YouTube is a free online video streaming service that allows anyone to view and share videos. It is the most popular online video website and was purchased by Google in 2006. More searches are conducted on YouTube than any other website other than Google making YouTube technically the 2nd largest (vertical) search engine.
A YouTube Channel is a centralised location within your account where other users can browse your videos, view your favorites and subscribers, leave comments etc. YouTube provides a number of tools to customise the look of your YouTube Channel, enabling you to give the channel a design scheme consistent with your brand or website…
Customising your YouTube Channel
With a suitable colour-scheme and background image, your Channel can look like an extension of your existing online offering
Customising your YouTube Channel to make it look less generic and more consistent with your main website is always a good idea. By choosing a suitable colour-scheme and making good use of a background image, your Channel can be tweaked to look like an extension of your existing online offering.
If you haven’t done so already, you could start by replacing the default profile image with your company logo. The profile image appears on your Channel and on your individual video pages next to the user summary details.
Note: You should be aware that images are heavily compressed by YouTube’s software and this can cause some loss of quality in the images you upload.
Branding YouTube Content
Consider branding or watermarking your videos with your company logo before you upload them to your Channel. This will ensure that your brand is still visible when your video is embedded elsewhere. Don’t position your branding in the bottom-right of the frame or it will be obscured by the YouTube logo when embedded.
Customisable Channel Elements
Tip: If you right-click this link and open the page in window, you can easily switch between your live view and settings page.
To customise your YouTube channel, firstly sign into your account as usual, click on the ‘Account’ link at the top of the page, click on ‘Edit Channel’ on the ‘Overview’ page, and finally click ‘Channel Design’ in the left-hand navigation.
The ‘Channel Design’ page allows you to change various settings relating to the way your ‘Channel’ is displayed. You can see what your live Channel looks like by clicking ‘View your public channel’.
The first option is ‘Select a theme’, which allows you to choose from one of nine preset colour-schemes. This is often a good starting point and you can get a rough idea of how these schemes will look by checking the ‘Channel Preview’ window which updates as you change options.
The ‘Channel Preview’ is fairly crude and doesn’t handle background images particularly well, but it does allow you to see the effects of your changes before you make them live. None of the changes you make on this page will affect your live Channel until you click the ‘Update Channel’ button at the foot of the page.
Available Panels
The ‘Layout Properties’ settings allow you to choose which panels are displayed on your Channel and whether they are positioned in the narrow column, or the wide main column of your page.
These panels include ‘Subscribers’, ‘Recent Activity’, ‘Favourites’, ‘Comments’, etc and you should think carefully about the implications of displaying this information on your Channel. For instance, if no-one has subscribed to your Channel yet, you may want to disable the empty ‘Subscribers box’ until your Channel is more popular.
The ‘Featured Video’ panel is the video displayed at full size at the top of the main column of your Channel. This can be set to display your most recently uploaded video (‘My latest video’) or any other YouTube video (‘Video URL’). You can use this feature to make sure a particular video is always displayed here or to highlight your most recent video. Alternatively, you can uncheck the box to turn off the featured video altogether.
Customising for Brand & Colour-Scheme
The ‘Advanced Design Customisation’ options allow you to control the colours and styles used on various elements of your Channel design.
These options override the theme you have selected at the top of the page. You can also specify a background image and how it is displayed. Changes to these settings are reflected in the ‘Channel Preview’ window immediately but won’t be applied to your live Channel until you click the ‘Update Channel’ button at the foot of the page.
Branding your Channel with Images
Tip: Ensure that you account for YouTube’s default navigation at the top of the page when designing a full screen background image.
The ‘Background Image’ field allows you to upload an image file. With a bit of work you can produce a background image that mimics the design of your existing website.
If your website uses a repeating pattern background, you can upload the same file to your Channel. You should make sure ‘Repeat Background Image’ is set to ‘Yes’. Alternatively, if you set ‘Repeat Background Image’ to ‘No’ your background image will be displayed at the top of the page centred horizontally and will not repeat.
Using this method you can produce a large background image that replicates more sophisticated designs.
Note: You should be aware that background images are restricted to a maximum of 256k and are heavily compressed by YouTube’s software. This can cause some loss of quality in the images you upload.
Picking your Colour Scheme
You can specify a background colour by entering a hexadecimal value for the colour in the ‘Background Colour’ field or by clicking the ‘Pick’ link and selecting from a web-safe palette of colours.
The ‘Link Colour’ and ‘Label Colour’ fields can be set to match the colours used on your main site, just like the background colour.
The ‘Font’ drop-down allows you to specify the typeface used on your Channel from the standard web fonts. You can match this to your main website to maintain consistency.
Finally, you can set the specific colours for the elements of the content panels on your Channel by editing the default values in the ‘Basic Box Properties’, ‘Highlight Box Properties’ and ‘Video Log Properties’.
These values override the theme you have selected at the top of the page. A little experimentation using the ‘Channel Preview’ window will go a long way, and by matching the colours and styles of these boxes to your main website your Channel will more closely reflect the look and feel of your existing website, and help reinforce your brand.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Heike // May 5, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Well described. Thank you.
I have set up my channel but even though it shows up in the channel preview, I don’t know when or how anyone else would see it. I signed out and searched for my log in but only got the same views I got previously with the plain white background instead of the image I uploaded. None of the “channel” design was visible. Can you explain? Thanks.
2 carissa // May 10, 2009 at 12:17 am
how do you make a profile with more than one picture in the back gground?
3 Cass Heaphy // May 14, 2009 at 5:31 pm
carissa - Unfortunately you can only supply a single background image. If you want to use more than one picture you’ll have to use graphics editing software package (such as Adobe Photoshop or similar) to produce a single background image incorporating your multiple pictures.
4 Cass Heaphy // May 14, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Heike - It sounds like you might be confusing your YouTube Channel page with your YouTube Home Page. Your channel page can be accessed by visiting http://www.youtube.com/username, where username is the YouTube username. This is the page which shows your own Videos, Playlists, Subscribers, etc.
Your YouTube Home page is the page you see when you first login to YouTube, but this cannot be customised.
If we’ve got the wrong end of the stick, please let us know.
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