In this talk, Rob Greenlee explains how to create effective podcast cover art by being intentional with every visual element. He stresses that each color, font, and image should support the podcast’s message and that unnecessary decorative details can be removed to improve visual impact. Greenlee advocates for simplicity, the use of contrasting colors, and ensuring the artwork tells a cohesive story that aligns with the show’s branding. He also highlights the importance of testing the artwork on various devices, noting that it can appear differently on laptops, phones, and tablets. He warns against over‑complicating designs, blindly following platform guidelines, or copying popular trends, urging creators to be unique. Finally, Greenlee recommends practical tools—particularly Canva—showcasing how its customizable templates allow creators to modify text, graphics, and background colors to suit their podcast’s identity.
Chapters
Be very intentional with every element of your show. Why is it in there? And each color, each font, image should be there to support the podcast message. If you can, even with my art, like, like all these visual elements, like these, the slashing black on the green and the fading in the background, those probably are unnecessary. So I would probably be okay removing all that. It just creates a little bit more of an attraction to the artwork and makes it a little bit more like eye candy. It makes it interesting to look at. But if I were to remove these green dots and the green kind of slashed lines and that green kind of fading background, that's in my cover art for my podcast. That would be okay too. And I think it would look— it would really pop a lot. So that's not a bad way to go about it. So, so be very intentional. The artwork needs to tell a story, right? And that artwork also gives a consistent feel for the coloring brand of my show, right? So that's the only real benefit there. And use contrasting colors, right? So I have red, black, some white in the visual image of this, but, and in this kind of fluorescent green of sorts. And those are all just elements of the show that I've built over time. And also test how your artwork looks on a variety of devices. Like I mentioned earlier about checking the size of the art is important as well in various screens and stuff. And it's going to look different on a laptop than it's going to look on your phone or your tablet. Right. And also the things not to do is don't overcomplicate it. Don't overcomplicate design. And I think I've been pretty clear on that. Simplicity is key. And don't always follow platform guidelines for art, right? I mean, sometimes the platform people don't understand how to do that. And don't always copy popular trends either, blindly just copying what other people are saying is what you're supposed to do out there. One of the things that you're striving to do as well is be unique, right? Do something a little bit different. So let's move on a little bit here and let's, let me go through, let's go ahead and talk about ways that are available out there to create your podcast assets. Right. And there's some platforms out there. I'll go through pretty quickly. Some top tools and not going to talk too much around the strategy of the COVID art. But let's talk about the number one tool, which is Canva. That's what I use to produce the artwork that I have for my podcast. And I'm going to bring up a screenshot of a bunch of Canva templates. Right. And what you can do with these templates is that every element in the template can be changed or modified. So all the text— so I'll bring it up on the screen here. So all the text, all of the, all the graphics, all the graphic elements, the coloration of the background, all that stuff can be modified in the platform.
