How to make great podcast artwork

Now, when it comes to capturing new subscribers for your podcast, first impressions are everything and your podcast artwork plays a big role in that first interaction because to the listener, to the person that's scrolling through their podcast app, your podcast artwork directly represents and reflects your show.

If it looks like something you whipped up in Microsoft paint, then they're going to think it's just something you're doing for fun, even if you are a serious podcaster, but if you have high quality stunning artwork that catches their attention and says to them, you'll really enjoy listening to this podcast, then you'll be more likely to get them to listen and subscribe. Here are three keys to having podcasts , artwork that converts.

Number one, you want the images and the graphics in your artwork to be relevant to your subject. You know when somebody looks at your podcast cover art, they should know what kind of podcasts you have. For example, if you have a star wars podcast, then you want to borrow graphics, icons and symbols from Star Wars. You want to make sure that your artwork screams. This is about star wars.

If you have a politics podcast, you want to borrow graphics and symbols from government agencies, people or history. For instance, Pod Save America, which is one of the biggest political talk show podcasts in the world, uses George Washington in their podcast artwork , and that's to signal that this is a political podcast. And so when you scroll past it, you know immediately they're talking about politics. So you want whatever images you used to be relevant to your subject.

It's also important to keep it simple because most people will scroll pasture artwork on their phone and when they're looking at your podcast on that tiny screen in their hands, it's not going to be as easy to see all the tiny details. So the simpler you can make your artwork, the easier it will be for them to quickly understand what it is you're trying to communicate.

And so if your podcast artwork doesn't look good, really, really small, it's not helping you, it might be well designed and well thought through. But if the person can't understand what you're podcast is about, then they're going to be less likely to check it out into listen to any of your episodes. So a couple of rule of thumb things for keeping it simple. You want to have one focal point, one picture image graphic that represents your podcast, just one.

And then you want the title of your podcast to be concise. In general, I would recommend five words or fewer, because remember people are scrolling past these podcasts and you want to very quickly be able to communicate what your podcast is about. So simple is better. And then you also want to be unique. We're trying to get the person to stop scrolling through their phone and click on your podcast.

So one way you can figure out how to be unique is to scroll down to the bottom of your podcast in the apple podcasts app and see the section that says you might also like these are your quote unquote competitors, the podcasts that apple podcasts think you might like if they listened to your podcast. And so your artwork should stand out and stand above these podcasts.

Cause chances are if someone's listening to these other podcasts, your podcast artwork is going to show up in the bottom of their podcasts . So to wrap up three places to get artwork, if you want the bootstrap option, which is free, you go to Canva. Canva is an online image platform where you can create artwork if you want a more affordable option, go with Fiverr. Fiverr is a website where you can commission graphic designers and all kinds of stuff and it's relatively inexpensive.

And if you want a pro level option than we recommend 99 designs. And I'll put links to all those in the show notes. At the end of the day, you put a lot of time and energy into making your podcast. So don't let your podcast artwork hold you back.