How to make a banner that doesn't suck for my channel page on YouTube 2021

How do I make a banner picture for my YouTube channel page?

I walk you through everything from finding and creating an image to uploading and cropping.

It's for my channel Neil's Trains and Stops here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwz219IRUgGL6NZHlD1wpcg

How to make a banner that doesn't suck for my channel page on YouTube 2021

0:00 How to make a banner for my YouTube channel page 2021

0:30 Go to the Customization tab on YouTube Studio dashboard

1:00 How to upload an image for my YouTube channel page banner

1:12 Can you use a portrait picture for a YouTube channel banner image?

3:00 How to crop an image for a YouTube channel banner picture

3:30 How to make a picture that fits YouTube size banner on TV, desktop and mobile devices

4:10 How to use Keynote to make a banner for my YouTube channel.

TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

How do I add or change my banner on my YouTube channel page?

You know, that picture at the top of my YouTube channel.

It's a little bit fiddly but it's really straightforward and I’m going to walk you through this step by step.

Hello I’m Neil Mossey, I’m a development producer helping high achieving creators and performers just like you to get ideas out of your head and out onto here on YouTube to make the world happier.

And we're going to make it happier by changing the look of our YouTube channel, and the first place that you and me are gonna go is quite obvious.

It's right here the YouTube studio dashboard and we're going to scroll all the way down to this tab here.

It's called customization and this opens up channel customization.

We've got the layout, we've got branding and basic info tabs along the top, but the tab that we need is the second one in which is called branding.

I’ve managed to get my profile picture sorted - there's a class 378 Overground train -  but if you haven't done this before, your banner image section will look like this... where we have red bands in place where our photo is going to appear.

So we'll click this lovely upload button.

I’ve got a few photos here that I’m going to try out with you because some will work and some really won't work, so let's try this one here.

It's a portrait picture of me in front of a nice train there and as you can see YouTube studio gives you this crop window, and this is the window that will select the stripe that will be used across all three sizes of banner image.

YouTube offers a banner image for your channel in three sizes there's a big one for the TV, a narrow strip for a desktop and a really narrow strip for... it calls it “all devices” but it's basically for... for mobile devices and your phone.

Now I’ve selected a window that looks good on TV, the biggest one.

Now this looks like it might work because I fit all of me into the box - into that blue box there.

But if I hit “done” I’ll show you why this... this really doesn't work.

This is how my channel looks now and you can see this on a desktop.

It's cropped my... It’s cropped my face off! 

We can only see the narrow band from that photo, so this would look okay on a TV but it really doesn't look okay here.

It looks even worse on a mobile device.

I’ll put it on screen here, you can see it's an even smaller strip at the top there so what we've got to do is find a photo that works well for all three sizes.

It's quite difficult to do that in portrait orientation.

We want something that looks good, really it's best to use photos that are shot sideways in landscape orientation.

So I’ll go back to the YouTube studio page and we'll hit change.

Let's try this one here.

This is me standing next to the train and the blue window won't slide up and down because YouTube doesn't let you leave the photo.

But if you grab the corner here or any of the corners, I can resize this cut out window and I can drag it anywhere I want on the photo.

And the window that I’m really looking at is the one labelled all devices because that's the smallest one, so if I make that middle one bigger... 

I’m dragging up as high as I can but it's cropping off the top of my head so I’ll make it smaller, so that might work, but for me it doesn't look like a train on that version.

Let's see how it looks if I publish it.

And this is how the channel looks now, so I kind of like that because I can see my face and I can see a bit of train.

On my mobile device this is how it looks now but I’m going to try a photo now that's a lot further back so that I can get more into the smaller cutouts, and I have a picture here with the train in the distance.

So I’m going to shrink this window again, so there I’ve got the whole train in, and then hit the publish button and this is how it looks on the desktop.

On my mobile device it looks like this... so that's nice, so it's got it's got a train in it but it hasn't got me with the train.

I want to... I want to add me with the train.

I can see there's some space to the left of the train and there's some space to the right with the bushes, so if I can use the size of the train as a guide for how big to make me in the picture...

I use Keynote on a mac to make all of my thumbnails and I think I’m going to try and use this to see if I can get me into the picture.

That's the original picture and this is the area that I’m looking at.

I want me to be there somehow.

It's a really cheesy picture.

We just have that as my banner.

What if I shrink it.

Whoops, if I shrink it? 

I don't... I don't know if this is gonna work!

[LAUGHS]

So if you're watching on a TV this is how it will look like.

It kind of works! 

I kind of like it so I’ll export this, so I’ll shrink it again and we'll take a look at the change.

[LAUGHS]

It sort of works doesn't it, but hopefully this shows you how the dimensions work on the page.

This is how it looks on the mobile.

I’ll just punch it up on screen there.

It sort of works doesn't it?

I like it, but hopefully this is a good guide to show you how all the dimensions work and some of the issues with trying to get the banner to do what you want it to do.

It's the same with placing text on here as well.

If this video is helping, please give me a thumbs up just to let me know that somebody reached this point of the video and right here right now is what YouTube thinks you should be watching next.

Previous post...
HOW TO SEARCH YOUTUBE COMMENTS and activity log history 2021

All about me, and getting these by email.