Speaker 1: Your podcast artwork is the square image that listeners see in Apple, Spotify, or their favorite listening app. It's a huge piece of your podcast's first impression on new listeners, and if you don't have a strong podcast graphic, you'll risk losing listeners before they even have a chance to hit play. We can't have that. That's why today, I'm so excited to share tips to help you design eye-catching podcast artwork that attracts your ideal listeners without breaking Apple's strict guidelines. And after we run through some do's and don'ts, I'll bring you back into a blank Canva project with me to show you step-by-step exactly how you can create your own graphic, even if you have zero design experience. Hey, I'm Melissa, and welcome back to Wit & Wire, where we help creators turn their skills and passions into profitable online businesses. Whether you're starting a new podcast or you're thinking of refreshing your current graphic, your podcast artwork is a major piece of your overall branding. And the key purpose of your podcast artwork is to let people know what your podcast is about at a glance so that they'll be excited to click, listen, and subscribe to your show. But a lot of new podcasters make the mistake of trying to fit too much information into their artwork. So keep in mind that most people listen to podcasts on their phones, which means that your graphic might be as small as one inch by one inch. So with that in mind, and before we open Canva or any design tool, we have to ask ourselves, what should we include in the graphic and what should we leave out? That question can be answered in a few different ways. So here's what we'll cover in today's tutorial. First we'll talk about Apple's guidelines for all podcast artwork. Every podcast in Apple is required to have a graphic in order to get approved. So I'll pull up the important details we need to understand to make sure that we comply with their rules. After that, we'll talk big picture about which text and graphic elements to include, including the four visual strategies that almost all successful podcasts use for you to choose from. Then I'll offer a few design tips around colors, fonts, and a few overdone trends I would avoid. And after we cover those basics, I'll open up a blank design project and create two different podcast graphics for the same podcast to show you how it's done and teach you exactly how to make your own professional looking graphic in under 10 minutes. First up, let's talk about Apple. Although Apple isn't the only listening app people use, it's still one of the top options globally and they have the strictest guidelines when it comes to artwork. So if we follow their guidelines, our graphics should be compliant with all the other listening apps like Spotify and Google. Here is the list of requirements, which is taken directly from Apple's resources for creators. I'll link to that page in the description as well, but to sum it up, you need clear images, nothing too PG-13, and you definitely can't include any Apple logos or imagery. I don't think this is as common anymore, but when Apple was really the only podcast app that mattered, some hosts tended to put the Apple logo on their graphic, which is a huge no-go because it kind of makes it look like Apple endorses your podcast, which isn't true and they don't want. Now beyond this list, Apple also offers these helpful guidelines around the actual file we'll be creating. First, it has to be a square. Second, it should be 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, and it can be as small as 1,400 by 1,400 pixels, but Apple says, and I quote, the largest size is preferred. So make it 3,000 by 3,000 unless there's a good reason not to. Third, it can be either a JPEG or a PNG file. And lastly, something a lot of hosts might not realize is that Apple recommends that you avoid putting important artwork elements in the bottom fifth of your image because they may be obscured by play progress, labels, or subscription offerings, so I think that's good to know. Now that we've got the dimensions and the rules down, let's move on to actual designs. First, let's talk about text elements. Of course, you'll want to include your podcast name, and it should be the focal point of your design, but some podcasters choose to include either the host name or a subtitle in the graphic too. I wouldn't recommend both, though, because your artwork will be very cluttered very quickly, and it'll be tough to read when it's small. And if in doubt, Apple recommends sticking with only the title, so keep it simple. Second, let's talk about design elements. A lot of my students in the Podcast Launch Accelerator program often ask if they have to include their own headshot. And although that is a popular strategy, it is not the only one. When I analyze successful podcasts across all different categories, there are four main trends that appear in their graphics, and we're going to walk through each one one by one. Visual strategy number one is a standalone title, and in this case, the entire design centers around the title. And although you could keep it simple like this mock-up with text alone, some podcasts get creative with hand lettering or small visual accents within the text. That's how the start of our actual graphic for Booksmart looks, where we turn the O's into glasses. But that isn't what our finished artwork looks like. So that brings us to visual strategy number two, which is illustration. For our podcast Booksmart, here is our actual graphic designed by my insanely talented sister Emma, where we have an illustration of an open book below the stylized Booksmart title to make this podcast instantly recognizable as a book podcast. Specifically, it's about personal development books. Although we did hire a designer for Booksmart, in the upcoming Canva demo, I'll show you how you can use pre-existing illustrations from Canva or other marketplaces to create your designs. So you don't have to draw your own elements, you just need to know where to find them. That said, I will include referrals to some of my favorite podcast artwork designers in the description if you are looking to outsource. But