From Bland to Brilliant: Transform Your YouTube Channels’ Image

How to Brand Your YouTube Channel to Get More Subscribers

Shanoon Cox

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

Epic Meal Time. Michelle Phan. Peter McKinnon. When you think of each of these YouTube creators, what comes to mind? The feelings and thoughts you have are vastly different because each one of these channels has its own unique branding.

Epic Meal Time’s YouTube brand is in-your-face and intense. It pumps you full of adrenaline and increases your heart rate.

Michelle Phan’s YouTube brand is calm, whimsical, and aspirational.

The color palette she chose is pleasing to the eyes and doesn’t evoke any of the stress we get from Epic Meal Time.

They have different branding because they want to reflect different feelings for different audiences.

Bad Branding Causes Mistrust

When a branding element does not align with the message or the tone does not match with the material, then the audience is not going to trust what you offer. Without trust, you won’t be able to get the advocacy that is essential for a YouTube channel to grow.

Imagine Michelle Phan using the aggressive colors of Epic Meal Time or vice versa. Pretty weird, huh?

What is YouTube Branding?

You might think that branding simply comes together while making videos, but that’s not true. Branding takes a bit of preparation and foresight.

YouTube branding is the idea your viewers have in mind and the emotion they get when they think about your channel.

Here are notable elements of your channel’s branding:

- Channel name

- Channel art

- Video thumbnail

- Video title

- Icon

- Watermark

- Catchphrase

- Style of video

How to Start Branding Your YouTube Channel?

Before you start designing thumbnails and coming up with a catchphrase, the first step in branding is understanding the purpose of your channel. Once you have a purpose, you will know how you want your viewers to feel.

Here is a quick exercise to find your channel’s purpose:

Draw a 3 circle Venn diagram.

In circle 1, write down everything you consider yourself an expert in.

- What do your friends know you for?

- What can you give advice on?

- What did you go to school to learn?

In circle 2, write down all the topics you are passionate about.

- What can you talk effortlessly about for hours?

- At a party, where do you lead conversations towards?

In circle 3, write down everything that people will pay for that you can supply. Here is where you find the demand of the audience.

- Can you give me travel advice?

- Can you make people forget about their stressful day?

- Do you have experience in a specialized field?

Understanding what people will pay money for will help guide you in creating content that has true value.

In the center, come up with all the ideas that can be associated with all three circles. This will be the ideal purpose for your YouTube channel as it harnesses your expertise, your passion, and the demand of a viewership.

Examples:

Epic Meal Time

Expertise = Eating

Passion = Fast Food Culture

Demand = Unique Meals

PURPOSE: Showcase a unique combination of fast food people won’t make at home.

Michelle Phan

Expertise = Beauty Products

Passion = Makeup and Fashion

Demand = Beauty School

PURPOSE: Give people more confidence in beauty products.

How Is Your Channel Different From the Others?

Now that you have your purpose, it’s time to separate you from others with similar purposes. YouTube is a crowded space for content creators. If your channel is mimicking another more successful channel, you will be in the shadows.

Good branding allows you to differentiate from others .

Pick a Unique and Memorable Name

If your name is Michelle Phan, and you are not the Michelle Phan, I’m sorry, but you will need to pick another name for your YouTube channel:

If you do have to pick another name or if your channel is an ensemble with multiple members, make sure the name you choose is original, memorable, and short (4 words max).

Picking an Icon

Not every YouTuber needs to design an original logo for their brand. In fact, if the channel is about you — the YouTuber — you are the brand, so using a high-quality picture of yourself as the icon is okay.

However, if your channel has a specific theme or topic and you want your branding to convey it so it sticks in the viewers’ heads, especially if it’s their first time viewing your channel. A clear logo will help in amplifying your message:

Create Video Thumbnails That Stand Out

The power of good branding is that your viewers will be able to spot your brand in a crowded space. On YouTube, the crowded space is the suggested video section.

Epic Meal Time thumbnails standing out amongst other loud thumbnails.

Once you have the feeling you want to evoke, test out different thumbnails. Go incognito, search up your videos, and see how the visuals appear beside your competitions. Do they all have the same style or is your far more impressive?

Good branding doesn’t happen in the first try so keep experimenting.

Designing Your Icon, Thumbnail, and Channel Art

There is a lot to consider when designing all the visual elements for your channel. I won’t get into all of it, but here are some tips that you should always keep in mind.

- Less is more: Don’t clutter your icons, thumbnails, or banner.

