Inkscape Tutorial: Youtube Channel Art Header Design

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create channel art for YouTube channels the little header that goes at the top of the page and since a lot of you who have asked me about this have gaming channels where you do tech review and gaming and let's play footage and stuff like that a lot of you guys have asked me to create tutorials like this so I figured I would make that the theme of this tutorials gaming and tech review I guess you could call it so let me minimize this and we'll get started here in Inkscape by the way if you'd like to know how you can make Inkscape appear darkened with these custom icons a link to that information will be in the description of the video so the first thing I want to do is open up the align and distribute menu with this button up here click on that we want last selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll go to the edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu to open that up so let me go back to let me click on this image over here this is the template the sizing the specifications for what a youtube channel art should be designed at because when you look at a channel is it's going to be viewed on a variety of different devices so if you notice the overall size is 2560 by 1440 and that's pixels that's for viewing on a television so like when you look at your channel on a TV you're going to see this entire graphic you know like the surfer here and the water and everything the wave if you're looking at it with like a large desktop monitor you're going to see this portion here and if you're looking at it with like a small desktop or a mobile it's going to be this area here this is for 1546 by 423 so this is really the main thing to pay attention to when you're designing channel art because that's what's always going to be seen if you have important information like logo and text or like a call to action or something like that it should be kept within this space here so we're going to set up the Inkscape document to match these specifications right here so this is 2560 by 1440 so what I'm going to do is in Inkscape I'm gonna go to file document properties and only bring that over here I'm going to turn off the the border shadow we don't need that I'm going to turn on show border on top of drawing and I believe this was the width was make sure you have pixels chosen from this drop down the width 25 60 if I remember correctly and the height 1440 hit enter and let me just double-check that uh 2560 1440 okay good we'll go back over here okay so that's done we can close out of that menu and if you notice our document is now set up at that size so if it's to like if you can't see it if it's zoomed in too much just zoom out you can press the minus and plus in the keyboard to zoom in and out like that so that's a pretty good pretty good size right there and what we want to do now is we want to create a backdrop so let's come over to the squares and rectangles tool and I'm going to come up here to this icon that says snap to the page border I'm going to turn that on and I'm going to come up here and snap the cursor on to the top left corner and then click and drag and snap the cursor on to this bottom right corner so it creates a rectangle that is 2560 by 1440 now we can go back actually before we do that just make sure you this is a clicked over here this makes your corner sharp if you don't want rounded corners on this part so make sure that's deselected like that and then we'll go back to the Select tool and I'll go to path object to path just to convert that to a path object and what we want to do now is let me click off that to deselect everything so we have the entire this is going to be the entire graphic here we should admit we should design something that fits within all of this and looks and flows nicely but the main information has to be kept within this central area over here for when it's viewed on mobile devices or small laptops or tablets so let me just go back and get the reference here this is 1546 by 423 okay I'll probably have to go back to that I'm not that so what we want to do now is let's open up the layers menu view layers which is up here and we're going to click on the + to create a new layer and this is going to be called content area and we want this above the current which go ahead and click Add and then I'm going to grab the rectangles tool and I'm going to create another rectangle now you're not going to be able to see it inside of here so I'm going to click the X to turn off the fill so it has no fill color and then I'll hold shift and click on the color red to give it a red outline like that and then I'll come over to the stroke style tab over here on the right I'm going to change that to two and then I'll go back to the Select tool and up here where it says effect we want to make sure you have this turned off when scaling objects scale the stroke width by the same proportion make sure that's turned off and then would come over to the width and the height we're going to change this accordingly so this was 1546 by 423 so we'll type in 1546 for the width 1546 and then hit tab on the keyboard to skip over to the height and I forgot it already what was at 423 yeah for 23 for the height 423 hit enter and then hold shift and click on the rectangle in the background let me just come down here to the align and distribute menu and we want to Center that on the vertical and horizontal axis and then click off it to deselect everything and then we'll come back up here up top to the layers menu and we want to click this lock