Medium image size: 1400×788 story headers that crop well

The best Medium image size for a story header is 1400×788 pixels, a landscape frame close to 16:9. Medium scales it for every screen, and 1400 pixels wide stays sharp at full width. Medium uses one image as your story's preview, choosable when you publish, and crops it to different shapes in the feed, in lists and in shared links. So keep the subject and any words in the centre of the frame, with plain background towards every edge.

Medium image sizes at a glance

How Medium crops your featured image

Your header is not shown the same way twice. At the top of the story it appears in full. In the home feed and in topic pages it can be trimmed to a wider or narrower rectangle. In some lists it shrinks to a small, nearly square thumbnail. When someone shares the link on another network, that network crops it again to the link preview shape, which is a little wider than 16:9, so a sliver comes off the top and bottom.

How to set the preview image on Medium

1. 1

   Put the header first

   Add your 1400×788 image at the top of the story, before the first paragraph.

2. 2

   Open the publish options

   Medium shows a story preview with a title, subtitle and image before you publish.

3. 3

   Choose or change the image

   If Medium picked the wrong image, change it in the preview to the one you designed for it.

4. 4

   Write a real subtitle

   The preview subtitle travels with the image into the feed. One clear sentence beats a teaser.

5. 5

   Check a shared link

   After publishing, paste the link into a draft post on another network to see the preview crop.

Add alt text to every image while you're there: Medium has a field for it on each image, and it is how screen reader users and search engines understand what the picture shows.

Images inside a Medium story

Below the header, Medium gives each image a layout: in the text column, a little wider than the column, or across the full width of the screen. Upload every image at least 1400 pixels wide and choose the layout by job, not by habit.

• In the column for diagrams, screenshots and charts that the reader studies alongside the text.
• Slightly wider for a photo or illustration that deserves a pause without breaking the flow.
• Full width for one or two moments in a long piece, such as a section opener. Used on every image, it stops feeling special.
• Side by side for comparisons, with images of the same shape so their heights match.

Header images that suit long reads

A Medium header sets the tone before the first word. Stock photos of laptops and coffee cups are everywhere on the platform, which is exactly why a simple typographic header on a considered background stands out. It also tells readers it's yours. Editorial design has more on making words the image.

Keep the header's words shorter than the story title. The title is printed right below it, so the image can carry a phrase, a theme or just your series name. If the words sit on a gradient, text on a gradient explains how to keep them readable across the whole line.

One header for Medium, Substack and LinkedIn

Many writers publish the same piece in several places. Each platform's header is a slightly different rectangle: Substack headers are 1456×816, LinkedIn newsletter covers have their own frame, and every shared link becomes a link preview image. Cropping one file for all of them moves the words.

In Gradiently, a header is a design that can be laid out again at each of those sizes in one step with Pro, with the Mark rendered fresh for every frame, so the words stay centred and readable rather than clipped. Put your heading font in the Pro brand kit once and the Designer uses it on every header it lays out, so each story looks like part of the same series.