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How to make a NEW Twitter Background Image Updated

Twitter Background Design, Why?

Some of you might ask: is creating a custom Twitter background worth the effort? While this is a valid question, and the final answer is up to you, there are a range of benefits to making your backdrop your own. Both the creative and the brand-conscious can (and have) benefited from unique background designs.

Here are a couple reasons for why you might want to build your own:

1. Personalization and expression: It’s a chance to express yourself and who you are. Are you an artist, a musician, a blogger, or a cook? Do you love Macs or the beach? A new backdrop can really help people understand who you are.
2. Contact info: It’s an easy way to add additional information you can plug into your 160 character bio.
3. Personal branding: Having your contact information, your face, or additional bio information within your background is a common practice. It helps potential followers understand what you do and why you are someone people should follow. Check out HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter for more.
4. Artistic creativity: Twitter is a great opportunity to push the limits of your talents.

Twitter backgrounds offered a way to integrate your branding to allow your Twitter profile to match your website or other media properties. Is the default blue background of your Twitter page starting to look stale, or is it just me? It’s time to spice up your Twitter page with a little more personality – a little more YOU! With the growing trend of Twitter usage, it’s only logical to treat Twitter as an impression of yourself. And as you would personalize the profile picture of your Facebook, why leave your Twitter as one of the faceless crowd?

A good Twitter background that incorporates your branding shows that your company still cares about the small details, and it makes your Twitter profile look professional.

Creating Your Twitter Background:

By changing the default Twitter background on your Twitter profile, you show your audience you’re not a spambot.  And it also gives you the opportunity to create a more inviting environment to engage with your audience and even to brand your business.

Again, failing to spend time on this, and simply selecting a background image provided by Twitter means that you miss out on valuable branding and advertising space.

• General: The left side of Twitter page should be used to promote your product and to promote you. Since Twitter restricts the length of your bio as well as your tweets, this is valuable space which you can use effectively. My suggestion would be to reinforce your bio and profile picture by inserting a different picture of you in a larger dimension. Or if you are not using your own picture, insert the same logo for your profile picture here, again in larger dimensions. Also insert the link to your main website/product as well as some detail about who you are or about that website/product.
  Although the user will not be able to click through on any links on this image, the idea is to attract their attention and work their curiosity. This way they are likely to enter the URL you are promoting into their browser and find out more about you. It’s another opportunity on your Twitter homepage to transfer traffic to the site of your choice – and that should be your ultimate aim when using Twitter as a marketer.
  Other suggestions for this left hand side image are using quirky images of yourself (but not unprofessional images) thus increasing the intrigue of your follower.  Like your bio, you may also want to use this space to use different images over time according to which product or website you want your followers to focus on. Together the image and bio complement each other.  For those marketers who are launching new websites or promoting new websites ahead of launch, providing a launch date and a teaser sentence or two and image can work very effectively.
  The idea is that new products or websites which are soon launching generate the most excitement so rather than using your bio/more info URL/left side image to promote old products, use them to promote prelaunch. Together they will increase the likelihood that any of your followers who are viewing your homepage will click through to the prelaunch page you want them to visit.  I would also suggest that you keep the right side of your Twitter homepage free of any images. You should not distract the user’s attention away from your bio and more info URL which are on this side.

• Image Format: Twitter only allows non-animated GIF, PNG and JPG files to be uploaded as background images. If you attempt to upload a GIF image, twitter often confuses these for animated GIF files and refuses to save them as background images.
• Image Size: Currently twitter background images are limited to a file size of 800k or less with a pixel width of 2ጐ or less. You should plan your images for a minimum pixel size of 1680 x 800.
• Twitter Working Area: Certain areas of your twitter profile page are used for displaying your profile information and tweets.  Anything on your background image that is located behind these areas will never be seen by those viewing your page.  Figure 3 shows the eduFire twitter page as seen on a 1280 x 800 monitor. Notice the large area that is required for twitter business. The red shaded area represents the twitter working area. Any thing in your background that is behind this shaded area will never be seen by your viewers.
  