icon for the content area go ahead and click the lock and then we can close out of that for now and what this is this is basically just a reference for us this is not part of the bar design we're going to delete that once we're done with the design this is just for our reference so we know that all important information that needs to be kept within that red border and what creating a what creating a layer for it did was what happened here let me go back to the layers menu here we go okay so what we're creating a layer for it did was it made us so that every time we create something it goes above the black backdrop but it stays beneath the red border right there so that's what we want that's pretty good so let's close out of that I'm close back out of the layers menu and now we just got to get started on the design part I'm going to close out of this I think we're done with this for now so I'm gonna get started on the design here if you notice I designed the entire large square as the thumbnail but I kind of just highlighted the inside area for the thumbnail as well because that's where the important information is so to do this I just went and found a bunch of random images on pixabay I'll have links to each one of these images in the description of the video if you'd like to follow along so what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab the first image let me shrink this down and the first image was this video controller image here all these will be in order in the description so just go and download those in order and I'm going to click and drag that into Inkscape click OK to embed it maximize this and by the way if you're using a Mac you're not going to be able to click and drag it into a window you'll have to go to file import so make sure you have the image saved somewhere where you can find it in the directory and then go to file import so here's our controller image I'm going to use this here and I'm going to hold shift and click on the black rectangle and Center that on the vertical and horizontal axis click off it to deselect everything and I click on just the image I'm going to hold ctrl and shift and scale that down about that much and I want to make the image so that it kind of just like fades in with like the edge is fading with the edges fading into the black background as well and to do that I'm going to grab the squares and rectangles tool and I'm going to click and drag to create a rectangle going over the image don't worry yours is probably coming out black now don't worry about I'm going to change this back to black we want it to be black and what I'll do now is let me go back to the Select tool you know what let's move this out of the way and let's this out of the way as well let's put this down here I'll click and drag over both of those and Center them up on the vertical and horizontal axis click off but to deselect everything now I'm going to click on just this black rectangle right here and I'm sure to bring me up the opacity down just a little bit just so I can see where the borders where the edge of the image below it is so once we've done that I'm going to come up here under the fill tab and click on the radial gradient tool to give that a radial gradient and I'll press G on the keyboard to get the gradient tool and I'm going to click on this node over here to the far right and bring the opacity of that all the way up and now I'll double click on this line right here this blue line to create a new stop in there and then I'm going to click on that stop and I'm going to make that white and I'm going to click on this stop in the middle I'm gonna make that white as well and what's what's going to happen here is everywhere where there's white is going to be where the image shows through and everywhere where there's black is going to be where it fades out into transparency and I'll show you what I mean here in just a second so let me zoom in by pressing + on the keyboard I'm just gonna hold ctrl and shift and grab this node and click and drag and scale this in because we want the white area we want all of the white area going inside of the border of the image beneath it I mean bring that in a little bit put that right there like that and I'd say that's pretty good we go back to the Select tool now we can click and drag over both of those and go to object mask set and if you notice like I said it took the white area and kept it full color and it kind of just fades out into transparency and it doesn't look that good right here let me zoom out a little bit again pressing plus and minus on the keyboard to zoom in and out or if you just hold ctrl and roll up on down on the mouse wheel look I like to do I like to do I'm going to put this over here in the center I'm going to bring the opacity of this down a little bit and if you notice it kind of just fades I just fades into the background there and click off that the deselect kind of just fades in there and it's going to look even better when we add some more images in so I'll leave that right about there you know what I'll push this off to the left a little bit and then I'll I'll shrink down the Inkscape window again for this image this one I use I I guess it's a Minecraft click and drag that into Inkscape click OK to embed it maximize this and I'm going to take this image and I'm going to bring this and snap it into the lower right corner over there and I'm going to lower that one step so it goes beneath the controller and again we're gonna grab the squares rectangles tool and Greg and create a rectangle that's just a little bit bigger than that image like that we bring the