Recently I made a plea here that often companies forget to style their own channel on YouTube because they forget that users actually (can) visit these. But if you are planning to redesign your channel you might want to hold off for now. This is because YouTube announced that there is a redesign coming for the channels that’s more integrated with the new interface introduced last December.
When the new interface was introduced YouTube also introduced the Guide, a new feature at the top left of the website which is always there on every page. The Guide consist of subscriptions and parts like ‘Watch later’, ‘Watch History’, and ‘Playlists’. As of this moment the Guide is not integrated with the channels, after opening a channel the Guide at the left is gone. When someone clicks on a channel from the guide he will see the channel in a plain feed view and not the branded version. The upcoming redesign will fix this so users see the designed version.
The new design is clean and optimized for all devices. The first new part you will notice is a new image at the top you can place comparable to Google+ and pages on Facebook. YouTube advises in the Channel Art Guidelines to make the image 210 x 1192 pixels for optimal results on all devices. To help you out design there is a template you can download here. Important is the logo safe area, this area will always be visible on all devices so the logo needs to be in this area.
At the right there is room for links to social media and other websites, below the image the title and the different tabs like Videos, Discussion and about. You can choose to place a introduction video for users who are not subscribed yet, subscribers will not see this video. This video is meant to let users know what the channel is about and why they should subscribe. Under the opening video there are blocks like Most popular, Recent Uploads, etc.
The new design is currently in limited beta but the new design will roll out to all users soon so you can already start with designing your own image for the top of the channel. To see and try the design for yourself you can visit the following channels DeStorm, EpicMealTime, SORTED, MysteryGuitarMan, LOUD en Geek & Sundry (You have to be logged in to see the new design).
