Need Some Help With Branding

[wcrb15]

Something I feared wasn't up to par on our channel was our branding, and it was confirmed by a very helpful user here in another thread. So I need some help sprucing up some things as far as channel art goes. Keep in mind we are a Let's Play gaming channel and I am very open to ideas as I know that this type of stuff is my most lacking area of expertise. So for our channel logo I use this:



Then I use this for our channel banner:



We have a custom intro sequence that I animated and our outtro screen looks like this:



With the white boxes being replaced with clickable hotspots of different videos from our channel.

Some of this stuff is a little phoned in and like I said not great. I also am working on improving thumbnails but that is for another thread at another time. Any help/feedback is greatly appreciated

 

[Ian W.]

I could help you out if you'd like? I mean I'm a beginner with photoshop but I'm pretty good for a beginner! All my channel art including thumbnails and outro screens are my own work so if you want to check it out and see what you think go ahead! Let me know

 

[wcrb15]

Your stuff looks really good! I am ok with the technical side of actually creating the art in photoshop just my creative side of knowing what to put where is lacking. So I guess mostly I am looking for tips on what I can change to make all of our branding pop more.

 

[Ian W.]

Well yeah, it is quite bland... Don't mean to offend! You should google search like 'textures' and renders of stuff you like, um you definitely need to spruce it up a bit but I do quite like the two guys on the couch If you still have trouble with it just try watching some YouTube tutorials or what not, helped me a bunch in the first few days. Again, if you still need help just contact me and I'll help you as best I can

 

[wcrb15]

Thank you! I know it's not good so no offense taken I've thought about incorporating a large stack of video games somehow into that image but beyond that I have no idea. I'll research texturing the background and some other things like that.

 

[Ian W.]

Yeah man! Just try not to over do it Hope you get what you want

 

[wcrb15]

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind and I'm sure I'll run into something and need help. It's nice knowing I have someone I can come to when that happens.

 

[KelseyCan'tEven]

I haven't been a YouTuber for very long, but branding is also very important in the blogging world (which I've been a part of for quite a few years now). Basically, all I can recommend there is to find something that you do that no one else does or something that is just unique about you or your channel and expand upon that. Really, one of the biggest forms of branding comes about by being 100% you. I started receiving the greatest responses on my blogs when I quit acting like every other blogger that I saw and started acting more like myself. People are attracted to personality and things that are unique. As for channel artwork? It's all dependent on how much time and practice you want to put into it. When I'm being lazy, it's very apparent in my graphic skills. If you put time and effort into it, the outcome is usually better. All I can say is play around with it. It's an art that can constantly be improved. And you don't need to spend a lot of money on it. Programs like GIMP are free and have almost all the features that Photoshop has. If you're looking for something more userfriendly, PicMonkey is pretty nice and there are other great options on the internet as well. For free photo editing websites, I recommend searching on Pinterest because bloggers in particular are all over finding good, free photo editing software and plenty of design and photo editing tutorials and like to share it with others.