YouTube isn’t just a video-sharing platform, it’s also the second largest search engine in the world. Over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched everyday by users worldwide. From original short firms and music videos to vlogs and cat videos, you can use YouTube to promote your unique content and brand. But apart from having great videos, it’s important to have high quality and relevant image art and icons for your channel.
Channel icon
Your YouTube channel icon is a circular image similar to a profile photo. It is a round image that best displays at 800 x 800 pixels. It’s important that you set either your own picture or logo as your icon so followers can easily recognize your channel and work. Take note that the default icon will be the image associated with your Google Account. You can change the image by modifying it in your Google Account settings.
Channel art
Your YouTube Channel Art is similar to a header or cover image where you can add images to highlight or represent your brand. Because users can watch YouTube videos from a variety of devices, including computers, mobile gadgets and TV, your channel art will look different depending on the device that you are on. For best results, YouTube recommends using a 2560 x 1440 pixels image. Minimum dimensions are 2048 x 1152 pixels.
Video thumbnail
Well-designed and chosen thumbnails give viewers a quick glimpse of what your video contains. They're a great way to attract viewers as they're browsing YouTube. After you've uploaded your video, you'll have the option to choose from the 3 automatically generated thumbnails or to upload your own custom thumbnail. A custom thumbnail should be as large as possible as it'll also be used as the preview image for embedded YouTube links. The recommended size is 1280 x 720 pixels and up to 2MB.
