:48):
And there's some people that will say you know what I
actually love when hosts havetheir photos on their cover
artwork, because it's like Iknow who it is.
That's talking on the other endand that's totally fine.
But that's also why we havehost images for podcasts.
I definitely would be mindfulthat if the topic of your
podcast doesn't really like lendto having a host photo.

(37:08):
So someone I think of is Brianfrom the support team.
He has a Denver Nuggets podcast, the basketball team and if he
just had like a picture ofhimself like arms crossed on the
cover, I don't know if thatwould be like a huge draw for
people, but if they recognizedthe imagery of that team then
maybe they would be more proneto click on the cover art.

Alban (37:32):
Yeah, you really want to imagine who's the audience and I
want the audience to see oh,this is something made for me.
I want them to get that feelinginstantly.
Maybe a good example would besomebody one of you posted Land
of the Giants the artwork theymake.
Land of the Giants, they do awhole season about one tech
company, and so the two exampleswe have here are the season

(37:56):
they did about Twitter.
It was called the TwitterFantasy and it's like a birdcage
and the birdcage is open andit's really plain, and then
there's a little like textbubble birdcage.
And the birdcage is open andit's really plain.
And then there's a little liketext bubble as the bottom of the
birdcage and so it's like thebird got out of the cage.
It's also about chatting and itjust kind of makes I see it and
I go oh, it's kind of a cuteplay on Twitter.

Jordan (38:18):
It's also Twitter blue and it's Twitter blue yeah.
Yeah.

Alban (38:22):
And then there was another one about Disney and the
Disney dilemma, which was about, like, the business model of
Disney, how they kind of wentthrough changing business models
, I believe, and it's like ahedge maze.
Inside the hedge maze is theshape of the of the Mickey Mouse
ears, and off in the distanceis the castle at Disney World.

(38:43):
Yeah it's just a single imagethat kind of conveys all of this
at once.
I see that castle.
I know where that castle is.
It's down in Orlando, florida.
It's a dilemma.
I see the hedge maze.
That feels like Disney.
It reminds me of some of theDisney things.
I see the ears.
I know what character has thoseears.
It's just like as soon as yousee it, it stands out.

(39:04):
I know what this is about.
Even before I read thatsubtitle the Disney Dilemma I
know it's going to be about WaltDisney Corporation.

Jordan (39:13):
You know what's so clever about this too, though If
you look at it like, if youreally look at it close, it's
actually not the castle atDisney World that you see.
It's not Cinderella's castle,it's actually a completely
different castle, but they'vemade this in such a way that you
can look at it and know exactlywhat it is.
I don't know if it's like thecolors that they use or what it

(39:34):
is, and then the hedge maze,like the Disney Mickey Mouse
icon, is not exactly, it's justit's like slightly different.
So they're not going to get introuble for using, like you know
, trademarked or copyrightedimagery, but it's just enough
that you know exactly what it isthat they're referring to.
Yep, another thing that youcould use instead of imagery is

(39:55):
large typography or like a logo.
Some podcasts, I think, do thisreally really well in conveying
what the podcast is about, oreven the, I want to say, vibe of
the podcast is Payne Lindsay'sHigh Strange.
I look at this and it's not aUFO, but I know it's about like
UFOs, right, like it's notactually.

Kevin (40:18):
I was thinking it gave me like roller skating vibes for
some reason.

Jordan (40:21):
Oh yeah, see, that's really cool.

Alban (40:23):
I was thinking like VHS recordings, like something was
recorded on a VHS tape, yeah,but this, this cover art, that's
really cool.

Jordan (40:27):
I was thinking like VHS recordings like something was
recorded on a VHS tape, yeah,but this cover art it's just got
this like really it's a darkcover but it has this really
bright, almost retro typographythat just like really stands out
.
And then, of course, you'reWrong About.
It has very simple artwork andit's just really big letters and
you can just tell what it is.

Kevin (40:45):
Yeah, and there's another very popular podcast that just
uses large typography.

Alban (40:56):
What podcast is that?
That's Buzzcast.
That's true.
The Buzzcast artwork was Kevin.
You just one day started makingit right.
You were like, oh, this is fun,this would be like a cool
little project.

