Why is creating YouTube channel art,
that banner at the top of your YouTube page.
So confusing and what are you even supposed to put in
there anyway?
And that's what you've been wondering.
Welcome to the YouTube channel art ultimate guide.
We're going to dive into everything,
YouTube banner channel art here in this video.
If you are new here,
my name is Meredith Marsh and this channel is dedicated to
helping your side hustle thrive as a video content creator so
that you can become the boss of your own future.
So make sure you hit that subscribe button.
If that sounds like your jam,
we're going to jump into this whole channel art thing.
Now, what if I told you that your YouTube channel art
isn't actually supposed to be about you now that might seem
backwards, but since your banner is one of the first things
that people see when they land on your homepage for the
very first time,
it's actually the most important element of your whole entire YouTube
page. You're just using that space to let people know where
they are,
and you're not using the space to tell people why they
should care and maybe why they should hit that subscribe button
while they're here.
Then you're missing out on some really valuable real estate on
your own channel.
So if you're creating your channel art for the very first
time, or you want to upgrade your channel,
or you're just not sure what all of those into designing
your YouTube banner.
And one of the questions you want to be asking yourself
is what do I need to include in my channel art
to give people a reason to let them know why they
should stick around and hit the subscribe button.
So let's say you have a crafting channel and your name
is, I don't know,
Kathy, and you create your banner.
And it says welcome to Kathy's craft closet that doesn't really
tell the viewer what kind of crafts you do.
And they can't really identify with whether they're even interested in
the type of crafts you do on your channel.
So instead of welcome to Kathy's craft closet,
you could say something like Kathy's craft closet to help you
make fun,
easy crafts with supplies you already have in your closet,
not bad right now in this video,
I'm using Canva to show you the ultimate guide to creating
your YouTube channel art Canva is like a free software you
can use right in your browser.
You don't even have to download anything.
And I also have a template that you can use for
your channel art,
right within canvas.
So I put a link to that down in the description
below, and you might be wondering what about photos and logos
and all that kind of stuff like what should be in
there. So let's dive into Canva and get to the specifics.
Now, before we dive into that,
I have to show you this.
You see how at the very top of my YouTube app,
I have this blue bar.
One of the things I want to show you in this
video is how to customize that color.
There's no setting within YouTube to do that.
You have to use your channel art.
Now, one of the weirdest things about YouTube channel art is
the actual size that you have to make your image in
order to have that tiny little banner show up at the
top of your YouTube channel or the actual image that you
upload YouTube is not a long,
horizontal banner shaped image.
It's actually shaped like a YouTube video is shaped.
And the actual dimensions that you need to use for your
channel art is 2,560
pixels wide by 1,440
pixels high.
Just like the template I'm showing you here on my screen
on which you can download using the link in the description
below. So you're uploading this big,
huge image.
And then YouTube is cropping that into this along horizontal banner
and the parts that you want to show up as your
YouTube channel art as the banner,
they have to be in the middle of this gigantic image
and they have to be placed just right,
because YouTube is going to do the cropping for you.
And if you're on a mobile device,
a tablet or a desktop,
it gets cropped a little bit differently as well.
So it has to be in the middle of your image
horizontally and vertically.
It also has to be small enough so that it's not
getting cropped off.
When you're looking at it on a mobile device,
you can also find some predesigned,
a YouTube channel art templates inside of Canva.
You can also use place it creative market graphic river.
I'll put links to all of those places down in the
description, along with my own template,
for the layout of your channel art.
There's a couple of things that you need to keep in
mind. You want to take into account this sizing in cropping,
which we already talked about,
but how much text should be there and how big should
the text be?
How big should your images or your logo be?
There's all kinds of things that you want to think about
here. And so what I recommend is that you have one
headline, one main sentence.
So with Kathy has a craft closet,
for example,
it was going to be Kathy's craft closet here to help
you make fun,
easy crafts with supplies you already have in your closet.
Now that's pretty wordy.
There's a lot of stuff going on there.
So we need to kind of dress it up a little
bit and make sure that the right parts of that sentence
are highlighted.
So we kind of have a headline and then a sub
headline. And somewhere in there,
you may also want to include when you upload your videos
or how often what your upload schedule is.
That's something I actually need to update on my own channel
banner. Now,
if you're going to put a picture of yourself or multiple
pictures, I want you to think about a little bit of
balance here.
If you have a picture of yourself as your profile image,
and then you place the same picture in your banner art,
then it's kind of redundant and really unnecessary.
But my channel art,
my profile photo and the picture that is in my channel
banner are different photos.
So they don't really compete with each other.
Pull us to add a little bit more balance.
