So, you’ve probably heard about how important branding is for your YouTube channel but what does that mean and what does it involve?
Branding is really the idea of creating consistency with visuals and messaging on who you want to be and how you want to be known. With branding, someone could easily see a piece of visual design and be able to associate it with who you are either as a person or company.
When it comes to visually branding a YouTube channel, I like to break it down into 2 different areas: your YouTube Channel homepage and each of your individual YouTube videos.
Your YouTube Channel Homepage
The design elements listed in this area are for things that viewers would see when clicking on your channel’s name. It’s usually the page that lists all of your uploaded videos and also includes playlists that you’ve created (if you’ve chosen to include playlists in your Creator Studio).
When I’m deciding whether to subscribe to a channel or not, this is where I come to first before clicking on the red subscribe button. Why? Because I saw a video that I liked but I want to know if what I watched was random video content that won’t be repeated or if the channel is covering a related topic that I’m interested in watching.
Channel art
Channel art or channel banner is probably the first graphic that viewers will see when they visit your channel page.
When creating channel art for your YouTube channel the overall size should be 2560 x 1440 pixels. However within that size there are other dimensions to keep in mind because those are the display areas for different sizes.
2560 x 423 pixels for desktop
1855 x 423 pixels for tablet
1546 x 423 pixels for mobile
Aside from the dimensions, the other branding aspect to keep in mind is your messaging.
Your channel art image should address 2 major questions:
- Who are you? So, your channel name
- What is your channel about? So, what kind of videos are you posting, why should your viewers watch your videos or why would they WANT to watch your videos?
Profile Image
The profile image is what people will see when you comment or reply to comments, it’s what shows up below your video thumbnails on the homepage feed, it’s what shows up on the top of a mobile view of the subscriptions feed, and it’s what show up right under the channel art of your YouTube channel homepage.
You can choose to have this image as an image of yourself or a logo. However, in saying that, if YOU are the star of a lot of your videos then I would highly consider using an image of yourself in that profile photo rather than a logo.
Video Thumbnails
Since thumbnails are visible on your channel’s homepage, I have listed them here but thumbnails could be considered an aspect of visual branding that goes with each video you upload.
When it comes to thumbnails, think of them as a way to catch someone’s attention in the same way that a “SALE” sign in storefront windows catches the attention of shoppers.
Whether or not you decide to include text on your thumbnail will depend on the type of content that you are uploading. If you do include text then make sure it is a short amount of text, in a large text size, and in a colour that contrasts well its background.
Some people will find a single design template on places like Canva and continually use the same one for their video thumbnails but I think it is a better strategy to have a few templates that you can rotate between. Having a few templates available will allow you to maintain your branding and having different video cover images will prevent you from running into the situation of viewers or subscribers not watching your video because they think that they’ve already seen your video because the image looks similar to another video.
Your YouTube Videos
For each individual video that you upload to your YouTube channel, there are also ways to include visual branding so that viewers learn to associate a certain visual style with your channel and brand.
The visual branding that I’m including in this section are generally things that would be done in the video editing process.
Video Intro
There are some people that say “skip the intro and just get to the content” and others that talk about adding a short intro to your videos. I think it depends on what kind of content you’re publishing.
Video intros are a great way to remind viewers who they’re watching and what the channel is about.
The intro could be something as simple as just animating your channel’s logo or it could be a short montage of video footage that sums up what you make videos about.
The only thing that I would say about video intros is to keep it short, preferably no longer than 10 seconds and even better if it is less than 5 seconds long.
The people who say “skip the intro” generally say it because of the wasted video time that it can use up and the higher possibility of viewers clicking off your video because they get bored or impatient to watch the video content that they clicked for.
Video End Screen
Similar to the use of video intros, people seem to have mixed opinions on the use of end screens or outros for YouTube videos.
I think end screens are a great way to guide people to more of your video content and, if you have more than one YouTube channel, it’s a place to let them know about your other channels.
There are a couple of approaches to designing an end screen for your videos. One simple way is to create a still image that you can insert after your video content and add the end screen options that YouTube includes. Another way is to design an overlay that still allows you to keep playing your video content but then you have a space for your recommended video cards or some of the other options that YouTube lets you add to the end screen.
A big reason why people are against using end screens is because it can negatively affect your watch time for the video because many viewers will click off your video once this screen appears.
Personally, I believe that this is inevitable. Most people will leave once they get the content that they came for whether you include the end screen or not. I don’t like watching the default pop-up at the end of a video where it covers up part of the video that you still want to show and end screen designs help avoid that.
Custom graphic overlays
If you have not figured it out yet, I am definitely a supporter of adding graphic overlays to your YouTube videos. Adding graphics to your videos during the video editing process can add a lot of benefits to your video content and I’ve gone through them in this blog post.
How can you make graphic overlays for your videos that match your YouTube channel branding?
Establish a colour palette and stick to it!
One of the simplest ways to start creating branded video graphics is to stick to a certain colour palette.
When I create colour palettes for branding projects I tend to pick about 5 main colours. Those colours do not include the basic black and white version that I often use for text depending on the background colour. So if you include the black and white then you end up with 7 colours to work with.
Be consistent with your graphic style
What do I mean by this?
Well, if you are someone that uses a lot of doodles and hand-drawn imperfect shapes, then be consistent in using those throughout your video.
If you are someone who likes minimal, black and white, straight horizontal or vertical rectangles, then repeat the use of those shapes in your videos.
Narrow down your fonts
When adding text to your videos, I would say limit the number of fonts that you use in your videos to no more than 3.
Choose one that you would like to use for titles or headings or short pieces of text. For example, if you are a food/recipe vlogger then this might be used for the name of a recipe.
Choose another one that you could use for longer pieces of text. Continuing on with the food vlogger example, this particular font would be used for the ingredient list and maybe even the step-by-step preparation instructions.
Then, a third, but optional, font could be something that you use as an accent. So, maybe in your recipe ingredients you want to indicate that a certain ingredient is optional. You could use this third accent font for the word “optional” so that it stands out among the rest of the list. Same thing goes for ingredients that are VERY IMPORTANT, you could use this accent font to highlight the fact that you cannot omit or replace that ingredient.
If you haven’t noticed a pattern by down, in this section, it’s really all about limiting the variety of design aspects in your video. Then, once you have that limited design set to work with, it’s all about repeating them throughout your video and channel.