Hints & tips to get started with Twitter backgrounds

Made Essential Reading on 28 January 2010 Claire Hedley

Your Twitter profile page is free advertising space so make the most of it! You can customise your look by changing the colours of the background, text, links, sidebar, and sidebar border (https://twitter.com/account/profile_settings).

Customising your background is also a great way to brand your page. As well as giving you the look you want, it also allows you to display additional information with a lifespan which is longer than that of a tweet.

Because Twitter aligns the background to the left, it’s important to keep the main elements of your design at the top left. Keeping inside a top left area of 120 x 650 px should ensure none of your important information is hidden even when viewed on smaller monitors. Anything outside that area may or may not be seen. Bear in mind that the actual content area of your twitter profile is 763px wide, and it’s centred in your page. Position your elements so that they are not unintentionally cropped at different resolutions (e.g. 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200).

I’ve created a photoshop template which contains sets of layers to help you see what your design will look like at different screen sizes.

One last thing: A cluttered background will detract from the main content of your page, and Twitter will not accept backgrounds larger than 800kb. Try to keep the filesize down – the smaller the filesize the quicker your background will load. Overall keep it clean and simple!