Since when I was engaging with twitter, thanks to my old friend KCtang recommended. It was a great tool and so many people was engage with it, “have you twit lately?” soon it become a habit and you might feel uncomfortable if you don’t twit. Oh no! I think it was different type of “Bird-flu” spreading so fast….
Recently I realize some of user has done great design to personalize their designs on twitter. There has already been a range of quality designs showcased on various sites, which has shown an emergence of trends such as the ‘sidebar’. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices around Twitter background design and get to work creating our own.
There were 3 different types of background approach:
1) Using repeating background pattern
http://twitter.com/daniesq, http://twitter.com/msphotogirl and more
2) Background Graphic fading to background color
http://twitter.com/bittbox, http://twitter.com/GordyMac/ and more
3) Extra Large Background Graphic
http://twitter.com/ijustine, http://twitter.com/betterinpink and more
However, you could also get some customize background or template that provided by twitter, http://www.twitip.com/custom-twitter-backgrounds/
Personally I prefer 2nd approach that background graphic fading to the background. Using a single graphic on your profile can help add some visual interest. And it load much faster with less graphics. Let’s start to do my own background on my Sidebar!
First of all, click on profile setting and go to “Change design colors”. Well, brown is always my first choice, change the tone from background, links, text etc. Immediately you can preview the colors from screen. Save the settings once you have decided.
Once I have done that, I get the measurement which is width 460 and height 600; copy the exact background color and start my own theme.
First thing in my mind – Top view on my sidebar; it was easier to arrange my elements such as paper, camera and most familiar’s top view – a cup of coffee.
Just find some of the picture from Google images. Or royalty free images from Stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)
For example, nice quality of Pencil – http://www.remarkable.co.uk/downloads/wooden_pencil.jpg
Then, rotating and reshape my “ingredient” on PS (sound like frying and cooking, yeah!). Used a lot of drop shadow and simple effects such as rotate and wrap the graphics. Other than that, it was quite straight forward.
Once I have done that and save in JPEG, go back to the settings and click on “Change background images”. Browse and save changes. Done!
Take a look at http://twitter.com/twentyplus