I'm hopeful that you'll feel empowered to at least try your own along with me as we make our way through this demo. On to visual strategy number three, which is headshots. This is a popular choice for many hosts, especially because showing your face is a great way to connect with your listeners. And since podcasting is an audio-only medium, and people are listening only to your voice and your personality without actually seeing you, it can be nice to show your face in the graphic so people can feel more connected with you as the host. In addition to connecting with listeners, there are a lot of proven marketing research studies that show that we like to see faces online. Social media in particular talks about this a lot, where faces tend to get higher engagement on social. So I think the headshot strategy is a great fit for hosts who are either trying to build a personal brand or be seen as an expert. So if you're an online business owner, a professional, an influencer, or hope to become more visible, I would recommend at least trying out the headshot strategy. As a pro tip, when you are taking your headshots, it can be helpful to have the photographer leave space around your head. So whether that's to the left, to the top, or to the right. If you're doing a photo shoot, make sure you get a couple different options for you to choose from, and we'll get to that later in the demo to see how you can position the graphic to create a few different options. Our last visual strategy is strategy number four, which is images. Unlike a headshot of you, this strategy uses a photo from the internet or a stock photo or B-roll from your shoot that alludes to the actual topic of your podcast. This helps immediately tell listeners what your podcast is about, unlike the title or headshot strategy alone, which rely more on the podcast title itself to do the heavy lifting. Obviously, it would be great if you did have a headshot that somehow included a nod to your topic, but often we really just have a photo of us, so that's not always the case. Overall, between the four strategies, I think the illustration strategy gives listeners the fastest immediate impression of what your podcast is about, while the headshot strategy draws people in through human connection and getting to see someone else's face. So I think that's why those two tend to be the most popular across all categories, and I'll be creating both of them in Canva shortly. But the last thing we can do before we start creating, no matter which strategy you choose, is to talk about a few big picture design suggestions to keep in mind. First, you'll want to design for small screens. I know we've already brought this up, but since it's the most common piece of feedback I give students, it's worth re-mentioning. If in doubt, keep things simple by emphasizing your podcast title as the only piece of text in the graphic, and make sure that there aren't too many competing design elements. Which brings us to design tip number two, complement your brand. You don't have to match your brand exactly or include your business logo, but if you imagine seeing your artwork on your website, you should feel like, yeah, this makes sense, this belongs here. And the easiest way to tie your graphic to your existing business or your overall brand is to keep consistent fonts, colors, or both across all of your related channels. So for Booksmart, that deep teal color is a staple for our brand, and we use it everywhere. For Witten Wire, it's a blush pink color. Also, I wouldn't recommend more than one to two fonts in the cover artwork, just because more than that can tend to feel cluttered or disconnected. Moving on, tip number three is don't include podcast images like microphones or headphones. This was a hot trend a few years back, and you will still see it in use, where podcasters include a microphone simply because they're hosting a podcast. But if your podcast is about gardening, parenting, or any other non-podcast topic, it is a much better option to include graphics about your actual topic, like something about actual gardening or actual parenting. We know it's a podcast, so use that real estate to tell me something else that's more specific. Overall, if you're looking for inspiration, you can always scroll through Apple or Spotify to see what other creators are doing. Definitely don't copy anyone's work, but think critically and ask yourself why certain artwork stands out to you. Is it because of a font style, like cursive versus a sans-serif font? Is it the colors? Is it the image of something specific, like an airplane that makes you crave travel? Or does the host have a great candid photo of herself in her element? Make note of the trends that you see in your favorite artwork across all the shows you listen to or other podcasts in your category, and that can help serve as a starting point for inspiration. With all of these tips in mind, it's time for us to start actually designing. So for today's demo, I will be using Canva, which is my favorite design tool for online business owners, and you do not need any design experience to get started. So you can check it out for free at witandwire.com slash Canva to follow along with me, or you'll find a link in the description. When I open up Canva, this is my home dashboard, and we're going to start by creating a design. And if you search for the word podcast, there's actually a pre-assigned size for that file. And it's 3000 by 3000, which is Apple's approved size. So we will click podcast cover and get to work. You'll notice along the left that Canva actually has quite a few starter templates. If you aren't interested in using one of their graphics, what I will say is that I don't believe that they are all created with a podcaster's experienced eye. So make sure that they fit all of the concepts that we talked about previously about focusing on the title and not having too much text. I'm going to create two graphics from scratch, one with a headshot and one with an image, and then I'll actually show you some illustrations as well. So I'm going to go into uploads where I have already added a photo of me that we're going to use. What you will notice first