Podcast
Podcast
Every image for the Seeds of Renaissance podcast: the episode cover for YouTube, the episode posts for Instagram, and show art. Part of the SoR design system; read BUILD.md first. Status: examples.md · beads design-34t.16.
The episode cover is final (signed off 13 October 2026). Make one in Canva with the podcast kit. Square show art is next.
One brand, no named shows
The podcast is Seeds of Renaissance: one name, one feed, no named stations. Over the Mountains is retired as a show name (2026-10-05, see brand.md). Kinds of episode (guest interviews, Rufus–Sylvie conversations) are formats, shown by playlist and the episode's own words, not by separate lockups. The podcast goes out on YouTube as video and on podcast apps as audio; YouTube is one channel for it (youtube.md has the channel's own specs).
The look: swallows and fingerprints
All podcast images share one ground:
- White, plain. Nothing behind the words.
- The black swallows (the woodcut flock,
system/woodcuts/elements/swallows-flock-engraving-black.png) rising from the bottom-left corner, cropped by the edges so the flock is still arriving. - The logo's fingerprints, without the bird (
system/img/fingerprints-red.png), faded to 20% around the birds and filling the corner. They fade out before they reach the words. - The logo: the horizontal lockup, mark and name, straight on the white, no disc. On podcast images it is followed by PODCAST on the same line, in Polyamine at the height of the name's capitals. It always sits under the guest's name.
The recipe is code in system/swallows.py, shared by the YouTube and Instagram kits, so both stay the same.
The episode cover (YouTube, 1280 × 720)
| Part | Rule |
|---|---|
| The hook | The episode's sharpest line, three to five words, two lines. Polyamine 112 px, ink, at x 80: the left margin matches the head's crop on the right. The biggest text. Not the video title: the title carries the topic ("Iain McGilchrist on the divided brain"), the cover the hook ("We've lost the plot") |
| The guest's name | Apfel Grotezk Mittel 48 px (42 for two names), under the hook |
| The logo | The lockup with PODCAST, under the name, 330 px wide. Same place on every episode |
| The guest | Cut out, black and white, on the right; the head about three-quarters of the height, shoulders running off the bottom. Expressive (mid-laugh, mid-thought), eyes visible |
| The ground | White, swallows and fingerprints from the bottom left, as above |
| Keep clear | The bottom-right corner, where YouTube shows the video length |
Two speakers (a conversation): one in front and slightly larger, the other just behind, turned towards each other, shoulders fading into the white; "Name One & Name Two".
Why it works. People see the cover at 170–360 px wide, often on a phone, and at 168 px in "Up next". So: one focal point (the face), a few big words, and the brand as a signature rather than a message. The face does most of the work; the hook is the second read; the logo, swallows and fingerprints make the series recognisable before anyone reads it. Check every cover at about 15% zoom before downloading. Honest, not clickbait: no arrows, shock faces or extra colours.
How to make one: the podcast kit: full-size PNG layers (the ground with the logo, the guides above, placement guides for one or two guests), the Canva steps and exact positions. Download as PNG or JPG under 2 MB at 1280 × 720.
Episode posts (Instagram)
The same ground and logo on 4:5 and 1:1 posts: the hook, the guest's name in Apfel Grotezk, the logo with PODCAST, the guest rising from the bottom right. Part of the Instagram kit, with quote cards, announcements and carousels on the same ground.
What we need
| Item | Size | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Episode cover | 1280 × 720 | Done: the podcast kit |
| Episode posts | 1080 × 1350 and 1080 × 1080 | Done: the Instagram kit |
| Show art | 3000 × 3000, JPG or PNG, RGB | Next. Spotify, Apple Podcasts and others. Must read at 55 px in app lists |
| Episode art | 3000 × 3000 | Optional per episode: guest portrait, short title |
| Audiogram or clip cover | 1080 × 1920 and 1080 × 1080 | Later: see social.md |
Open
- Fonts: Polyamine (the hook, PODCAST) must be licensed before covers are published (beads
.2); export final PNGs from a machine that has it, or from Canva once it is in the brand kit. - Swallow engraving: traced from a web image with no rights cleared; re-source or redraw it.
- A softer ground: a pale colour or simple image instead of plain white was suggested (13 October); secondary, after the basics.
- Real guests: the photo and words on the examples are placeholders.
How the cover was arrived at (versions A–D, sixteen backgrounds, the swallows versions): archive/podcast-thumbnails-2026-10/.
Brief for a new session
Make square show art (3000 × 3000) on the swallows-and-fingerprints ground: the logo with PODCAST large, no guest; two or three options at full size and at app-list size (55 px and 160 px). Build it with system/swallows.py like the kits. Finish: update this page and examples.md, beads, commit, push, republish.
Prompt: Read projects/sor-design-system/podcast.md and follow its brief.