- Have a single focus: A channel and a video can have a lot of different topics, but the image can’t show everything a video can. Pick one important area and highlight that in the image.

- Quality matters: Your audience is savvier than ever. If they see a pixelated image, they will judge your channel poorly. That’s bad branding. Always use high-quality pictures.

- Make sure the color pops and the text is visible: Use eye-catching colors and visible text. This is a billboard, you have milliseconds to get people’s attention as they scroll past.

Want more resources for creating your channel’s visual elements? Yes? Well, we made this for you:

- How to Make YouTube Video Thumbnail

- How to Make YouTube Icons

- Free Youtube Banners

How to Make Your Visuals Consistent?

When a viewer finds your video and considers it pretty interesting, they will then go into your channel page to learn more. Here is where they make their decision: subscribe or not subscribe?

Consistent branding affirms the viewer that they are in the right place. Peter McKinnon’s brand is built upon his amazing photography, it only makes sense that his visual elements are awesome.

Peter McKinnon is best known for his photography and cinematography, and his branding amplifies that.

But Branding Is Not Designing, It’s A Feeling

Don’t get too caught up with a design.

Look at PewDiePie’s branding. You can argue that it is inconsistent and the design is not professional, but actually, his branding is spot on, because he is making you feel a certain way.

PewDiePie’s brand highlights its upbeat and unpredictable personality.

PewDiePie wants you to laugh. He is not branding his expertise like Peter McKinnon is, he’s branding his personality.

Consistent branding is about making the elements of your channel: channel art, logo, thumbnails, titles, etc. all harmonize together to evoke a sensation.

The humor in PewDiePie’s brand is consistent, even though his thumbnails don’t look like Philip DeFranco’s. It is up to you how you define consistency, and that will happen over time.

Philip DeFranco supplies commentary on current events with a satirical flair. Like a news broadcast, his branding and video format are consistent, while the daily news is different.

Inserting A Watermark

The main point of a watermark is to let the viewers know when they are watching your video that it is in fact your video.

Let’s be honest, YouTube content can all look the same, especially if you are making content that is quite general (like beauty or tech), so a watermark helps differentiate, so when viewers are ready to subscribe, they have an extra branding element connecting them to your channel.

Improvement Pill is a YouTube channel focused on inspiring and motivating its viewer to live a better life.

Above we see an example of a watermark from the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. You can see the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.

Improvement Pill is not the only channel that uses whiteboard animation to illustrate their story, and because of that, they need to set themselves apart. A watermark helps do that.

When a viewer lands on their video, the watermark gives the viewer another way to get more familiar with the channel, and if they are to scroll over the watermark a subscription button pops up.

Want to set up your subscription watermark? Here is a quick tutorial:

Coming Up With A Catchphrase

A catchphrase can be your greeting or sign off, but it doesn’t have to be an original line, it can simply be the way you say “hello.”

Check out some of the popular YouTuber’s catchphrases:

When coming up with a catchphrase that is connected to your channel’s branding remember how you want the viewer to feel. Do you want to leave them with a smile? Or do you want them to take action?

Final Thoughts On YouTube Branding

As you build and grow your YouTube channel, you can expand your purpose while still sticking within the overall theme. You might have started a channel that focused on the topic of nutrition, but as you grow, you will discover that your audience may also be interested in fitness tips or workout accessories as well. Take it slowly and grow with purpose.

Your branding doesn’t dictate the content you create, but it does affect how you go about making it.

Got more questions about branding your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments below.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Engage & Learn: Students’ Choice of Best Historical YouTubes

Versatile YouTube Video Editor - Filmora

An easy yet powerful editor

Numerous effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

Do you enjoy watching the YouTube history channel? Well, for the fact that you are looking for articles like this, your answer should be yes. The thing is that because you enjoy watching history channels on YouTube, this doesn’t mean that you know a lot about them. You might just watch them for fun, but one thing is knowing the right place to go for history videos. What this means is that You have to know about the best YouTube history channels to really enjoy history topics. Well, we have ten of the best history YouTube channels on this list that are known to provide adequate information and provide information as frequently as possible.

Part 1: Top 10 History YouTube Channels to Follow

Down to business, we have ten of the best history channels on YouTube provided for you on this list.

Click here

### 1. History

This has to be the most obvious one on the list because whenever you click to watch a video on the History YouTube channel, you always get what you came for. The History Youtube Channel as it was formerly known as is known for posting about topics like. World Wars, ancient recipes, and listicles of female species. There is a lot to learn about history from this channel. The user who is based in New York makes a post at least four times a day and has been working like this since 2009.

