Your podcast’s brand is essential as it establishes a recognizable identity and fosters a sense of trust and familiarity among our audience. A strong brand helps you stand out in a crowded podcasting landscape, attracting new listeners and fostering a loyal community around your content.
Starting with a strong brand will provide a solid foundation for the duration of your podcast. You might not think of your podcast as a professional endeavor now, but you never know what the future will hold. The basic components for a podcast brand are:
Name/title of your show
Think of a name for your podcast before launch. Do searches on Google for the prospective name to see if anyone has the same or a similar name. It’s usually best to avoid similar show names.
Domain name for your show
Even if you have a service that provides a domain (for example: mypodcast.blubrry.com), it’s always good to have a unique domain name for your show (example: mypodcast.com). This way, if the service you are using changes, your unique domain will maintain your established brand.
Show image or cover art
Every podcast should have 3000 x 3000-pixel JPG cover art (the current Apple Podcasts recommendation). Many directories, especially Apple Podcasts, will use this image to link to your show. Think about how the image relates to your content. Make sure it is not too busy and that it is simple to view at smaller resolutions such as a thumbnail image or on a smaller mobile screen. Consider a branding image that is unique; one that will stand out in directories. And if the old-style microphone logo pops into mind, you might want to think again.
Make sure your images are designed and saved for screen viewing (not print) using RGB color space. RGB (Red-Green-Blue) is the color of the light emitted from the screen to represent a pixel of the image. The color space to avoid is called CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), it is the color of ink used for printing. Often podcasters are not aware of the difference and use images for printing as their podcast artwork, resulting in poor-quality images when resized and/or viewed on various screens and devices.
Treat the image as if it could be displayed on a TV screen. Plan on the lower and upper third getting cut off by things such as advertisements, screen tools, or player buttons and features. The most common are web-based player controls that display your podcast artwork behind a semi-transparent bar containing play, pause and other controls across the bottom. Important text and logos should be able to overcome such clipping from the top and bottom of the image.
Make sure your images look good scaled down to as small as 60 x 60 pixels. Text might not be readable but the logo/text should still be recognizable. Apple scales images to as small as 30 x 30.
IMPORTANT: Your image should be saved in JPEG (.jpg) format to optimize the file size. A detailed PNG format image at 3000 x 3000 will typically exceed 1MB in size, which is known to cause issues with applications including Apple Podcasts. More importantly, the larger the file is the longer it takes to load.
In certain circumstances, such as a logo with only a handful of solid colors, the PNG version of your artwork may be smaller than the JPEG version. In this situation, it may be ideal to use the PNG version. Keep in mind that most podcast directories including Apple Podcasts will save smaller versions of your logo in JPEG format regardless of the format you choose. Apple Podcasts specifically creates 600 x 600, 100 x 100, 60 x 60 and 30 x 30 versions saved in JPEG format.
Apple Podcasts specific requirements
Apple Podcasts podcast artwork must be a square image in either JPEG or PNG file format (JPEG recommended) in RGB color space with a minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels. A 3000 x 3000 image is recommended for targeting the Apple TV podcasts app.
Where to go to get your podcast cover artwork
Best practice for album art images is to change them up every 90 days or so. Blubrry’s hosting customers can refresh their podcast’s image using AI every 90 days with AI-generated album art.
If you are not a Blubrry hosting customer, you can generate album art through other AI platforms or even a graphic designer. There are many online resources available to create your own show’s artwork. We recommend checking out the Canva.
Website Design
Design or pick a website theme and incorporate your logo and colors. Though this sounds difficult, remember to keep it simple. Website themes and other options are explained in detail in the Your Website section.