Four directions for the podcast episode cover, following the brief: one face, three to five words, the guest's name and the logo top left on its white disc. The bottom right stays clear for YouTube's duration badge. Each version is shown at 1280 × 720 and then at real size in a YouTube feed, beside thumbnails from other channels.
The guest photo, quotes and names are placeholders. The photo is cut out from its background so the ground can carry the brand. The woodcut and mountain drawings are traced drafts whose rights are not yet cleared.
At 168 px the current guest cover's title still reads, but the "Podcast" label and the name beside the logo shrink to a few pixels. The Grove covers hold a calm series look, but the face is about a third of the height and the thin title fades at sidebar size. Full pages: templates and Grove covers.
A huge face, cropped at the shoulders, takes the right half. The hook sits on the left in three to five words of Polyamine, with the name below it. Sunlight ground.
The words lead and fill most of the frame. The face is smaller, in a circle (on paper) or an arch (on night), with sunlight behind the cut-out.
The A layout with one of the new graphic elements as a quiet backdrop behind the face, never behind the words: the brush ridge, the linocut range and the flowering branch. The face is smaller here, about two-thirds of the height, so the element shows around it.
One layout, the ground changing by theme. The four system grounds come first. The fifth, a cobalt taken from the mountain drawings, is outside the palette and shown only as a test: colour.md allows four grounds and rules out blue for action.
At real size among other channels' thumbnails. The other channels are made-up stand-ins in common YouTube styles. Scroll the page at arm's length: the ones you still recognise are the ones that work.