If you already have a YouTube profile, you know how important it is to give it a professional look. That entails using a proper profile picture, banner, descriptions, video size, and more. For starters, you should check out some YouTube banner ideas and start there.
You don’t have to do everything at once when setting up your profile for success. Taking it one step at a time is the logical and most efficient way to go.
However, you need to understand that YouTube banners are a reflection of your personal (or professional) brand. Subsequently, they should reflect your persona, branding, and ideas.
In this article, we’ll go over some of the best YouTube banner ideas you can take inspiration from, along with some additional information you need to know.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
20 Best YouTube Banner Ideas in 2021
When creating your YouTube channel art, you need to keep in mind what your channel is about. Knowing that will help you understand what kind of banner would work best with your channel and viewers.
You can either go for a YouTube banner template or design your own YouTube banners using online banner ideas. Regardless of how you decide to proceed, you can take inspiration for your banner design from the following YouTube banner ideas:
1. Utilize a Simple YouTube Banner Design
If you don’t want to spend too much time designing channel art, then keep it simple. You don’t want it to be completely blank unless that’s part of your design strategy.
Use basic design assets, vectors, fonts, and images to create a simple YouTube banner. The template above is an ideal example of minimizing design elements and keeping your banner simple.
2. Feature Your Brand Slogan or Tagline
If you’re building a brand, use a tagline. A dedicated slogan that you can use on your banner. You can tie it with an image that resonates with your brand – it can be a photo, illustration, or any other element.
This way, anyone that comes to your channel is instantly introduced to your slogan, even if they haven’t watched any of your previous videos. If you already have a well-known brand, you can further capitalize on your brand awareness with this banner idea.
Here’s a prime example of it:
3. Use Your YouTube Thumbnail Font
If you want to stay consistent with your branding, you can use YouTube thumbnail fonts in your banner image. Provided that you’re using multiple fonts, make sure that they look well-designed.
If you’re already familiar with the YouTube thumbnail size, there’s a good chance you’ve noted down a few fonts. However, if you haven’t, you can check out some futuristic fonts, especially if you have a gaming, space, or science channel.
4. Show What Your Channel Is About
Perhaps the best way to get started is to just show what your channel is about. You can do that by using a photo, logo, icons, or a couple of lines explaining what you do.
The best examples of such channels are pet YouTube channels, like the one shown above. Once you open the channel and look at the banner image, you instantly realize what the channel is about.
5. Use YouTube Banner Templates
If you don’t have the time to get into graphic designing and creating a custom banner, you can always use YouTube banner templates.
Stock templates allow you to brand quickly and use other features to bring your channel art to life. You already have the layout, style, quality, and background; just make the necessary adjustments and upload your banner.
6. Introduce a CTA (Call to Action)
You can also use your banner to market certain elements of your business. For a professional business page, you should add CTAs to your banner.
While viewers can’t click on the CTA, they can definitely be influenced by it. Therefore, add a call to action and make sure that it’s eye-catching.
7. Use High-Quality Photos
If you’re looking to add an image to your banner, make sure it’s high quality. Some users tend to visit the channel before subscribing to it.
Therefore, if you have high-quality photos on your banner that resonate with the audience, there’s a good chance people will subscribe to your channel after visiting it.
This idea works best for food channels, fashion channels, and other product-based YT channels.
8. Create a Custom Branded Channel Banner
If you want to make a name for yourself, you need a custom branded channel banner. This would be unanimously applied to all aspects of your YouTube channel, including your profile picture, watermark, and videos.
Create a banner that has all the relevant ideas related to your channel and brand.
9. Utilize Design Trends Based on Your Channel Niche
There’s a good chance that your YouTube channel is based on a niche. You can use that to get creative with design elements and trends related to that niche.
For example, a channel about homes and interior designing can have an image of a wall painted in a contemporary manner.
Similarly, you can list down design trends related to your niche and add some related elements to your banner design.
10. Develop Your Banners Using a Centralized Theme
It’s best to build your entire YouTube channel on a centralized theme. That’s how you build your brand.
Therefore, creating your banner based on your central theme is a great way of building brand affinity. You don’t even have to use complex Adobe software to do that. Instead, you can just find a YouTube banner template and add your theme to it.
11. Focus Banner Design in the Safe Area
The safe area in the YouTube banner is the space that’s always visible, regardless of the device, browser, or any other factors.
That’s why it’s best to keep your design elements in the safe area to ensure they’re always visible.
12. Utilize Borders for Your Channel Art
Borders help emphasize certain elements. For example, in the picture above, the border encompasses the banner safe area, ensuring all design elements are within that area.
You can also utilize borders to create a more eye-catching banner. Better yet, use unique borders like shapes or small icons for added effect.
13. Make a Creative YouTube Banner Using Cartoonish Designs
If your channel is for children, about fun stuff, or has a positive tone, you can always use cartoonish designs for your banner.
