This article will help you in creating a Header for Twitter. The complete procedure for creating a Twitter header is given below.
Twitter launched certain new designs for profile pages that help you add a new header photo to your profile which appears similar to cover picture in Facebook’s timeline. You can find some useful tips on how to create a Twitter header and certain free templates that could be used for the same.
Earlier Twitter was designed initially as text-centric service but now they have improved the visual appeal through support for multimedia features. If you upgrade your Twitter profile, you will automatically get the updated features like Twitter profile header and latest photo streams in your profile.
In order to upgrade profile, you should go to the Setting menu in the top right corner and choose the “Design Tab” present in the left side navigation window. After you go to the design page, you can select the “Customize your own” section and select “Change header” option.
Determining the header size
When you want to design the profile header, the first thing you should consider is the size of the header. Usually the standard header size has dimensions of 520 pixels x 260 pixels. The ration of the width and height is generally 2:1 and maximum size of upload is 5 MB. Hence the maximum resolution of the header will be around 1252 pixels x 626 pixels. There is also an option to toggle the header image but you should also double check how it might appear to other visitors who have bigger resolutions on their screen.
The best way to design the header image is to ensure that it does not require any cropping. The image size of Profile picture is 73 x 73 pixels while the background image should not be more than 800kb. The length of text for your biography should be of 160 characters and these are default standards for the new Twitter profile.
Readability of the Image
The image size which you plan to upload is not just the factor you should think about. You should also consider other things such as readability of the image and whether it matches the background profile. When you have white text in the header, you should make sure that the background is dark so that the text is clearly visible.
You can use tools like Photoshop, Illustrator or Coreldraw to add effects to the text in your image.
Matching the background of Twitter Profile
Another important factor which you should keep in mind when you create the header image is that it should match the design and must be compatible with background image. You should also remember the fact only the simple header image will have better impact on the visitors. Don’t add too much of graphics or visual effects for the image as this only makes it complicated and gives a fuzzy appearance.
Creating Custom Header with Photoshop or Other Online Tools
There is plenty of tools available online to design the Twitter header. The most common tools include Photoshop, Coreldraw or Paint.net. The recommendation from Twitter is to use a header image with resolution of 1200 x 600 pixels and guarantee the width which is twice the height. You can also get some nice pictures for your header from Google Stock images. There are websites like FreeTwitterHeaders where you can download already designed headers.
There are online tools like Twitbacks which allows you to design your own custom Twitter Background and header image. There is also an iPad app which allows you to change Twitter header image where you can either choose an existing photo on your device and take a new picture with the device camera and set it as the header image.
