Last updated on December 6th, 2022
YouTube is no more a global platform for fun videos. It’s a marketing tool. Now, many marketers as well as business owners have started exploring this visual medium to increase their market reach manifolds. Almost all businesses have their YouTube channels to engage the target audience with brands. This has lead to businesses competing hard to catch the customer’s attention. Therefore, they design a unique, simple, and interactive YouTube banner ideas for brand promotion.
The one glaring fact that stares at your face while creating your YouTube banner is the competition. At this video sharing platform, many thousands of videos are uploaded daily. Businesses from all industries have their channels started with hundreds of new videos uploaded for brand promotion. So, the challenge is in catching the attention of people in this jungle of videos.
This should prompt you to make your YouTube channel art stand out in many ways. A slight distraction or a wrong message for the audience can put them off perhaps forever. After all, they have thousands of other videos to watch from your niche. So, only a perfect channel with relevant videos can survive the competition.
However, your YouTube banner or channel art is your opportunity to make a lasting impression on your first-time visitors. If the banner design idea is outstanding, it can convert the visitor into a subscriber of your channel. For small businesses, the need to create such banners as part of their marketing strategy that outcompetes the business rivals is felt even more.
Therefore, making the best first impression on your target audience is the first condition for effective brand promotion on YouTube. This you can ensure first by creating a remarkable YouTube banner with the right images and other elements.
Remember that if you position your brand adequately through the YouTube videos, it will enhance your brand outreach tremendously.
You can gauge how massive the audience of YouTube as a social channel. According to a survey, 500 plus hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube per minute in May 2019. So, leverage this platform to create a place for your business in your market niche. But first, design your channel art nicely.
Create A YouTube Banner All By Yourself
Your small budget need not be a constraint in creating an attractive YouTube banner. Many software tools are available to businesses today to help them create graphic designs, including banners. One such effective AI-powered YouTube banner maker comes from Designhill, the leading creative marketplace.
This banner maker has a user-friendly interface that allows you to create your banner even without design skills. With hundreds of colors, images, typefaces in its library, this banner maker is 100% customizable to personalize the design.
However, first, pay heed to some basics of designing the banner to come up with an impressive banner that generates curiosity for your brand.
Follow These Crucial Tips To Design Your YouTube Banner
01. Chose The Right Banner Size
The YouTube banner size matters a lot for an impact on viewers. On a desktop browser, the banner occupies about a quarter of the screen. So, with such a large space taken up, the banner surely catches the attention instantly as the first thing visible on the screen.
Therefore, you should be aware of the right banner size. The maximum YouTube banner size is 2560 x 1440 pixels. This looks like a huge banner. But this is because social media wants to let you create detailed channel art for your brand.
When deciding on your banner image for mobile devices, upload an image of at least 1546 x 423 pixels size. This banner size is a safe area that will be visible on mobile screens. After you upload the image, it will be automatically scaled down as per the width of the mobile device.
If you are uploading for tablets, the image size should be 1855 x 423 pixels, with the safe area being 1280 x 350 pixels. This safe area of the image will be visible on the device despite the adjustment.
While the YouTube banner size is fixed, you should follow the banner image size requirements as well. Here are the image size details:
– Minimum size: 2048 x 1152 pixels.
– Safe area for text and logos: 1546 x 423 pixels.
– Maximum width: 2560 x 423 pixels.
– Maximum file size: 6 MB.
02. Design Banner With Size In Mind
Now, that you know the right YouTube banner size, always keep that in mind when designing your YouTube banner. You will still be making a lot of adjustments to incorporate a background image in the banner. If you make mistakes in this regard, your banner will lose its impact.
While incorporating the banner image, make sure that its important parts are not lost in adjusting it to suit the banner size. To avoid cutting those image portions, consider these tips:
i. Put all of your crucial information such as your company name and logo, contact information, and call to action buttons in the central area of the banner design. This is the area where your crucial content will be safe from any automatic adjusting of the image to the correct banner size.
ii. Remember that on a mobile version of the banner, your profile picture comes in the way of your YouTube channel art. Therefore, putting the details of your banner at the right place is even more important consideration for the small screen.
iii. To see how your YouTube banners look on different sizes of screens, you should visit the YouTube support page to get detailed instructions.
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03. Show Your Brand Specialty
How is your brand different from your competitors? If you can precisely define how the brand stands out, you have answered the question perfectly.
Here, note that many businesses have a massive fan following on Facebook, but their YouTube channel art fails to gather a matching number of subscribers. This happens because their YouTube banners and profile pictures do not convey a specific brand message.
Your YouTube banner must not only tell who you are but also how you stand out from competitors. Therefore, highlight your specialties and priorities of business in the banner design.
Create channel art that connects with the audience emotionally. Remember that you should create the banner to sell your brand and not your products or services. The design should reflect who you are and not what you sell.
04. Know Your Target Audience
Consider your target customers while thinking about how to create a banner. When you know which set of people are likely to buy your offerings in the market, you can then design the banner to please them.