Kevin (41:03):
And you made it and you're like this looks good this
could be the name of ourpodcast, right, it was actually
like a design experiment.
So I do have a bit of abackground in design work and I
wanted to challenge myself.
One of the weaker areas of mydesign background is typography,
and so it was just mechallenging myself to do a large
typographic logo for Buzzcast,and that's where I ended up.

Alban (41:24):
I love it, that's cool, I didn't know that were Buzzcast,
and that's where I ended up.
I love it.
That's cool.
I didn't know that.
One of the big mistakes we seeis when people have one chance.
You know you've got one pieceof imagery you can put on this
artwork, and the thing peopleput on is a microphone and some
headphones.
And the reason they do that isbecause they think in their mind
well, it's a podcast.

(41:45):
I record the podcast with amicrophone, people listen to it
with their headphones.
Boom, now everyone's going toknow it's a podcast.

Jordan (41:52):
Yeah.

Alban (41:53):
But it's logical.
That would be like and Iactually made this.
Maybe we can get this image inthere, oh, a thousand percent.
Imagine a movie poster and Ithink I did bad boys too and I
was like, imagine if bad boystoo, instead of having the
explosion with Martin Lawrenceand Will Smith like in the
foreground, explosion behindthem and they're holding guns,

(42:13):
instead of that you've got likecameras and DVDs, cause like
that's how they filmed it.
They filmed it with a camera andyou know you watched it on a
DVD and so like that would bereally bad movie poster artwork,
because the movie poster issupposed to show you what the
movie is going to be about, getyou excited, and the one thing

(42:34):
people know when they see yourpodcast artwork is if I listen
to it, it probably will be withheadphones and I really hope you
used a microphone when yourecorded it.
They know that.
They know it's a podcast.
Yeah, so use this one space toconvey a message about what
subject matter is.
Unless you are like talkingabout the podcasting industry or

(42:54):
you're talking aboutmicrophones, you probably
shouldn't have the microphone beon there.
Just in the same way, a cameraisn't often going to be on the
movie poster.

Jordan (43:04):
Yeah, and some other things that you might want to
avoid when you're creating yourpodcast.
Cover art is explicit languageand images.
Don't have anythinginappropriate on it because
it'll get reported and get takendown.
Also, like what Land of theGiants does, you don't want to
have copyrighted logos orcharacters.
So, for example, if yourpodcast is about Star Wars,

(43:26):
maybe don't put the Star Warslogo on your podcast cover art.
Maybe do something that likeshows that it's Star Wars-esque.
Another thing that Alban hadtouched on earlier, which I
fully agree on, is marketing orpromotional content.
So this is like when peoplehave like the banner, like
listen on your favorite podcastapp, or they have like social

(43:47):
handles and little like iconsand tags all over.
I've seen a lot of people havecover art where they put the
listen on Apple podcast, listenon Spotify, on the bottom of the
cover art, which is reallyfunny.

Alban (43:59):
Because the only place people are seeing the place
they're probably seeing this isin Apple podcasts.

Jordan (44:03):
Yeah.

Alban (44:04):
They know they can listen to it right here.

Jordan (44:06):
They're aware.
So yeah, try to avoid that,because that can really clutter
your podcast artwork and detractfrom the message you're trying
to convey.

Kevin (44:15):
There are a lot of things that will be important to you
as a podcast creator, that aremore important to you than they
will be to your audience.
So one of the things that we'vedone in the past is we've taken
this, we've talked about on theshow.
We took this laser engraver toPodfest in Orlando and we made
people key chains for theirpodcasts and so on the front of
the key chain we inscribedsomething around like the name

(44:38):
of their podcast and we tried touse elements from their podcast
cover art and on the back wedid a QR code.
I just did another one of thesefor Brian, who Jordan mentioned
earlier in the office.
He has a podcast called FandomFrom Afar and his podcast
artwork is a map of the US andit has like the Denver Nuggets
logo about where Denver is andhe has like a little arrow that
points over to Jacksonville,which is where he lives, and

