53 Comments
User's avatar
Preston Park's avatar

You should define these terms. They aren't obvious to everybody:

Logo: At least 256 x 256 px with a transparent background.

Email banners: Recommended 1100 x 220 px with a transparent background, but could be taller.

Cover image: At least 600 x 600 px.

Social / post preview image: We recommend at least 1456 x 1048 px, but 420 x 300 px is the minimum. 14:10 is the aspect ratio for the preview images.

Expand full comment
Behrouz Jafarnezhad's avatar

It was a great session — and this is a fantastic value-packed post. Thanks for sharing.

And special thanks to Kellyn for her slides; so clean and minimal. Loved it.

Expand full comment
Glasp's avatar

Thanks for sharing this! This is very insightful! I'd like to know more about readers' behavior

Expand full comment
Roberto V. Minasi's avatar

Thanks for all your insights. Quick question: what about the wordsmark logo. Recommended size is at least 1344x256 or above with 21:4 aspect ratio. Me - and many others here - seems to have an issue with that: on desktop version it's displayed as really tiny

Expand full comment
David's avatar

sublime - inspired - divine! :)

Expand full comment
Taylor Jeane's avatar

This was very helpful, thank you!

Expand full comment
Shanie Evans's avatar

thank you for this information :

Preston Park

Better Brains

Apr 9, 2023

You should define these terms. They aren't obvious to everybody:

Logo: At least 256 x 256 px with a transparent background.

Email banners: Recommended 1100 x 220 px with a transparent background, but could be taller.

Cover image: At least 600 x 600 px.

Social / post preview image: We recommend at least 1456 x 1048 px, but 420 x 300 px is the minimum. 14:10 is the aspect ratio for the preview images.

Expand full comment
Xenia Avezov's avatar

I am trying to make my own wordmark image and am struggling with sizing. right now no matter what I do the text and image look too small. What would you suggest?

Expand full comment
Curious Hidden History's avatar

What is recommended size for an image within a post? My home page shows the post's image as being too large to fit. Thanks.

Expand full comment
Conny Borgelioen's avatar

What is the maximum file size for images (e.g art) included in the newsletter? I can't find this information anywhere.

Expand full comment
Andrew Smith's avatar

Thanks, folks! I've just hit 100 subscribers and am really excited to make the presentation better on the physical landing page. This gives me a lot to think about.

Expand full comment
Eheedsa's avatar

As an independent creator, it's important to have a place where your work can live and thrive. A place where you can build a community of supporters and followers. A place where you can control the narrative.

Enter Substack.

Substack is a platform that allows you to do just that. It's a place where you can create and share your work, without having to worry about the algorithm or someone else's agenda.

With Substack, you can build a home for your work. A place where you can reach your audience directly, without having to go through the filter of social media or the noise of the internet.

It's a place where you can connect with your readers on a deeper level, and create the kind of work that you want to be known for.

So if you're ready to take your work to the next level, and build a home for it, then Substack is the platform for you.

https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/to-pay-or-not-to-pay-someone-to-write-my-essay-for-me_b_14793970

Expand full comment
Ravi Rajan's avatar

Thanks for this article. It was very helpful and insightful. One question - is it a good practice to link previous substack articles in every new article ? Will it harm the readership ?

Expand full comment
Felgonah Oyuga's avatar

Good question...can we put previous links under the heading......You may also like....?

Expand full comment
moviewise 🎟's avatar

Is .png the best format to save images in, or is .jpg better? Also, I've noticed that the thumbnail images, the small images that show up on the "Archive" page, for example https://moviewise.substack.com/archive, seem to be pretty low resolution/fuzzy, even though when the article is viewed the main picture there is high resolution/sharp:

https://moviewise.substack.com/p/movie-wisdom-on-making-friends

Could someone help explain what may be wrong? Could the resolution in which the thumbnails are created be increased?

Expand full comment
Katie @ Substack's avatar

Hey there! PNG works better but both are ok.

Have you checked to make sure that your images are at least 1456 x 1048 px? We recommend at least 1456 x 1048 px to avoid blurriness.

Expand full comment
moviewise 🎟's avatar

Hi Katie,

Thanks, but 1456 x 1048 px is too big, and would take up too much space on the page. Is it not possible to just increase the thumbnail resolution (or not compress them so much?) so that the small images on the "Archive" and "Home" pages etc. aren't blurry? The larger ones (the actual image files) on the published pages are not blurry.

Expand full comment
Katie @ Substack's avatar

What you could do is just use a different image for the "social preview" or the thumbnail then you do in the post. You can change the image in the post settings.

Here's how you do that: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039016992-How-do-I-edit-what-my-post-looks-like-on-social-media-

Expand full comment
moviewise 🎟's avatar

Hi Katie, will doing this update/change the thumbnail images displayed on a newsletter's "home" page: https://moviewise.substack.com and the "Archive" page?

Expand full comment
moviewise 🎟's avatar

Hi again Katie! Thanks for taking the time to answer, but the link you provided only mentions that this is to see "what your post will look like on social media such as Twitter." The images displayed on Twitter are much larger than the thumbnails on the Substack newsletter's "home" or "archive" pages. Also, creating new thumbnails for posts is redundant/unnecessary work (and pretty time consuming) since Substack already provides the thumbnails on newsletter's "home" or "archive" pages, it's just that the resolution is too low. Is there any way to bring this to the attention of Substack engineering? If not, then what exactly are the dimensions for the thumbnails that are displayed on a newsletter's "home" or "archive" pages? I'd hate to go through all that trouble to have the images still be compressed or truncated, and therefore still blurry.

Expand full comment
Eve_Interrupted's avatar

Very helpful post and comments! Thank you.

Expand full comment
Tosin Isreal's avatar

Thanks for sharing

Expand full comment