Designing a feature graphic that survives being shrunk

The feature graphic is a 1024 × 500 banner at the top of your Play listing. It is also the poster frame for your promo video, the image used in some promotional placements, and one of the assets Play checks before it will feature you. It is rendered at wildly different sizes, which is why so many feature graphics look fine in Figma and unreadable in the store.

Respect the two hazards: the centre and the edges

If you attach a promo video, a large play button lands dead centre. If Play crops the graphic for a different placement, it takes from the edges. That leaves you two safe bands — left-of-centre and right-of-centre — for anything that must be read. The reliable composition is a device mockup on one side, three or four large words on the other, and nothing important in the middle stripe or the outer margin.

Type big, then bigger

Assume the graphic will be displayed at roughly a third of its native width on a phone. Body-copy sizes disappear. A useful test: export the graphic at 1024 × 500, view it at 340 px wide, and if you cannot read a line at a glance, delete it. Most strong feature graphics carry between two and five words at a weight and size that would look absurd in isolation.

Make it look like the app, not like an ad

The graphic sits directly above your screenshots. If it uses a completely different palette and typeface, the listing reads as stitched together from two projects. Pull the background from the same gradient family as your screenshots, use the same accent colour, and show the real interface in the device rather than an abstract illustration. Consistency across the listing does more for conversion than any single clever image.