Most RSS feeds have an option to include not only series artwork but also individual episode artwork. By testing this out, you have a chance to grab listeners’ attention with famous faces, and can give listeners an idea what they will be hearing about without an overly wordy title. However, there is a chance that you sacrifice brand awareness in the process.
Many of the big podcasts have recently switched out their artwork for episode art, including news podcasts such as The Daily from The New York Times and Today in Focus from The Guardian, but also other podcasts such as Off Menu by Plosive.
At City Sounds, we just launched our new series “The Pilot Series” which is our first to feature individual episode artwork, and we gave this a lot of thought.
“The Pilot Series” seemed an obvious place to begin experimenting with episode artwork, due to the format of the series. In this series, each episode is a pilot for a brand new show, and there is thus a vast variety of topics, tones, music and voices. Here, having artwork that matched each individual concept made a lot of sense, not just to drive engagement, but to give a complete sense of the podcast concept the listener is about to hear.
This reasoning is also echoed by Mark Des Cotes, a podcast branding specialist, on LinkedIn.
A common case for episode art, which Acast advertises on their website, is that it is a chance to advertise celebrity guests, such as on Off Menu’s episode art. This makes sense, as seeing their face might be an intriguing pull for fans. If there are not regular famous guests, it is more of a tradeoff between variety and brand consistency.
There are two main types of episode artwork, some opt for a clean image with no graphics, while others opt for a border or graphic to retain the name and branding of the podcast. In the examples below, you can see that both The Daily and Today in Focus feature a clean photo, while both Off Menu and Pod Save the UK have an edited graphic around the photo.
The Daily:
Off Menu:
So, which style should you go for? Adam Bowie recently wrote a blog post about this, where he argued that a key metric for this decision is where your listeners are. Episode art appears differently on different platforms, which presents a challenge for podcasters. On Apple, the “latest episodes” tab displays show art regardless of episode art. However, on the homepage they will show new episodes with the episode art with the show art baked in.
Apple advises on their website to avoid the “dead zone” where the text and show art would obscure the photo. This homepage feature is a useful way to have a grabbing photo pop out and appeal to listeners.
However, on Spotify, things look different. The best way to find your new episodes in Spotify is to go to the “Latest Episode” tab. In the photo below, you can see Spotify’s latest episode page. As you can see by the sub-title, the one in the middle is an episode of Today in Focus but it displays the episode artwork. Here, a follower of the podcast might accidentally scroll past if they are not looking carefully. Here, some graphic editing could come in handy.
When it came to the artwork for “The Pilot Series,” we began by looking at where our listeners were. In the time period from January 1st, 2025 our listener breakdown is as follows:
There are varying valleys and peaks, but for the total amount of downloads, Apple and Spotify come out equal at 26.09%. Since there is not a clear preference for Apple, we decided that we should not forgo some identifying branding. We also decided to follow advice from podcast branding specialist Mark Des Cotes in designing our template.
We designed the following episode art, careful to have the show name in the top right corner inside Apple’s safe area, and in the same colour scheme as “The Pilot Series” show art – which is purple. In the end, we designed the artwork below. We hope it grabs your attention.
