Podcast thumbnail: Canva kit

Everything needed to make a Seeds of Renaissance podcast thumbnail in Canva: the black swallows rising from the bottom-left corner through the logo's fingerprints, faded, on white; the quote, the guest's name and the logo above them; the guest on the right. Chosen 12–13 October 2026. The same ground is used for the Instagram posts. The exploration that led here is archived in archive/podcast-thumbnails-2026-10/.

What's in the kit

Every PNG is the full thumbnail size (2560 × 1440, twice 1280 × 720, so it stays sharp). Drop it in and stretch it to fill the page, and it lands in the right place.

File	What it is	Use
`png/01-background.png`	White, faded fingerprints, swallows	The usual start. One layer for the whole background
`png/02-background-with-logo.png`	The same with the logo already placed	Even quicker: then add only the photo and the words
`png/03-swallows.png`	The swallows alone, transparent	If you want to move or resize the flock
`png/04-fingerprints.png`	The faded fingerprints alone, transparent	The same, for the fingerprints
`png/05-logo.png`	The logo (mark and name), transparent	Use with 01
`png/06-guest-example.png`	Where a single guest goes (placeholder photo)	Match your guest's size and position to it, then delete it
`png/07-two-guests-example.png`	Where two speakers go (placeholder photos)	The same, for conversations
`png/08-guides.png`	Pink guides: quote box, name, logo, face area, the corner to keep clear	Put it on top while you work; delete it before downloading
`png/example-one-guest.png`, `example-two-guests.png`, `example-with-guides.png`	Finished examples	For reference

Set up once (brand kit)

Fonts. Upload Polyamine (the quote) to the Canva brand kit. Apfel Grotezk (the name) is free (Collletttivo, OFL): upload it from system/fonts/. ⚠️ Polyamine must be licensed before anything is published (beads .2).
Colours. Ink #1b1916 for all text. The red comes from the logo and the fingerprints.
Template. Build one thumbnail with the steps below and save it as a team template, so each episode only swaps the photo, quote and name.

Make a thumbnail

New design: YouTube Thumbnail, 1280 × 720 px.
Background: upload 02-background-with-logo.png, drag it onto the page and choose Set image as background.
Guides: add 08-guides.png on top, stretched to fill the page.
The guest: a good photo (head and shoulders, eyes visible, mid-laugh or mid-thought rather than a neutral headshot). Edit photo → BG Remover (Canva Pro), then Adjust → Saturation −100. Place it in the face area so the head fills about three-quarters of the height and the shoulders run off the bottom edge. 06-guest-example.png is a size guide.
- Two speakers: one in front and slightly larger, the other just behind, turned towards each other (07-two-guests-example.png). Fade their shoulders into the white if the photo edges show.
The quote: Polyamine, ink, 112 px, line spacing 1.0, left aligned at x 80 (the same margin as the head's crop on the right), the top of the capitals at about y 104 (baselines 185 and 297). Two lines, three to five words, no wider than 520 px. Shorten the quote rather than shrinking the type; pick its sharpest phrase.
The name: Apfel Grotezk Mittel, ink, 48 px (42 px for "Name & Name"), at x 80, baseline about y 375.
Check: nothing important in the bottom-right corner (YouTube puts the video length there); the words don't touch the swallows; zoom out to about 15% and check the face and quote still read.
Delete the guides, then Share → Download → PNG (or JPG under 2 MB) at 1280 × 720.

The logo

The horizontal lockup (mark and name), straight on the white with no disc, under the guest's name at x 80, y 405, 330 px wide, with PODCAST after it on the same line in Polyamine at the height of the name's capitals. It's part of 02-background-with-logo.png and 05-logo.png, so in Canva it never needs placing by hand.

Rules in short

White ground; the swallows rise from the bottom left; the fingerprints stay faint.
One face (or two for a conversation), cut out, black and white, on the right.
The quote is the biggest text: three to five words. Don't repeat the video title; the title says the topic, the thumbnail the hook.
No other logos, labels or episode numbers; no arrows, shock faces or extra colours.

Rebuilding the kit

./export.sh runs build.py (one page per layer in src/) and screenshots each with headless Chrome into png/. The ground (white, swallows, fingerprints, logo) is shared with the Instagram kit in system/swallows.py; sizes and positions are at the top of build.py. The fingerprints are system/img/fingerprints-red.png, the new mark's prints without the bird. The guest photo is a placeholder. The swallow engraving is traced from a web image with no rights cleared: re-source or redraw it before public use.