• Monitor Restrictions and Web-Safe Areas: Twitter backgrounds are stationary, which means that as the user scrolls down to view your tweets your background does not scroll. This is desirable because it means that your properly placed billboard ad will always be seen by your visitors. However if your ad is placed outside of the web-safe zone for most monitors, parts of your background will never be seen at all. To create an effective twitter background it is necessary for you to understand where these web-safe zones are located. The how-to guide covers this topic in great detail.
  

There are two main limitations with setting up your custom background:

• It’s an image and won’t have any active links. This means you should try to use easy-to-remember links and not clutter this space with too much information.
• The visible area on either side of your Twitter feed will be different sizes depending on the size of the screen used by your viewers. For example, let’s say you set up your Twitter background to look good on a large computer screen.  However, if a large portion of the people you want to connect with use smaller screens, your communication will be lost.
  
  

 

How to make a NEW twitter.com Background Image: 

Dimension Dilemma:

The main problem you’ll face when designing a Twitter background is that your Twitter homepage will look quite different on various monitors at various resolutions. To preview the screen with different resolution, you can use a tool called Twitter Background Checker.

The first question, you would ask yourself is: What's the right width I should use to make the most of my twitter background? How to make it display almost the same on all screen resolutions? Well, to get the right answer, we will divide the twitter background designs into 2 different styles.The first style displays the main part of the design Only on the left side of twitter background. We do so because the left side is displayed almost the same on all screen resolutions. Unlike the left side; the right side of the twitter background may not be visible at all if the user has a very high screen resolution. To make it easier to understand; let's check what do the most famous names on Twitter do?CNN Breaking News is followed by about 6 millions followers. Below you may check how does their background look like in two different resolutions.

Resolution 1280×1024:

Resolution 1680×1050:

In the first screenshot, you may notice that more than 90% of their logo is displayed clearly on the left side of the background under the resolution of 1280x뾀px. In the second screenshot, you will see that their logo is 100% visible under the resolution of 1680x1050px. This means that their logo will always show on the left side as long as the follower screen resolution is higher than 1280×1024. The question now is: Why did I use screen resolution 1280x1024px? Well according to W3Schools statistics, most computers today have a screen resolution greater than or equel to 1290×1024 pixels.

How about the two sided Twitter background size? Well, some famous names still ue two sided twitter background like Cristiano Ronaldo. Below you may check 3 screenshots taken at 3 different screen resolutions; 1280x1024px,񎞠x900px and 1680x1050px respectively.

Resolution 1280×1024:

Resolution 1400×900:

Resolution 1680×1050:

As you may notice that the vector image on the right hand side is clearly visible at 1440x900px screen resolution, while at the other monitor resolutions it gets cut off. When using higher screen resolution the vector image will tend to disappear completely as it will get shifted to the middle of the twitter background. That's why the twitter background size is directly affected by the graphics included on both sides. so what is the best Twitter background size to use? The conclusion is to use large Twitter background size, so it covers the whole background area, but keep the important info., photos, or vectors at the left hand side so it display the same on more than 85% of the vistors monitors.The recommended Twitter background dimensions by me are 1920px for the width and 1200px for the height.

You can click to Download. Make note of this when designing your background. Also, you can put elements to the far right but be aware that some users will not see them depending on what monitor/resolution they are running. I included the “twitter container” (logo and space where your tweets are housed) it is actual size. So you can move it into different resolutions to keep in mind what other users will see.

Sidebar or No Sidebar?

One trend that has emerged from the creativity behind Twitter background designs is the use of a sidebar. The sidebar is an area of screen real estate that is put to use to display additional information about the user, such as large profile image, bio and lists of websites and other social networks. Due to the lack of space on 1024×768 resolution monitors, profiles using the sidebar approach usually only accommodate 1280×1024 upwards, with anything less simply being hidden by the main Twitter website content.

You can also use your Twitter background image to share more information about yourself not included in your bio.  Consultants and businesses may want to put their phone number, email and other relevant contact details here. If you’re worried about spam when giving out your email address, you could create an email address specifically for your Twitter networking.