(45:00):
that's what his podcast is about.
It's like being a fan of asports team when you don't live
in the city of the sports teamand his fandom from afar happens
to be Denver Nuggets.
But I think he also talks aboutthe topic more generally, like
how do we be good fans if wedon't live in the city and can't
support them locally by goingto the sporting events.
So I understand the concept.
But Brian just asked me to do akey chain for him because he saw

(45:21):
that we did them at theconferences and he's like, hey,
I wasn't at the conference, canyou do a key chain for me?
And so what I had to do was tryto figure out how to simplify
that to fit on a key chain.
And again, I do this for lotsof people at the conference and
what I do is I take the mainidea, and the main idea is that
man, you live in Florida andyou're a Denver Nuggets fan, and
so I, instead of the wholeUnited States, I just took an
outline of Florida and insteadof like showing Denver Nuggets,

(45:44):
like we know that they're in theDenver area and you live in
Jacksonville, I just stuck theDenver Nuggets logo like over
the Florida map in theJacksonville area, and then I
wrote fandom from afar and histypeface and did it on the key
chain.
I gave it to him, and I alwayswonder how people are going to
react to this when I modifytheir artwork.
But when modifying it, Iactually have to simplify it
quite a bit to make it work onthese key chains and, just like

(46:06):
many of the people at thepodcast conference who are like,
oh, I love this, it's so great.
And really, what did I do toyour artwork is all I did was
simplify it.
I just took the core idea and Igot rid of everything else.
That didn't matter.

Jordan (46:18):
Yeah.

Kevin (46:18):
One of the things that we've just done for Buzzsprout
in the last year is we madethese widgets for your phone iOS
lock screen widgets and homescreen widgets for iOS and
Android.
If you have the Buzzsprout app,you can see some of these things
.
I love this design exercisebecause it's so constrained.
You really have to go throughthis process of just saying,
like, what is the absolute coreof what you're trying to

(46:38):
communicate as simply and asbeautifully as possible.
Just stick to that, Nothingsuperfluous.
So anything else, anything thatyou can remove from the design,
remove from the design and youend up with a much higher
quality design at the end of theday.
And so, as you're talking aboutthings not to put in there,
don't feel like that's a likeconstraint is like in a bad
sense, like really the mostbeautiful, highest quality

(47:01):
design usually has one of thesecharacteristics in common, and
that is that they are simple andthat they are not.
They don't have all these extraembellishments everywhere, that
they have a clear concept.
They execute on that perfectlywell, and then they have the
discipline to not add beyondthat.

Alban (47:19):
Jack Dorsey from Twitter had a quote that was something
like the way to nail a design ornail product is to limit the
number of elements and then makeevery one of those elements
perfect.
Yeah, and it really is true.
Like just take out almosteverything and then the last few
things you have, do the bestjob you can with, like the one

(47:41):
picture, the one little phrase,the very few elements that are
on this artwork, because reallythat's all.
You only get one little bit ofa chance and then make it as
good as possible and then moveon.
And then when you have likethree, four concepts kind of
clashing, the real messagepeople get is none of the
messages get through.
You know, it's just kind ofconfusing and people look at the

(48:02):
next image.

Jordan (48:03):
Yeah.

Alban (48:04):
I guess that kind of takes me to the text, the rule
of thumb I've had for text.
I just tell people like youwant like five, seven words max.
Best would be even fewer andwe're trying to do one, maybe
two fonts and we're trying tomake it really bold and easy to
read.
But we're limiting.

(48:25):
Everybody has the desire to getlike the title and a subtitle
and something else on there andthe name of the host.
The more you have, the morecramped everything gets, the
more expertise you're going toneed in making it all kind of
fit together.

Jordan (48:43):
Yeah Well, and also think about like I mean that
kind of goes into the actual actof titling your podcast,
because you want your podcasttitle to be something that
people can easily say like oh,have you listened to this
recently?
If you have like a 10 wordtitle, they're going to be like
it's something like oh gosh,how's that go?

(49:03):
And so it'll be harder forlisteners to even share your
podcast too.

Alban (49:08):
Yeah, I mean, one of the big mistakes I see a lot, and we
may even have fallen into thisa little bit is making a pun in
your podcast name.

Jordan (49:16):
Oh yeah.

Alban (49:16):
Because then it's going to just become so hard for
people to remember exactly howto spell it or how to find it.

