askDANTE – podcast cover & art direction

The situation.
askDANTE was launching its own podcast, "Einstempeln" – a series on time tracking, absences and shift planning, hosted by the company's CEO and a key account manager. It launched in the middle of the brand redesign I was running for askDANTE, which meant the cover had two jobs at once: hold up at thumbnail size across Spotify, Apple and YouTube, and prove that the new visual system worked beyond the website and core brand assets.

The idea.
The first question was portrait or abstract. An abstract, structure-driven cover would have sat comfortably inside the new design system, but the format lives on two people and their perspective. So we put the hosts at the centre and used the system to frame them: the new typography, colour palette and time-based graphic language as the frame, the people as the content.

The execution.
I ran the project end to end. Concept and moodboards, coordinating and art directing the shoot with an external studio – briefing, setup, lighting, framing, and directing two hosts who aren't professional talent. Then post production, the cover artwork itself, and the surrounding campaign assets. Because I had built the design system, I could stretch it where the format needed it instead of applying it defensively. The result reads from full screen down to thumbnail and carries into blog headers and social without losing the brand's voice.