I added the picture of myself on the right hand side
of the channel banner,
so that it's not right next to my profile image,
by the way,
the photos you see in my and in my banner are
done by my friend,
Kristin Goss from boss,
boss photography,
down in Pittsburgh,
PA I highly recommend you invest in a really great brand
photos for your YouTube channel,
but that's a topic for another day.
And if you were Kathy from Kathy's craft closet,
then I would definitely consider having either one nice big photo
that kind of displays craft supplies,
and maybe some of the actual crafts that you create on
your channel as kind of like a flat lay type of
an image.
Here's a really good example from smart fund DIY.
Now, when you go into actually design your banner,
your channel art,
you're probably going to find that what you create with your
design, once you upload it to your channel,
YouTube is probably not going to crop it exactly the way
that you were expecting them to.
And that's okay.
Just go in,
tweak your design,
resave it,
re upload and try again.
It's pretty much impossible to get it perfect on the first
TRIBE. Now,
once your channel art is beautiful,
perfect, and you're ready to upload it,
or at least see how it's going to look on your
channel. There's a couple ways you can do that.
The easiest way is to go to your actual channel,
make sure you're logged in under your channels,
YouTube account.
And then you should see this little icon show up in
the top,
right? This little camera icon,
or you could come down here to this customized channel button,
and it's going to open up your settings within YouTube studio.
Or you can simply get here by going to your YouTube
studio, coming down to customization on the left-hand side.
And then instead of looking at layout,
you want to come over to branding.
And this is where you can change your channels profile,
picture your banner image or your video watermark.
So for our banner image,
I have a new one.
I added a few things,
tweaked it a little bit.
So I'm going to hit change and I'm going to select
my banner.
We're going to hit open.
And this is where it tells me how exactly it's going
to be cropped.
I'm thinking this is fine.
Yeah, I think we're good here.
I'm going to hit done.
And then at the very top,
right, you want to make sure that you hit publish.
Or if we come back over here and hit refresh,
narrowing out,
there's my new banner,
it's all white with all white background.
And I just added how often I upload every single week,
usually. So a couple of common questions I have seen about
YouTube channel art is what about my channel name?
Should my channel name be in the banner?
Should my logo and branding elements be in the banner.
And I think what you really have to think about there
is again,
balance. My channel is just called Meredith Marsh.
Do I need to put that in my banner?
And as far as the logo is,
I mean,
I don't have a super recognizable logo and my logo evolves
over time.
So I don't think adding any branding elements would really add
to my channel art.
But if you have a recognizable logo attached to your brand,
then you want it to be instantly recognized in your channel.
Aren't you on people who are looking for your channel to
know right away that they found your channel.
Now, I mentioned that I had a juicy tip about how
to customize your YouTube channel colors within the app on your
phone. And it's something that you can't do this anywhere inside
of YouTube.
It's actually a hack to do with your channel art.
So if you are viewing this video on a device that
is not a phone,
then go ahead and pick up your phone,
open this up,
just open up any channel.
You can look at your channel.
You can look at your favorite YouTubers channel and just see
what colors shows up inside of the YouTube app.
It might be blue,
it might be red,
it might be Brown or tan.
How does that happen?
And how can you change yours?
Well, YouTube automatically looks at your channel art and pulls a
color from the channel that it thinks is on brand for
you for a really long time.
Mine was like this dark tan color,
which is like the worst.
And I think,
I think it's because it was pulling the color of my
hair. It was the color that stood out as being a
featured color in my thumbnail,
I guess.
So the trick to customizing the YouTube app color for your
channel is if you remember back when I said that your
YouTube channel art banner,
that you create is going to be like the dimensions of
a computer screen or of a video.
It's not that long horizontal image,
but the long horizontal part of the banner is the only
thing that actually shows up on your YouTube channel or in
the app.
So for the other parts of your banner image that are
basically invisible to the viewer at the very top and the
very bottom of your banner area,
you have this absolute dead space.
You can make those sections any color you want.
So I have mine.
That's kind of like blue,
green color,
which used to be the color of my channel in the
app. Now it's like a little bit more of a darker
blue color,
and this is what it looks like when I upload it.
But you don't see all of this blueness.
That's just the color that I wanted YouTube to pick as
the featured color.
So when you're designing your channel art,
you can just make a rectangle at the top and at
the bottom,
make it the color that you want and see if the
app changes for you.
It might not be immediate.
And this is like a little bit of a hack that
a lot of people don't know about.
And who knows,
maybe at some point,
this section of the video will be obsolete and it will
be easier to customize the color of your channel within the
app. But in the meantime now,
you know the secret.
So if you're not sure how to actually add images,
change fonts and all that stuff within Canva,
when you're designing your channel art,
using my template that you can find out in the description
below, I queued up the very next tutorial over here for
you, where I show you exactly how to create your banner
inside of Canva.
So I'll see you over there.