Jordan (49:22):
Yeah.

Alban (49:23):
And findability is more important than searchability,
Like if people know what yourshow is and they can't find it.
That's when it's, that's whenyou know you're in trouble.

Jordan (49:31):
Yeah, and another thing that will help with like
choosing what text and what fontyou want to use for your
podcast is just to make surethat you don't use more than two
fonts.
That's usually a good rule ofthumb.
It, like some of the otherthings that we've said.
This is not like the end all beall If you have.
I've seen some really coolpodcast cover art where, like,

(49:55):
each letter is like a differentfont and it's like really cool
and mysterious looking.
That's fine, that's awesome.

Alban (50:01):
Like a ransom note.

Jordan (50:02):
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly Like a ransom note, and
that that's fine if that's thekind of like design you're going
for, where it's a little bitlike you know whatever sort of
ransom notey.
But generally you'll want tojust stick to like two fonts,
just because it reallysimplifies things and it's
easier for people to read yeah,that's great advice.

Kevin (50:21):
I there's very few designs, especially of this
scale, that will benefit byhaving more than two fonts, and
I would say the majority of themcan get by with one or at least
one family.
So if you're using, like thepopular Apple font is San
Francisco, like they have theseven or eight different main
variations in that family, soyou might use a thin version and
a bolder version, or a normalversion and a heavy version and

(50:45):
and version and an italicizedversion or something like that,
and then you know that thesefonts are going to complement
each other instead of sort offight against each other,
especially if you're not anexpert in typography.
So sticking within the samefamily.
Oftentimes it is tempting forpeople who don't have a lot of
design skills to do some sort oflike a slab font for the title
of the podcast, and then theywant to write their name, but

(51:06):
they want to do that likescripty, because it's a name, so
a name should be scripty, andthey, you know, they go grab
their brush script font and it'sjust becomes illegible at small
sizes.
Again, it's best to stay in yourlane.
I don't think that people areclaiming to be great graphic
designers.
They probably know theconstraints, and so I think the
best tips that we can give youare how to operate safely within

(51:28):
the skillset that you have.
Again, I don't want to talkdown to any designers who happen
to be listening.
If you know your fonts andyou've studied typography, then
have at it, and I'm not speakingto you, but if you don't, then
I would say, at least forstarters, pick a font or at a
minimum, a family, and just usethat one font for your main
design and then, when you'redone and you're looking at it,
if you feel like it's justmissing something extra, then

(51:51):
maybe you can experiment withintroducing a second font.
But I don't think in most casesit's necessary.

Jordan (51:56):
Well, if you struggle with pairing up fonts, if you
Google like good font pairings,there are plenty of design
bloggers that have dedicatedtheir time and expertise to
creating lists or databases oflike what fonts go well together
.
I mean even Canva.
You know, we talked about theBuzzsprout Canva integration.
Canva actually has a section offonts that go well together and

(52:21):
so you can click that and youcan easily see what pairings
complement each other Right, andthat helps a lot too.

Alban (52:27):
So yeah, it's a very good tip.
We've alluded to this now a lotwith the artwork and the
typography and everything thatyou really are designing for a
variety of sizes, and so I wantto highlight a tool that we
really like Only Pods haspodcast cover art size preview.
So you upload your artwork andthen they'll show you like hey,

(52:49):
here's what it looks like inApple podcasts and Spotify and
this other app and on car play,and you just get a little bit of
a feel for what it's going tolook like in all these different
areas and often that will helphighlight areas that you're
strong or areas that you mightbe struggling.

Jordan (53:05):
Yeah, that's a.
That's a tool that I've sharedwith so many people.
When they ask me you know likeI'm struggling with testing out
my podcast, do you think this isgoing to be readable in, like
the Apple podcast app and thingslike that, I'm like, oh yeah,
just slap it in this website andthen you can see how it's going
to look and everything.
And it really helps when you'recreating to just kind of like
adjust if you realize that maybeyour font's so thin that it's

(53:29):
illegible on a small thumbnail.