Therefore, you should have detailed information about the audience. Research your market to have an insight into who is the ideal customer of your products. But don’t restrict your research to just one demographic.
Instead, branch out to other related niches to find out which other people can show interest in your offerings. This will help in making some conclusive statements regarding the audience of your banner should target.
You should try to create a customer persona to conceptualize the target audience for your YouTube banner. So, know more about the customer’s family life, social, educational, and economic backgrounds.
In this way, the personality traits of the customers are clear to you, which helps in designing the banner precisely for them.
05. Choose Your Tone And Voice
Which is the right tone your YouTube banner should speak to the audience? The banner should speak in a specific tone and voice that the customer can relate with easily.
The tone is the attitude and mood you convey through your banner. The choice of the tone depends on the type of business you run apart from the target customer.
For instance, if you offer luxurious products, then speak in a sophisticated and classy tone. Similarly, in case kids are your audience, address them in a funny way. But you can also blend your voice to make your brand look friendly and human. For instance, think of blending a professional and funny tone.
06. Pick Bold Colors
Prefer the use of bold colors to catch viewers’ attention. With bold and bright colors, you can engage them with the brand for a little more time. But, make sure that the color scheme represents your brand personality.
While using a YouTube channel art maker, pick colors that suit your brand values. Know that colors have the power to evoke our emotions. For instance, the red color evokes passion, aggression, love, and energy.
So, first, know which color best expresses the values of your brand. Then, see if you can pick bold colors to evoke the desired emotions from the target audience.
But avoid cluttering the space with multiple colors, which confuses the viewers. Rather than going for three to four colors, pick one attractive color and its hue.
07. Include Your Icons And Social Buttons
Brand icons include your logo, company name, and any image that your customers associate with your business. Include social buttons of Facebook, Twitter, etc. and your website address. All of these should be part of your YouTube banner.
These icons appear on the lower right corner of the banner. Your viewers can click on these buttons to access your website and the social accounts to known more about your brand.
Here are the steps you should take to add the buttons:
i. Log on to your YouTube channel.
ii. Select the settings by clicking on the gear icon underneath the banner and have the dialog box.
iii. Select ‘Customized the layout of your channel’ in the dialog box.
iv. Close the dialog box and go to the upper right corner of the banner to select ‘’Edit Links.’’
v. Add links to your various social media and websites and save from net the new links. Then, they will appear on the lower right-hand corner of the banner.
08. Add A Relevant But Descriptive Background Image
The background image is the most crucial element to convey a message to the audience. So, when pondering on how to make banners, pick a unique and creative image, and incorporate some text that summarizes your brand.
This way, you can quickly show your new viewers what your YouTube channel is all about. But pick the relevant image. For instance, if you do tech reviews, a futuristic banner background image will be appropriate. For a lifestyle business, you can include some exciting images of scenic places.
Small businesses can use free stock images in the YouTube banner. Stock images are perfect for incorporating in a YouTube banner but pick them carefully. Make sure that the images are relevant and less used.
Or, if affordable, hire a photographer to click professional pictures of your products to capture the mood that you wish to convey to the audience with the image.
09. Add Some Structure
A surefire trick to make your YouTube banner stand out is to design some borders, shapes, and icons. Outline the banner with a simple border to direct viewers’ eyes to your banner.
Add an icon to highlight your call to action button. How about creating a background shape? If you can do this, it will help your banner pop off the screen.
So, before publishing it, add some structure to the banner. Your channel can stand out amid your competition in this way.
10. Keep Your Banner Design Simple
Whichever ideas and elements you pick to create a YouTube banner, keep its design simple. That is the one tip every professional will ask you to follow strictly.
Viewers do not like to waste their time in understanding a complicated brand message if the banner space is cluttered with too many elements. The impact you wish to make on viewers is lost if they confront a cluttered space.
Many businesses make the mistake of adding more text to images to describe their brand. Instead, use only two to three words that can best tell about what your business is all about. The purpose of such a banner is to draw the viewer’s eye to the most important element.
This element could be an image, a product, or your call to action. So, keep the space clean with only one or two elements used. However, the simple banner must still take into account your marketing goals.
Also, note that text can altogether be eliminated from the banner to keep it simple. Many business owners want to create banners on their own using the software. They are not designed savvy. So, for them, it is fine to exclude text completely from the YouTube banner design. But, in that case, use a high-quality image.
So, these are the basics you must adhere to when creating a YouTube banner to engage customers with your brand. You can further explore what skills you need to incorporate these tips in making the banner stunning.
Wrapping Up
YouTube is a huge social platform for video sharing. Businesses use this visual medium for brand promotion. But, YouTube banner or channel art must be an outstanding design that makes a quick but lasting impression on the target audience. So, the banner must be a simple but unique design with a purpose. It should be created for a target audience. Therefore, you should carefully incorporate colors, icons, images, structure, shape, borders, and tone while designing the banner.