Use cartoon characters (avoid using copyright cartoon characters), a simple font, an appropriate background, and create a banner that resonates with your channel’s purpose.
14. Use Basic Illustrations and Icons
If you want to make a cool YouTube channel, you need to add unique elements to your banner. Adding elements like custom illustrations, vectors, and icons can do that for you.
You can get design tips from various people and channels. Use it as inspiration and create your brand’s design assets. Then, add them to your banner design. Who knows, you could even end up making a video about it to help others as well.
15. Make a YouTube Banner Using Image Collages
Using image collages in your banner can work for you if you have a product-based YouTube channel. For example, if you have a clothing brand, you can add multiple images of your products, models, and more.
It gives viewers an instant glimpse of your brand, its aesthetics, and what they can expect from your channel.
16. Utilize a Big and Bold Font
If you want to give your viewers a clear message as soon as they land on your channel, use big bold fonts. You can write a single word, a quote, or anything that catches people’s attention.
Use free fonts to minimize any potential issues. It’s best to use a minimalist font because it’s easy to read and doesn’t overlap if it’s bold.
17. Use Banner Space for Channel Updates
If you’re consistently changing the look of your channel, making updates, or launching new videos/products, you can use the banner image as an announcement tool.
If you have a new YouTube playlist, product, or website, you can mention it in the safe area of the banner.
18. Write Your Channel Name in a Unique Way
If you don’t want to get into subconscious design elements, branding, and excessive marketing, you can always write your channel’s name in a unique way.
It could either be a new font, vector-based font, or uniquely shaped glyphs. Tie it with a nice background or image and you’ll have a decent banner.
19. Utilize Professionally Designed Templates with Stock Photos
If your YouTube channel is based on professional services, you’re better off using a professionally designed template. Add stock photos to the template to give it a ‘real’ feel.
You can get access to stock photos from multiple sources. All you need to do is find the right template.
20. Use Panels and Frames for Your Banner
Using panels and frames can work pretty well because they grab the viewer’s attention, especially if you use vibrant colors like in the picture above.
You can add images in each panel or frame, add characters, or simply create a background based on that design.
In the end, it allows you to focus on multiple design aspects in the same banner space.
What is the Ideal YouTube Banner Size?
Here’s everything you need to know about the YouTube banner size:
- Ideal YouTube Banner Size – 2560 x 1440 pixels
- Minimum Dimensions – 2048 x 1152 pixels
- Safe Area Dimensions – 1546 x 423 pixels
- Maximum Width – 2560 x 423 pixels
- File Size Limit – 6MB Max
The aspect ratio for the banner image is 16:9. While the recommended file types are JPG and PNG. However, BMP and GIFs are also acceptable in some cases.
How to Bring Your YouTube Banner Ideas to Life Using Pixelied
The best way to create a great banner is to use a YouTube channel art template that’s already following the ideal YouTube banner size requirements. That’s where Pixelied comes in.
Here’s how you can get started:
Step One – Open Pixelied’s Editor
Open Pixelied’s editor and you’ll immediately have the dimensions set to the appropriate channel art size requirements.
You can immediately check the dimensions on the top bar.
Step Two – Choose YouTube Channel Art Template
On the left-hand side, you’ll see a list of all the YouTube channel art templates that you can use. All of the YouTube banner ideas that you see in the section above are available in the list.
You can choose any template and start designing it according to your needs.
Step Three – Add Various Design Elements to Your Channel Art
After choosing your template, you can add various elements to customize your banner image. Here’s a list of the design options that you have:
- Custom Images (Stock Photos)
- Text Boxes
- Illustrations and Vectors
- Mockups
- Brandify (for branding templates)
- Elements and Shapes
- Icons (social media icons and other web-based icons)
- Blend (for unique color palettes)
You can use all these features to design a custom banner image.
Step Four – Download Your New YouTube Channel Art
When you’re done designing your channel art, you can download it from the top right corner. Click on the download button and you’ll see this window:
Choose your format between JPG and PNG (accepted by YouTube), use the slider to choose the quality, and the overall size of the image. For a YouTube banner, keep the quality at 100 and the size at 1x. Once you’re done, hit the download button and you’ll have a new YouTube banner.
Bottom Line
It’s critical to the success of any channel that you utilize all channel customization options. From inception to the growth stage, you need to plan everything out.
If you’re new, your first order of business should be to choose a good channel name. You can use a YouTube name generator to come up with a good name. After that, you need to learn the best video format for YouTube.
Once all that’s done, create a YouTube description template for your videos and also customize your profile for better branding. Keep things like the ideal YouTube profile picture size in mind while doing so.
When you get to the banner, take inspiration from other channels or get some YouTube banner ideas from the list above to design your own channel art.