Alban (53:32):
All right.
We got a fan mail message fromMinneapolis, Minnesota, and they
reached out and they saidthey're about to launch their
podcast on soccer for fans andparents of young soccer players
and they wanted to get someadvice on their cover art.
I'd say if you want good adviceon specific cover art, best
place to do that would be to goto our Reddit or subreddit or

(53:54):
maybe our Facebook group andjust start a thread asking
people for feedback.
It's really nice to getfeedback from more than just a
couple of people.
It might be hard for us to dothat on the podcast, so I'd
point you to one of those twoand we will be happy to chime in
when you do.

Jordan (54:10):
Yeah, all right.
And so to wrap up our cover artepisode, where can people
create cover art, like whenthey're getting started?
What softwares do we want topoint them to?

Alban (54:23):
I would say I'd go one of three places.
No-transcript.

(54:55):
I don't want to point you toany specific tool, but if you
are brand new and you want to dothis yourself a hundred percent
, use the Buzzsprout Canvaintegration.

Jordan (55:04):
Yeah.

Alban (55:10):
I feel like we have not promoted this as much as we
probably should, because it'ssuch a good integration that we
can set all the parameters.
We're getting exactly the rightspecifications.
Canva thrives in making designeasy for people because it's
templatized, that.
They're going to give you abunch of templates.
You're going to find one thatis close.
You're going to change thecolors.
You're going to add you a bunchof templates.
You're going to find one thatis close.
You're going to change thecolors.
You're going to add an image,but it's all going to work
together.

(55:30):
You're only changing a fewvariables to get something
unique.
And then it comes back toBuzzsprout, all ready to go.
If you don't want to spendmoney and you're not already
using some design software thatyou personally love, I would say
almost everybody should beusing the Buzzsprout Canva
integration.

Jordan (55:48):
Yeah, I agree, all right .
Well, I am really excited thatwe got to talk about cover
artwork.
It's been a while.
There's been a lot of newartwork rules and things like
that that have come into thepodcasting ecosystem, so I think
that this was long overdue andhopefully it helps everyone
create their podcast artwork,episode artwork, chapter artwork
, whatever you want to do, allright.

(56:09):
So for our next main episode, Iwant to talk about coming up
with ideas for your episode.
I know that we talk a lot about, you know, keep podcasting, and
that can seem really dauntingwhen you kind of like zoom out
to like a macro view of yourpodcast and you realize, like I
have to create 70 episodes.
I'm gonna run out of ideas if Ihave to create 70 episodes.
So I think it would be reallyfun to talk about, like how to

(56:33):
keep these ideas going for yourpodcast, to make sure that you
keep podcasting, make sure thatyou stay on top of, like your
content calendar and tools thatwill help with that.
So if any of our listeners haveany tips on you know, how they
come up with ideas for theirpodcast or tools that they use
when content planning, I wouldlove if you would just tap the

(56:55):
Texas Show link in the shownotes and send those our way so
that I can plan the next episode.
As always, thank you all forlistening and keep podcasting.

Kevin (57:08):
What generation am I?
Do you guys know?
Like, am I a Gen X?
I think you're Gen X.
I think I'm a Gen X too.
It's like a child of the 80s.

Jordan (57:16):
We're Gen X, you're like you might be a cusper.

Alban (57:19):
Wait, are you born in?

Kevin (57:20):
79 or 80?
Neither, but I don't want tosay when I was born, because
I'll have my identity stolen.
So what generation is it thepeople who are afraid of getting
their identity stolen?

Alban (57:32):
Boomers?
Definitely not like my kids.
My kids are not afraid of it atall.
They put all their informationeverywhere.
You're not a boomer.
I think you're Gen X.
I think you're safely inside ofGen X.

Jordan (57:38):
Kevin, you'll be fine as long as you just like, copy and
paste the message in Facebookthat you don't give them
permission.

Kevin (57:45):
I know not to do it, but I will say I'm the generation
that would be tempted to do that.
Yeah, you do not have therights to use my photographs
Facebook, all right.
So that generation, uh, we hada rough week.
Oh, you know, we had somepeople who were big, like when I
was growing up.
We just had three of them passaway in the last week we had you
know, ozzy Osbourne, hulk Hoganand Malcolm Jamal Warner.

Jordan (58:08):
Yeah.