Again, these won’t be active links and you need to verify that everything fits well when viewed from different screen sizes.  But this can help you to connect with your Twitter audience.  Keep in mind that you can’t scroll Twitter backgrounds.  Rather, they remain fixed on the page and content scrolls on top of them.  So don’t extend your design too far down the page or it may not be visible for some users.

Here are some samples (sidebar PSD files) for reference when you design backgrounds with sidebar (Download):

The decision to set any Style Background?

You've probably already established a visual brand with a company logo, business card, and Web site. Though you may choose to take a few liberties, your Twitter background image should reinforce that brand:

1. Seamless pattern Twitter background:
 Using seamless pattern you get fast loading Twitter profile which still have specific look and feel. If you like abstract textures and don’t care much about putting additional information using your Twitter background this would be ideal for you. Visit Pattern Cooler site for more pattern: Add your own colors to contemporary and retro pattern designs, or browse from thousands of pre-colored patterns in the seamless pattern background library.

2. Tiled Twitter background:
The repeating tiled background pattern is very common in web design. You need just to play with image file dimensions and upload the file to your account. The main advantage of this way to design Twitter background is that repeating pattern will work at any monitor resolution. And you can change it very often depending on your mood.

3. Single image fading to solid color:
You can make stylish and good looking Twitter background using this technique. This type of Twitter backgrounds are fast loading and easy to scale because most space will be filled in with solid color. Make sure image you choose is perfectly faded and blends with a solid color, you specified as the background color.

4. Large image as Twitter background:
You just use one large image as your Twitter background, I’d choose at least file with 1600×1200 dimensions to scale it properly on large monitors. Make sure that Twitter content area hiding some part of background is not making your background look weird.

5. Extended Twitter profile/background with sidebar:
Many Twitter users prefer now to have an informative Twitter background and implement a sidebar. The sidebar is an area of Twitter background used to display additional information about the user, such as large profile image, bio and lists of websites and other social networks. For companies it would be a logo along with some promotion. Because there’s not much screen space on 1024×768 resolution monitors, profiles using the sidebar only usable starting from 1280×1024s, with anything less being hidden by the main Twitter website content.

Make the Load Time Speedy:

Twitter's background image requirements are pretty liberal: As long as you upload a GIF, JPG, or PNG file that's smaller than 800k, Twitter will accept it. However, just as people will view your page on all sorts of displays, they'll also have all sorts of Internet connections. The smaller the file size of your background image, the faster it will load. 300K is the maximum I recommend. Photoshop's Save for Web & Devices (under the File menu) makes it easy to experiment with different compression levels until you find an image size/image quality compromise you can live with.

Twitter recently announced their upcoming changes to the twitter.com user interface, which is a much needed improvement over their existing interface. The positive benefits that the new interface offers comes with a price: background images are severely hidden.

1) Make your background consistent with your branding.

Some of the best ways to keep your branding consistent is to use your company’s color theme and logos in your background and profile picture.
Don’t include a lot of text, as it now has a high chance of being cut off.

• Keep it SIMPLE! The @CocaCola Background is a great example. 
• Instead of including a lot of URLs in the background, Tweet about your other web properties! This ensures that all your Twitter users have a chance of seeing it, instead of just the users visiting your Full Profile Page.

2) Match your twitter.com profile background color to your image’s color.

Many profiles have a background image that is different from their profile’s background color. Coca-Cola’s Twitter profile background color is gray, while their image’s color is red.

When your background color and image color are the same, it will look professional. This problem is mostly visible on wide-screen monitors, but as monitors get larger, more users will see whether your background color matches your image’s color or not. It helps to start with a one-color image, and then add your logo/text from there.

4) Use .PNG to save your Background Image

The JPG image format is a lossy format, meaning you sacrifice picture quality to save file size. PNG files will be slightly larger, but will keep your details in-tact; which is VERY important if you will be using small text in your background.

5) Upload your creation and test it live.

You will only be able to see how good your twitter background is once you test it.

Now you may choose 1920x1200px as the default Twitter background size

Originally posted 2011-06-08 15:56:07.

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