is that this headshot is not really the right size for a graphic. What I would recommend is that when you take photos, leave space along one side of you or the other, or even above and try a few options. That way when you get in here, you would have the option to make this a little bigger, and you'll notice I'm going beyond the borders of the graphic itself. But you'll make this bigger, and this is how big I would have to make this graphic for it to fit in the square. Now I think we could do something like this, but as you'll look around the sides, it doesn't leave us much room to put the title, and that's why we're going to go with a different approach for this podcast graphic. I'm going to add a new page, and I'm actually going to add this image again. And this time we're going to do something that I think a lot of you might try, which is removing the background. So I'm going to click on this image, and once you click the image, then along the top you'll have edit image come up, and you'll have all kinds of different effects that you can use. But the one we're looking for is called background remover. So I'm going to click this. It might take a few seconds, but what it's doing is automatically removing this background, and that gives us a lot more flexibility to put your image anywhere you want in the frame. So if I did make this a little bit larger, I could put my image here, and if I click off, you can see it would cut off. I'm sitting, so that looks a little awkward. I would probably go all the way down like this and maybe make it a bit bigger, or you could put it in the middle. And now we have a few different options when it comes to where to put the text, and since we have a white canvas background, there are different ways that you could fill it. The most common for sure would be to use a color. You could use a different image if you want, but I'm going to recommend the color approach. So the way that you can add a color to the background is just by clicking on it, and then a small color icon appears. I'm going to choose one from the branded colors, which is a pro feature of Canva, but you can use any default color, or you can click here to choose your brand color. So I'm going to use this pink Wittenwire branded blush, and this is starting to look okay. I'm going to add text to the top, and then I'm going to show you how you could make the headshot pop even more. First though, let's add some text, and I'm just going to add the standard heading here so that I can show you some different text effects. Let's make it way bigger. You could also size it by upping the text size on the top. I'll just make a note and tell you that when you click off of elements, I think it's important to know that menu items along the top change. So if you're wondering why you don't see options that match mine, if you click an element, now we have a text menu. If I click the photo, now I have the image menu. If I click off, we have nothing. So let's move this to the top, and now we have effects for our text. Of course, you can change things like the font along the left. So if I were going for something totally different, maybe I would pick Buffalo, and let's write wit and wire. This is not my brand font, but I think it'll be fun for this video to show a few different things. I would recommend making the title as big as possible. So we're going to go pretty large. We're going to move me down a little bit. That's a good start for now. The other thing you can do with text that'll make it really look, I think, unique is to add a text effect. And you can actually see Canva has some suggested combinations at first, but you can create any by clicking on the text and then using the effects button. And you'll see there are different styles. So you could add a shadow, and you could change a lot of the in-depth design choices, like the transparency, or how big it is, or the color. You could do a splice, which I'm a fan of. You could do a neon glow, if that suited your brand. Because I started it in black, the neon doesn't look great. But if you did a pink, you can start to see how it really looks neony. And if I made the background a black color, now this gives a real neon appeal, if that suits your brand. I'm going to click undo a couple of times, and I'm going to click the text and revert it back to the shadow for now. I kind of like that. And then this is looking all right, but I want to do one more thing to the headshot, and I want to add a shadow or a glow. I will cover this in depth in a different Canva tutorial, if anyone is interested. So leave me a comment if you're interested in more Canva tips. But if you click edit image, you can go into shadows, and there are two that could work really well. The first one is drop, and you'll see this adds just a little bit of a gray behind me. You can click the small little sliders to make the offset a little smaller or a little bigger. Maybe you prefer a different color shadow. Let's make this a little bit bigger. Now it kind of matches the vibe. Oh, let's hit undo. Sometimes the shadow effects are a little funky in Canva. If that happens to you the way it happens to me, that's just a known part of their tool right now. But coming back into this, let's try again. Let's edit the image, and I just still want to show you the other effect I like, which is called glow. This is the one I'm actually going to recommend more strongly. So if you go into the sliders to edit this more in depth, if you bump the transparency up to 100, meaning it's not transparent at all, and the blur to zero, meaning no blur at all, I like to change the color to a white and then make the size a little bit bigger. And you see how there's now this aura around me, this white glow. It just tends to make things pop against a background. And although we chose a solid color, you could have done a gradient or something else in the background. And in fact, one more tip I want to add before we do the non-headshot graphic is that if you want to try a few different things, like a few different types of text or a few different effects on the photo, instead of just continuing to edit here, what I would strongly recommend that you do is click