Why we used 99designs for our new podcast artwork

Today on 5 Minute Mondays, we'll share our top recommendations for podcast artwork and royalty-free music.

Get $20 off any design contest at 99designs.com/Buzzsprout

Royalty-Free Music

• Soundstripe
• Audioblocks
• Epidemic Sound

Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.

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Transcript

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today on five minute Monday's I'll take you behind the scenes and share the process that we have gone through to rebrand five minute Monday's into podcasting. Q. And a welcome to five minute Monday's who are bringing the best tips and strategies for building your podcast and five minutes or less. And if you're new here, definitely consider subscribing. And the last couple of weeks you've gotten to take a little bit of a sneak peek behind the curtain to see the process that we've gone through to really get ready to rebrand Fineman Mondays in the pod casting Q and A. And if you haven't listened to those episodes, yes, I would. I strongly encourage you to do so, because today we're gonna build on the stuff we've already talked about, so we already covered why we're doing it. We've already covered the new format that we're gonna go be pushing into. You already got to meet my new co host. Sarah and Dylan are gonna be helping with these episodes, and in this episode of particular, I wanted to share the creative elements of rebranding because when you execute a rebrand, you have an opportunity to really recreate your show and make the best version that you possibly can now, having all of that experience of making those episodes. And there are two very specific things that you'll wanna investigate in one or discover, which is what is gonna be the new look of your podcast, specifically your podcast artwork. And then what is gonna be the feel or the sound of your podcast? So we were going through the process of designing artwork for podcasting Q and A. We leveraged a service called 99 Designs. And what's really cool about this particular graphic design website is you're able to create a contest where you basically put up a design brief Say, this is my podcast is about These are the things that are important to me. This is the file size, any of these. They're kind of the design restraints and parameters. If you don't have your picture in the logo, you give them a picture file, and then you have graphic designers from around the world sending you their ideas for what your podcast artwork could be, and you go through a couple different rounds the first round. You just take lots and lots of submissions and figure out okay, What of the one of the 5 to 6 designers or designs that I want to continue to work on, where, when I send my feedback to the designer having to send me some revisions and really refining to these concepts So you take a certain group into the finals, and then from there you're able to choose. Okay. Not only is this the designer that I want to work with, but this is the final podcast artwork that I want tohave for my podcast redesigned. So it's a really simple, straightforward process, especially if you're not a graphic designing yourself. You can certainly use a cheaper website like fiber if you know exactly what you want, and you can find a designer that does exactly what you're looking for. But unless you're in that small group of people, 99 designs is more than likely going to give you a better outcome with artwork that you're very excited about sharing with your audience. Now, the second piece that you'll want to customize is the sound or the feel of your podcast, and this is where music comes into Blade. This is where you can change the theme music that using your intros and you're out throws really think about what kind of experience you want your listeners tohave when they listen to an episode of your podcast and try to construct that from the ground up. So if you're looking for places to get high quality music tracks where you're not gonna have to get worried about copyright infringement or having to pay royalties than the ones that I would encourage you to check out our audio blocks, sound stripe and epidemic sound, all three of those are subscription sites where you can sign up to download as many royalty free tracks is you want to and the licenses cover podcasts at Bus Route. We use sound straight for 95% of our music, both on our YouTube channel and on our podcast episodes. But you can't really go wrong with any of those options, so I hope that was insightful as a behind the scenes journey through our own podcast Rebrand. Definitely make sure to stick around next week, or we'll be launching the first episode of podcasting Q and A. Here on the bus right YouTube channel and in the five minute Monday's podcast feed. So if you're already subscribed a five minute Mondays, you don't have to do anything other than look for the new artwork and the new name when you go to download your episode on Monday. And if you haven't yet subscribe to the YouTube channel and you're watching this on YouTube, makes sure that you d'oh! Because in addition to these videos, we also do software tutorials and gear reviews and strategy videos to really help you on your podcasting journey. Well, thanks for listening, and it's always keep podcasting.