opacity of that up a little bit and I'm going to give this a radial gradient again and if we go to the drop down over here we should have our gradient that we already created before that's good and I'm going to take this center node and I'm going to click and drag it until it snaps onto the page border right there and then I'll hold ctrl and take this top node and bring it up to about right about there I'll take this node over here I'm just pressing down the mouse wheel and moving the mouse to pan the page around and I'll just hold ctrl and I'll take this node over here I'll pull that to the right until that white area goes all the way out to the edge maybe I'll take the center node and bring that out a little more that's pretty good let me go back to the select tool and then I'm going to hold shift and alt and click on this image so we have both the mind mindcraft image and the rectangle selected and go to object mask set I'm going to bring the opacity of that down a little bit just so it fades kind of nicely into the background there looks pretty good everything's starting to come together now excuse me all right so we'll click off that the deselect the next thing I have here is I have like a cut a hand playing with an Xbox controller so let me minimize that we minimize the Inkscape window again here's the Xbox controller click and drag that into Inkscape click ok and again you could do this with any variety of images you want you don't have to be following these exact images alone the point of this tutorial is to teach you the sizing the sizing guidelines and how to use the masking feature to make these images kind of just like blend in like that so I'll take this one and I'm actually going to flip this vertically actually no horizontally like that and let me bring your pasty of that down a little bit just we could see it just we can see the image beneath it and this is about where I want it right here that's a pretty good position and I'll just hold shift and click on the black image and make sure the bottom edges are aligned click off of that to deselect I'll click on just this image bring the opacity up click on the black backgrounds right click that and go to duplicate hold shift click on that image and go to object clip set because that's what we're going to use we want to confine to this area and we'll just go ahead and hit group group that together so that we can apply masks to it now and again we're going to we're going to create another rectangle going over it slightly bigger bring the opacity down a little bit and then go to radial gradient go to the drop down choose our gradient that we used earlier take this Center stop and put it on the page border right there I'm going to hold ctrl and bring this out to about there I'll hold ctrl and bring that up to about there and again we don't want it we don't want the white stop going all the way actually we don't want the last stop going all the way to the edge because it's gonna is going to be some it's gonna you're gonna see some of the page border the image border showing through which we don't want so make sure to leave a little bit of padding in there and I'm going to zoom out and that's pretty good I'll go to the select tool hold shift and alt and click on the image so we have them both selected and go to object mask set and I'm going to lower that one step so it goes beneath the PlayStation controller and I'll bring the opacity of that down as well that's uh that's pretty good right there and then the last image that I used here I think it's the last image it's kind of just like a space with a galaxy or a UH like a universe type of image just to fill in the empty space up there so again I'll minimize Inkscape and I'm going to take this what is this horse head nebula I take that and click and drag that into Inkscape click OK and this should already be the width this is 250 25 50 25 60 so we can just take this and snap that into the page border I'm going to bring the opacity of that down a little bit I'm just going to hold ctrl and just click and drag this up to about here I'm going to bring the opacity down more just so I can see what's beneath it I want to position this I like the pink color coming through as part of the design so I want to make sure that's part of a the area there and you could just lock it to the vertical axis by holding ctrl while you scroll it up and down I'll leave that right there that's pretty good and now I want to grab the black background beneath it so I'll hold alt and click on it and it should select the black background and I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and I'll hold shift and click on the universe image bring the opacity all the way up go to object clip set and group that together I'm going to send that to the bottom lower selection to the bottom and then lower it one step so it goes above the background and I'll bring the opacity of that down a little bit as well and this is coming together pretty nicely so let me click off that to deselect everything and what's next is I'm going to put the logo in a little makeshift logo and the information here in the center so I'm going to create a rectangle let's give the rectangles tool snap to the page border up here and just click and drag and create a rectangle like that snap to the bottom border like that I'll just make that black bring the opacity up and I'll give this a linear gradient and I'll click on this stop bring the opacity all the way up I'll double click the line right here to create a new stop let me zoom in double click that line to create a new stop actually no I need to press G on