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Tips To Design Eye-Catching Cover Photos

by Alice Jackson Tweet - in Graphic Design

Cover Photos

Last updated on September 13th, 2021

Imagine that you woke up one morning to receive a call where someone tells you that you have been given a small free space to advertise your business publically. You can use that space to showcase anything that may benefit your business. Now, let’s get away from this hypothetical situation so that we can tell you that you actually have got your own private billboard. In fact, we all have, and that is called cover photos.

Cover photos are the top-most section of the social media profiles. They are a powerful tool that provides an opportunity to present the most significant visual portion of the profile and create a lasting impression. It is the first thing that people see while visiting your page for the first time.

Since the last decade, social media cover photos have been trending. All popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. have incorporated it to help users in sharing more information and making social media more useful and fun.

To design cool cover photos, you don’t require any technical skills. All you need to know is the dimensions and the right image.

Whether you want to create cover photos for yourself or any company, here are a few tips for designing eye-catching cover photos so that you can make the most out of your online presence.

Tips To Design Eye-Catching Cover Photos

01. Know Your Goal

No matter whether you are designing website banners, cover photos, or a book cover before coming up with an idea, you first need to have clarity about your goals.

Answer the following questions to yourself:

i. Do I want to increase sales?

ii. Do I want to increase traffic to the website?

iii. Do I want to increase followers on the respective social media page?

iv. Do I want to do branding?

Goal Cover Photo

All these answers will help you to come up with the perfect cover photo design. While answering these questions, keep your target audience in mind. Knowing the target audience will also help you in identifying your goals.

02. Choose The Right Images

As per the study conducted at MIT titled “What makes an image memorable?”, evaluating and forecasting the quality of being easy to remember one picture over another is still a growing subject. They have found that there are specific main components, such as interiors, social institutions, people, and foregrounds that play an essential role in the success of memory.

Right Cover Photo

In other words, people are more likely to remember those images that connect with them on a deeper level. While choosing the image for designing cover photos, make sure you keep the most engaging element at the center to create a remarkable impression.

03. Use RGB Color Mode While Creating Designs

RGB stands for three colors – Red, Green, and Blue. They are the primary colors, by adding two or more colors create a new color. That is the reason why it is also called the additive model.

RGB Color

If you compare RGB with CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and key black), you will find that RGB space has more lively colors. It is because CMYK work with ink, whereas RGB work with light. So if you are creating graphics for online platforms, then RGB is the right choice. CMK is used for logo design, brochures design, t-shirt printing, and letterheads etc.

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04. Create A Visually Consistent Design

Consistency is one of the fundamental principles of designing. Consistent design is intuitive design that helps audience to shift their knowledge to a new situation and discover new things without any difficulty.

Consistent Design

While creating cool cover photos, make sure you use similar colors, fonts, and buttons that have been used across the platforms. Consistency gives the target audience a sense of comfort while saving their valuable time.

05. Pay More Attention To Space Rather Than Text

Think like an advertiser – will you be able to convey your message without being allowed to use any words? If no, then how can you convey your brand message in a few words? A cover photo is a place for eye-catching picture ideas and themes, not for text posts.

Space Cover Photo

It is believed that the brain processes images a thousand times faster than text. So it is advisable to use less or no text to your cover photos. It is where choosing the right image plays an important role (discussed in point 2).

06. Make Sure That The Profile Picture Relates To The Cover Photo

It is another excellent and important tip to design eye-catching cover photos. Most of the companies or designers are failing to take into consideration the profile picture while planning the Facebook cover photo. They may come up with a fantastic design but when the design gets uploaded, the profile image overlaps the cover photo design. To avoid this mistake, it is advisable to keep your essential image or content on the right side of the design.

Make Sure That The Profile Picture Relates To The Cover Photo

For a more innovative approach, try to create the profile and cover image interactive to each other. Some platforms automatically make your cover photo as an individual post. So, if you are adopting the creative approach, make sure it looks good with or without profile image.

07. Follow The Guidelines Of Each Platform

Every social media platform has its own set of guidelines. These guidelines can be in form of image quality, size, etc. For instance, if you look into the Facebook guidelines, you will find that their guidelines forbid the use of nudity, threatening images, copyrighted images, etc.

Follow The Guidelines Of Each Platform

Talking about the size, well, currently the cover photo size for Facebook is 851*315 pixels on desktop.

Ideal cover photos size for other popular social media sites are as follows:

i. Twitter: 1500 * 500 pixels

ii. Pinterest: 222* 150 pixels

iii. YouTube: 2560 * 1440 pixels

iv. LinkedIn: 1584 * 396 pixels

08. Keep The Design Simple

If you are using the cover photo place for any campaign promotion, then it is advisable to keep the design simple and clean. Try to create a compelling image with a short content and simple call-to-action button.

Keep The Design Simple

If you are struggling to design that perfect cover photo for your upcoming campaign, then use our Facebook cover photo maker.

09. Make Your Design Visually Engaging

Apart from creating a visually consistent design (as discussed at point 4), it is essential to make the design visually appealing as well. After all, the overall purpose of social media is getting connected with the target audience and engaging them with the brand.

Make Your Design Visually Engaging

Here Are A Few Techniques For Creating The Visually Engaging Design:

i. Use quotes that relate to the brand or audience. For instance, if you have an online fashion brand, then you can use one of the famous fashion quotes ‘Dress like you are always being photographed’. Such type of quotes will create an urge among the audience to buy more and look good.

ii. Use images that generate engagement through humor.

iii. You can combine images with a hashtag campaign.

iv. Use images that express your appreciation. It will help a brand in getting more comments or like on their cover photos.

10. Keep Your Mobile Customers In Mind

According to the reports, the number of worldwide mobile social media users is increasing every year, and the figure is expected to grow 3.02 billion (approx) by 2021. It shows how important it is to keep mobile customers in mind while creating cover photos for social media platforms. It’s not necessary that images that look perfect on the desktop may look good on mobile phones as well.

Keep Your Mobile Customers In Mind

To ensure that the critical information doesn’t get hide on a mobile screen, it is advisable to test the images. For instance, if you have added any text on the desktop image and it’s not looking good on mobile screens or it is degrading the quality of image, then you may have to remove the text, and come up with some other alternative.

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Conclusion

Now that you know some great tips to design an eye-catching cover photo, it’s time to start implementing these tips and come up with the design that not only helps in getting more followers but also increases sales. If you have your own designs and want to sell it online, then Designhill Printshop is an ideal place for you that allows designers to sell their artworks, designs, and photographs at their own set royalty rates.

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Alice Jackson is a business consultant, blogger, social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer and an avid author at Designhill. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, startup strategies and e-commerce. When she’s not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels, Connect with her on Twitter: @jackson_alice1

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