Have you ever created a cover photo for your post, added some cool graphics and text only for the thumbnail version of it to be cropped badly right where the graphics and texts are?! Well, I’ve done that many times and I thought that I’ve figured it out… until ‘recently’ when Connect changed the aspect ratio of the thumbnails, and I got caught out again!
Previously, Connect was showing thumbnails of your cover photo in the 16:9 aspect ratio. If you’re not sure what an aspect ratio is, find out more here (Wikipedia). And then a few weeks back, it was switched to a 4:3 aspect ratio* meaning that the left and right side of your 16:9 image would be cropped to fit the 4:3 ratio. So there’s a chance that you might lose some text/graphics.
*Note: I measured the thumbnails and it’s not quite a 4:3 aspect ratio but it’s close enough!
Here’s a quick tip to make sure your cover photo is suitable for BOTH the 16:9 and 4:3 ratios! Create your cover photo using the 16:9 aspect ratio but leave the margins along the left and right side clear of important text/graphics!
If you look at the cover photo above, the blue background is 16:9. The orange background is 4:3. If you check the thumbnail of this post, it is still showing some of the blue background: this proves that it’s not fully matching a 4:3 aspect ratio! But this is good enough to ensure that as long as your important text/graphics are in the orange area, your cover photo will be fine regardless of whether it’s cropped to 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios.
Personally, I generally use a 1280 x 720 pixels dimension for the cover photo and I also have a template showing the blue and orange background to clearly identify the safe and no-go areas. However, if you’re worried about file size, you can possibly go down to a 1024 x 576 pixels dimension (this is still a 16:9 ratio). You could go lower but I would worry about the clarity of your cover photo on a big screen.
You can check out my recent post here as an example of how the cover photo gets cropped as a thumbnail as shown in the screenshot below. Again, the width of the orange box seen in the cover photo below is the ‘same’ as the orange area above:
Lastly, here are my tips for designing a good cover photo:
- Make sure your font type and size is suitable so that it’s easy to read when it’s shown on a small screen or when it’s been made into a thumbnail.
- If you’re placing a background image behind your text. keep it simple. A very busy background with lots of patterns/lines will make the text hard to read. A simple ‘fix’ to this is to add a solid colour box above your busy background but behind your text (as in the example above).
- Choose suitable colours for your text and background to ensure clarity.
- A cover photo should be interesting to capture attention but don’t go overboard. Usually, less is better! Don’t put too many text/graphics on it. And I personally recommend avoiding animated GIFs. If you do want to use animated GIFs, please be responsible and keep your animation speed low so that it cycles through the images slowly!!
- The text on your cover photo should capture the essence of your post and can be used to complement the title of your post. That is, the two does not need to match. Again, see the example above: the text on the cover photo is generic, the title on the post is more specific to the month of November.
- And yes, you can have a cover photo that is only an image with no text! Obviously, an image that complements the title of the post would be ideal!
- And graphic designers would probably also recommend that you use 1-2 font types. 3 font types (like in the example above) is pushing it. Keep it simple!
Some folks are probably already aware of this dimension ‘trick’ and the tips above but in case you’re not, I do hope that you’ve found this post useful! I do have an excellent app that I use to create my cover photos (Canva) and I’m hoping to find some free time to create some video tutorials on how to use it. The free version is plenty good enough!
If you have any other tips/tricks, do share in the comments below or if you’re still having problems designing your cover photo, feel free to ask away! Or post your cover photos below and ask the community for feedback! 