the keyboard to go to the gradient tool now we can do that double click that line to create a new stop and I'm going to take this stop on the far left bring your pasady all the way down and take this stop on the far right bring the opacity all the way down put this stop down here at the bottom and let me zoom out take this stop hold ctrl and just move it straight up until it snaps onto the edge of the page there and I'll take this stop over here and just bring that up to the edge of the red the same thing I'll bring this down to the edge of the red and go to the Select tool bring your passier that down a little bit and this just gives us a little bit of a buffer between that and the actual design so that we could actually see the text and the wording that we put there so um I'm just going to grab the text tool and create like a quick little makeshift logo I just wrote game stuff just like I did in a thumbnail I'll go to the text editor I'll find the font I use which is Yukari mobile this is a free font if you'd like to search it and download it should be shouldn't be too hard to find close out of that let me zoom in a little bit oops game soft and and right there about gaming a tech review so just gaming and tech review go back to the Select tool and just hold ctrl and shift to scale that down put this over here hold ctrl to scale to keep the proportions like that and then I wrote like new videos every Tuesday and Friday or whatever it is so let me just do that as well we're just hitting ctrl D to duplicate that if you want to duplicate that you go to select tool hit ctrl D to duplicate it and there it is and we'll go back to the text tool I'll just write do videos every Tuesday and Friday I'll make that italics go back to the Select tool hold ctrl and shift to scale that down we make that not that small that's pretty good and the click and drag over those two right there and group them together click and drag over both of these make sure it's centered on the vertical axis click off at the deselect and I'm going to create like a little line break there we'll grab the rectangle tool create a little line break you that's good bring the opacity up select tool Center them on the vertical axis and I'm going to come down here to the distribute panel make vertical gaps between objects equal that's good we can group that together let me zoom out by pressing - on the keyboard I'll put this over here and I'm just gonna make that white and I'll hold shift and click on the black stripe make sure it's centered on the vertical and horizontal axis and actually with them both selected I'm going to hold shift and click on our little universe image there make sure it's all centered on the vertical axis I don't think we did that earlier we can click off of that to deselect everything we take this I'll hold ctrl and shift and scale that up about that much and I think that almost does it it's just a couple of things I'd like to cover here let me go back to the text tool I'm going to highlight that text to make that red like it did in the thumbnail go back to the Select tool okay so we have the design done and there's a couple of things to keep in mind when you're designing channel art for YouTube for one it's a good idea to keep any important information away from the left side because with YouTube they put the profile picture like up here in the top left corner going over the header it used to be down here at the bottom but they recently changed it to up here so I would keep important information all the way oh just completely away from this left side over here and over here on the right side this is where like your your site links and your channel um not your channel your YouTube social social media handles will go and that's another thing a lot of times people like to include like their web address and their social media handles on the design personally I don't think it's necessary it's kind of redundant because YouTube lets you put like your actual links that you can click on to your social media profiles and your web sites there so I like to just exclude it all together unless I have some kind of like important call to action that I really want people to take when they see my channel otherwise just like a logo and a little tagline like that works pretty good and what we could do now is since the design is completed we can go to the layers go back to the view layers menu we can click on the content area layer unlock that and just press Delete delete the current layer to get rid of that outline and what we could do now is we can export this we can go to file export bitmap or if you're using a later version of Inkscape it should say like export as PNG or export something whatever it is just click on the one that says export and the export area we want to make that the page and it should show the width 2560 by 1440 the DPI should be set to 90 and the filename you can just click browse and you give it a file name and save it in whatever folder you'd like and once you've done that you can click export and you will have your YouTube channel art that should be able to work across multiple devices so that's how you can do that with Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching [Music] [Music] yeah you [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 35,615

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape for beginners, vector, vector design, vector graphics, vector tutorial, vector icons, graphic design, learn graphic design, graphic design for beginners, youtube channel art design

Id: FAUm-Veimm0

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2017