It has been about 8 or so years since I produced a podcast, but thanks to The McElroy’s new book ‘Everybody Has A Podcast (Except You)’ I was inspired to get back into making auditory shows for others to listen to. But there’s a lot more to starting a podcast than just recording a conversation; you need to build a brand that is eye-catching, recognizable at smaller sizes, and informs prospective listeners while they search for something to listen to on their morning commute.
I had already decided that my podcast would be about one of my biggest, nerdiest passions – the Dragon Ball anime and manga series. For a name, I had come up with “We Gotta Podcast” which is a little play on words on Dragon Ball Z’s second opening song “We Gotta Power.” As the series is known for it’s thorough usage of puns for all things, I felt this was the most appropriate.
Next was building the brand – colors, font, tone, and building assets for specific uses and platforms.
I started with the Dragon Ball GT TV series logo as a reference for font and color styling for the show title and the iconic Dragon Radar item – a radar used to search for the seven titular dragonballs – as the basis for the background.
I had shared my initial concepts with Erik Anderson, a design friend of mine. He sent me this sketch of an idea of where to take things with the illustrations I’d produce – Me preoccupied by nerding out while my co-host Doug tried to get my attention about the final Dragon Ball coming up on the radar.
After making the illustrations and incorporating them into the composition it came down to small refinements here and there before coming to the final artwork that would be used as the podcast’s album art!
After the design was finalized, I then made individual assets for things like Twitter and YouTube banners, video thumbnails, social media avatars, and so on! And if you’re interested in listening, you can find the show and all available platforms right here – We Gotta Podcast – Dragon Ball From A To Z