Kevin (58:09):
And Sam, what's his name?
Sandberg baseball guy.
Oh, ryan Sandberg, ryanSandberg, yeah, yeah, so it's
been a heavy week.
Really hard and I will say, invarying degrees.
Was I, like you know, huge fansof that?
I wasn't, but they, I havedistinct memories when I think
of actually four of them,including Ryan Sandberg, any
four of them, like there arememories I have as growing up

(58:30):
and like watching them, you know, play baseball or whatever.
It used to be WWF I know theychanged it to WWE, but like Hulk
.
Hogan was like huge when we werein the eighties.

Jordan (58:40):
The.

Kevin (58:40):
Cosby show again.
Sorry, controversial show Iunderstand, but Malcolm Jamal
Warner, like he's a huge, likefamous person and Ozzy Osbourne
like all the controversy of Ozzydid something crazy at this
concert again last, like I don'tknow.
I guess what I'm saying is likedid it hit you guys in the same
way or are you like, nah, itwasn't.
Didn't really have memories ofthose people.

Alban (59:00):
The one that really did was Ryan Sandberg actually.
Yeah, because he was the firstgood baseball player that I had
their card.
Yeah, when I was a kid, Iremember being in my friend's
house and I was, you know, fiveyears old or something and he's
going through his baseball cardsand he was like, oh, that's a
good one here and he gave it tome.
It was Ryan Sandberg and Istill remember it and I had it

(59:22):
forever.
And then I want to say, like twodays before he passed, I was at
a garage sale and they had abunch of baseball cards and I
flipped open the book and I sawa Ryan Sandberg card and I
remembered, like with my friendstrading cards, and I was like,
man, I wonder what he's up to.
And yeah, I just thought of him.
And then it was like two dayslater I saw that he passed and

(59:43):
he wasn't all that old.
No, yeah, wow, it is sad.
It kind of surprises me how sadI can feel sometimes seeing
even celebrities that I didn'thave many fond memories of, just
realizing.
You know, that's not just aloss for that person but there's
family and friends that reallyknew and cared for them deeply.

Jordan (01:00:02):
Yeah, I think for me Ozzy was really tough because my
mom was like a huge fan ofBlack Sabbath when I was growing
up and then we watched theOsbournes obviously in the early
aughts Like that was the bestshow on television.
It was so funny and we reallyfell in love with that whole
family.
And now obviously Kelly hasgone on to do amazing things and

(01:00:23):
his son, jack Osborne, has thisawesome production company and
he would pull in Sharon and Ozzyfor a lot of like his
paranormal investigation showsand it was so funny because Ozzy
wants nothing to do with any ofit, even though he's like the
Prince of Darkness, and it washilarious.
And so I just have like suchlike a warm spot in my heart for

(01:00:45):
that family.
And I think Ozzy was reallytough for me because I've even
recently been watching a lot ofthe shows that he's been in and,
yeah, he's just so sweet.

Alban (01:00:55):
I think that's actually what made him so endearing was
the.
I was too young for BlackSabbath but when the Osbournes
came out and you're like this isthe guy who was just like wild
and was playing all this likesatanic music and biting the
head off of a bat and all thisstuff, and then he realized he's

(01:01:15):
like trying to be a good dadand it was like, yeah, we
actually did too many drugs, wedid too much, we drank too much.
You know better, be better now.

Jordan (01:01:23):
Chasing the cats around the house.
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (01:01:26):
Yeah, I yeah.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm just getting to acertain age where it's like you
have just memories of thesecelebrities who were part of I
don't know core childhoodmemories, like growing up and
just listening to music orwatching certain things on TV
that these people were a part of.
And then they are just gone andit just feels like they were
just like larger than life.
They could never be gone, and itjust makes you, like I don't

(01:01:48):
know, wrestle with your ownhumanity a little bit Like time
marches on.
Nobody lasts forever.
Anyway, rough week for whatevergeneration I am, but it's good
to hear that you guys can atleast.

Jordan (01:01:57):
We're struggling with you.

Kevin (01:01:58):
You can struggle with me.

Jordan (01:01:59):
Yeah, we're in it with you.

Kevin (01:02:01):
Yeah, so for anybody who lost a hero or just whatever,
yeah, you're not alone, thankyou.