this duplicate page button. And now we have two different versions. And let's say we just wanted to change the text to this other script, which is huge. Let's make it smaller and then put that here. You'll also notice the pink box that was just there. Again, we're not getting too in-depth into all of the Canva tricks, but if you move text around and you start to see those grids, they're helping you align things either in the middle or in certain parts of the graphic. The reason I wanted to show you the duplicate button is because if you click this icon to grid view on the bottom, you'll start to be able to see all of your graphics. And this can be a helpful way to do two things. Number one, see which one you prefer by seeing them side to side, and number two, view them much smaller to replicate how somebody would actually see them on their phone. So already I can tell that I prefer this one to number three, but let's click the grid again to go back. And this is where we're going to get into the other type of background I mentioned, which is a gradient. So if you go into elements, something that I will often do is just search for the word gradient, or you can pick a color. And these can be some fun backgrounds as well. I would probably filter it to only show static images so that you don't see moving gradients since this is not a moving asset that we're creating. But whether you use a blob like this one to add a little bit of interest or a full gradient background, you can do a few things. Obviously this fully covered my face. So you can click position at the top to move it to the back. I don't like this graphic. I'm not here to endorse and say I think this is a good design, but hopefully you can start to see how adding different elements, changing the text effects and adding photo effects can be a great way to create a headshot graphic. Now I am going to add one more page, and you'll notice it keeps the background color, but you can either hit the backspace button or change a different color if you want something else. I want to create one more graphic, and I just want to show you where you can find images and illustrations in Canva. Because if I wanted to, let's say I was making a graphic and I really wanted a desk. Now if you search for desk, you'll get all kinds of things, but you can narrow it down to photos, or you could go over to graphics to see things that are illustrated. So I'm actually liking the look of this laptop. Let's move that here, make it a little bit bigger, move it into the center. And I will share that if you're working in Canva, depending on which graphic you click, some like this one give you the option to change the colors. Others come with one set color and you cannot change it. So you could click around and see if you preferred this one. You could change the colors. I'm trying to find one that you can't. Like this one. You'll notice there's no color option on the top. That means you can't change the colors. So we'll stick with this one. And then I'm just going to copy the text we liked from before, and I'm going to move it down here. I'm just using the command C and command V buttons on my keyboard, the way that you would use in Microsoft Word on your computer. Now we've got a totally different graphic. Let's just make the background pink. And I think this could be another option. The computer is giving a nod to the fact that it's for online business owners. I'm kind of liking this direction. The last one we're going to do, though, is with a photo. So let's delete the pink background and let's instead use something more like this. Let's move this up a little. Maybe this time I'll try dragging this to the sides like this. You can see how it's actually changing the graphic. But if you don't like the part that it picked, if you double click into the image, you can actually move this around. And now that will keep it within the confines of the square. So the last piece is we'll just keep our same Witten wire, copy and paste it here. It doesn't really work in the same way because the spacing is so different. But for now, let's just stick to this. I don't hate it as much as I thought I would. And you can see how quickly we were able to create a few different versions. And I definitely would recommend creating multiple graphics, at least five, whether it's with different headshots, different graphics, trying to find illustrations in Canva or anywhere else online. And I'll include some references in the description if you're looking for additional illustrations or stock images. But now going back to grid view, you can see that we have different graphics. I would argue the first one is not a finished graphic, but the others could work. Okay, right now I am working on rebranding the Witten Wire podcast because my business is expanding beyond just podcasting and into bigger online business strategies, mostly for online course creators. So I've just been playing around with, I think it's nearly 30 different options. To be clear, some of these I love, some of these I'm not a fan of at all. But I believe that creativity doesn't happen just by staring at one graphic. So I do think it's really helpful to create a lot of different versions to see what you can come up with. I know this didn't go in depth into using Canva. So if you are interested in a Canva tutorial with some of my top tips, leave me a comment below this video. And if I get enough interest, I will make a new video. On top of that, if you're working on launching a new podcast or you're thinking about it, I do have a free download called the podcast launch checklist, which you can download at wittenwire.com slash checklist. I walk through the three major phases of launching, and I give you an overview of all the major small tasks that you'll need to complete. And now, you know, the podcast artwork is a major one. So after watching this video, you're already off to a great start. If you found these tips helpful, I hope you'll give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to this channel so you don't miss any of our upcoming tips and videos. And if you enjoyed today's lesson, here is the next video that I would recommend for you. Yeah.