Channel Art Best Practices?

[SalvageSV]

Does anyone have any best practices to share for producing channel art? I'm not having much initial luck making something I'm happy with for all devices. See my current art here:

I'm just not happy with it.

I found the page on YouTube that gives suggestions and supplies device templates, so I'm going to spend a little more time on it. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2972003?p=picker_channel_art&hl=en&rd=1

But, I'm interested to see if you all might have some insight on things that have worked for you.

 

[F4celess]

I mainly aim for art that fits the browser size the best. Check your "devices" tab on the analyctics page in creator studio and see what your sources are. Catering to your main source makes sense to me.
Personally I have just a plain photo of my bike as the banner. And most popular channels I see have pretty "browser centric" banners rather than something made with the full screen in mind like on TV.

Beyond that, graphic design skills might help. I like to view the banner as something like how a window sets the mood of a room.
Also I'm not sure if the pic you have with the blurred bike in the BG is the best option, might be a source of unhappiness.

 

[RoadSprock]

There's an amazing template for Photoshop that has all the border grids set up to reference alignments across all platforms. Not the one I used but similar: http://ct-social.com/youtube-channel-art-template-psd/

 

[JonJeoprdy]

Good topic! When I was originally setting up my banner it was just a ton of trial and error... mostly error. Thanks for the template link I will definitely be using that.

Going forward I plan on catering to the browser first then the mobile and TV will be what it is.

 

[SalvageSV]

I mainly aim for art that fits the browser size the best. Check your "devices" tab on the analyctics page in creator studio and see what your sources are. Catering to your main source makes sense to me.
Personally I have just a plain photo of my bike as the banner. And most popular channels I see have pretty "browser centric" banners rather than something made with the full screen in mind like on TV.

Beyond that, graphic design skills might help. I like to view the banner as something like how a window sets the mood of a room.
Also I'm not sure if the pic you have with the blurred bike in the BG is the best option, might be a source of unhappiness.

Good feedback! Looks like I get desktop, then mobile, then TV traffic. I'll pull up the templates and knock something out based on that. I didn't consider the blurry bike being an issue, but I can see it now that you mention it. I'll adjust.

 

[SighBored]

I went to source for a template, just for the dimensions, and then found just a basic photo, resized the photo so that the main part on all platforms are shown properly. I was recently advised to add some text in the banner to explain what the channel was about. Went back to edit (again using a template for the dimensions). Simple & basic, cause I'm not a Photoshop Guru.

 

[MiGlyRides]

Don't forget that it shows up differently on DESKTOP too depending on resolution, left screen is 1920x1080 & right one is 3200x1800

 

[SighBored]

That's why I chose to source a template and just overlay my image and make sure the important bits are within the borders on all platforms.

 

[TGLambino]

Using a template is definitely the way to go.

 

[Amalgam509]

A template sounds awesome, I just rolled the dice and raged on my keyboard every time something didn't work. 6 years later something finally worked and I said meh and here we are.