Welcome to the first addition of the “Tips by Cadet” series, from design to post I hope to give you tips to make the process easier and more resourceful!
It doesn’t need to be Spring to do some cleaning.
With Twitch, image is an important element for brand and presence. When discovering a streamer I am interested in, I always look at their page especially their “about” section. From a viewer/follower and artist perspective, I see some common design bumps within a streamer’s twitch page. These are not deal-breakers but the tips below help with jumpstarting the habit of looking over graphics on your page and easy ways to update them.
Update your channel color
One of the updates Twitch implemented to the new UI for channel pages is an additional background seen below the banner and towards the right of the page. This background color is connected to the chosen profile accent color in your channel’s settings. This color can easily clash with your banner if chosen from Twitch’s default colors.
To create a more seamless transition from your banner to your background color pick the color located on the bottom right of your banner and choose that for your profile accent color. Not only will it provide the appearance of the banner being your background, your accent color will be cohesive to your brand theme. If you don’t have a color to pick from ( either too many colors or there is some kind of illustration toward the right of the banner ) choose a common color seen in the banner. If that color may be too bright, you can use a darker shade.
Add text with your panels
Throughout Twitch, panels designs can differ from illustrations to text, which can vary from a single line to a whole paragraph, captured in a PNG. It may make it more aesthetically pleasing to just have panel images in your About section, but it is not accessible.
Currently Twitch does not have an alt text field, which is used by screen readers, in their panel editing. This is crucial since screen readers can not read text in images. Use the panel title and description fields in place of images when delivering information to your page visitors.
Update the social icons you use
This is one of the more common instances dealing with images. Social media platforms update their icons. While it is not frequent, it is important to keep up on. Panels or other graphics that still have older versions of social media icons instantly look outdated.
If not wanting to update your design apply the new version of the icons to your assets. If these graphics are commissioned ask your artist if they provide the service of updating Twitch assets. While doing this update to your kit, make sure you remove not used or deleted accounts and add your new / updated ones!
Again, while these are not deal-breaker design issues this should start the process of keeping up your graphics. You don’t need to wait to do a big rebrand ( I am available however if you are thinking about one 🙂 ) to take a look at your kit. Make sure to make slight adjustments every now and then.
