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How to Create Spotify Playlist Cover on your own

Anirudh Singh

In Business, For Producers, Tutorial Posted

With spotify’s latest decision to open it’s door for all artists, market saturation has made proper branding crucial for survival.

While endlessly binge-listening playlists after playlists, you must’ve realised something- one of the main reasons for Spotify’s popularity is it’s playlists. What would be a better way to promote your brand than creating your own playlist with a professional looking spotify playlist cover (like this)?

Sounds good? Great, now let’s learn how to make one!


Anatomy of a Spotify Playlist Cover

A typical Spotify playlist cover has a very consistent design all across the platform. This involves — a background image, the spotify logo and the playlist name written using the “Circular Std” font. If you use them right then on seeing your playlist covers Spotify listeners will think that you’re a professional.

At the bottom of this post I have attached all the files you’ll need to follow this tutorial.

Note that for this tutorial I’m going to use Photoshop however, you can use any software of your choice as the basic steps will remain the same. If you want to use a phone app, I recommend using Canva.

These are the layers we will be creating —

Let’s go through each of them one by one.

1. Create a new document

Create a new document with the resolution 4000 x 4000px.

2. Import a background image

Select any image that you feel suits your playlist’s vibes. Use www.unsplash.com to get copyright free stock images

3. Gradient map

A lot of spotify playlist covers these days have a very flat, dark, monochromatic look. This step is totally optional and depends on your personal choice. You can either choose to simply color correct your photographs and use them as it is. You can also just use some cool graphics.

However in this tutorial we will try to achieve that same dark look.

Go ahead and add a gradient map layer to your document. This will make your whole image black and white.

This is because the default gradient map is a black and white one. What this adjustment layer does is that it replaces the colors of your image with those of the gradient map you select.

To change the default colors, click on the gradient. This will open the gradient editor.

Most of you must be familiar with the gradient editor. If you’re not, it’s fairly easy to use, just click on the little square boxes showing the black and white colors, and pick any color of your choice.

What you need to keep in mind is that the left color of the gradient will fill the shadows, and the right one will fill the highlights. So it’s best to choose a dark color for the left, and a lighter one for the right.

Once you’re comfortable with your gradient, click OK. Your image should now look something like this —

Sweet, right?

4. Add the spotify logo

Import the spotify logo and with the transform tool, set it’s size to 300x300px. Place it in the top left corner.

(Note: These numbers work only if your document size is 4000x4000px).

Next, set the layer opacity of the logo to somewhere around 30%. This will give it a gray-ish translucent look.

You can also change the color of the logo to fit your background image better, but most spotify playlist covers use the gray one itself.

5. Add the text

This is the final step. You must’ve noticed that almost almost every spotify playlist cover uses the same font.

This font is calledCircular Std.

(Font also included in the link at the bottom of the article)

With the text tool, add some text to your document, and make sure your settings look something like this —

A few things to keep in mind here are that first, you need to select the Circular Std Black font. And second, that the character tracking should be set to -25.

You can change the font size and colour as you like.

In the end, your final product should look like this —


Conclusion

Congratulations, you just created your own Spotify playlist cover! Now go ahead and add some amazing tracks to your playlist and show your brand to the world.

These are the files you will need to recreate this cover, including the background image, spotify logo and the font:


If you’re a music producer & need to get a custom Playlist cover, Album art or Live visual made – feel free to contact me

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