2. Weird History

This channel follows the name that they gave to themselves, they dedicated their channel to posting topics on weird history like the chronicles of history, crystal Pepsi, gout, life in a medieval castle, and the Victorian pastimes. All the videos are weird, most times they seem funny and spooky but they are just videos that make you think deeply because they seem too weird. Video is here makes you feel like a police officer chasing a man with the power to turn into a leopard. That is how confused you get from watching this channel. They usually make their posts every day. The channel provides videos for their subscribers 3 to 4 times a week

3. Tasting History With Max Miller

This channel is just a brilliant channel, why do we say this? Well, see what they do here. You might have an interest in learning about the dishes that are served in amazing series like Game of Thrones and other historical movies. You just want to know how they make those historical cuisines on these epic series, this is the channel for you. They recreate the dishes made in movies and series like Vikings and the rest. This channel was created to pass time by a Disney employee but he got the most out of it and has made it a full-time job, posting two to three videos daily.

4. History Civils

A YouTube channel created by someone who loves Rome like he were from there. A Rome freak who created a channel based on the Roman Empire. There are several histories to talk about when it comes to Rome, for instance, talking about NATO and Cleopatra. The videos on the channel are very short but they hit the nail directly on the head so you get to gain knowledge about old Rome and what it was before. Most of the videos are on the wars that were fought but they were also other Roman histories involved. This channel posts videos every week, at least once

5. Kings And Generals

This is another good history channel on Youtube, they provide the information through animated historical documentaries. From the channel from the title, you would know that the channel talks mainly in battles and politics, hence the name kings and generals. Aside from the war niche, the videos talk about some of the important happenings in history. The user makes a post on this channel for you to learn about the different kings and generals in history who lost and won their battles and crowns. Videos are posted twice a week

6. The Great War

This is a channel that has dedicated its time to learning about the great war known as World War 1. The channel shares videos telling the public about the era of World War 1. This is a major part of history and so it is something we ought to learn about. This isn’t just about the soldiers on the battlefield or how the bombs went off to destroy the enemies but it covers everything that happened within that period, from the kind of food they are to the way they dress and the technologies used. Even the different tribes, arts, and cultures. They post videos twice a week

7. Oversimplified

Normally, no one likes the idea of listening or learning from someone who makes things too complicated. Also, when learning, it is more interesting if you could understand it in the best way that you can. Not everything can be learned that way and not everyone can make something that easy to grasp. Channels like oversimplified make things easier for everyone to understand. They oversimplify their contents. They give you histories like the French revolution and the battle of Hastings and make it funnier and twist the storytelling to a way that people would find it interesting and funny sometimes. Videos are posted three times a week

8. The History Guy

The history guy is known well for the short time he takes in his video. Other history videos online are short but they are much shorter because they take 5 to 15 minutes. Even with this short time, he tends to cover different histories. They are a little bit odd histories but they seem interesting. Things like the wild wide west and the New York blackout that happened in 1977. Other things like how Europeans discovered Alaska and the great olive poisoning that happened in 1919. He makes the videos short because he aims at getting the audience in their spare time. Videos are posted 3 to 4 times a week

9. Timeline

This is a timeline popularly on YouTube as the home of world history. What they do here is drop a video once a week that talk about documentaries and other things. They explore around all of ancient Egypt, shedding their whole light on the former dark ages.

10. Epic History TV

Epic history TV tells you a lot about history and its most important occurrences talking about things like world war one and the epic history of nations like Russia and the story of legends like black beard the pirate. The TV only posts one video every month where you stand a chance to learn about different events that happened in the past.

Part 2: How to Avoid Being Misled by Fake History

For sure everyone knows the concept of fake news, this is like a rumor that people spread around to implicate those around them. Everyone is well aware that not every news is as authentic as it seems. Relating to the history part, you shouldn’t just go ahead and believe what everyone says on YouTube. Make sure you don’t fall for a fake history story. Sometimes, while trying to avoid fake history, you have to get a mindset that is critical, ensure that the source you get it from is checked, check the story out, take a look at the evidence given, and try to make sure it sounds believable.

Final Words

Sometimes it might help your mental health if you can take out time to watch some videos on YouTube, it has so many niches so you can choose the ones you like. History should be a good one for everyone.

Try It Free Try It Free

Part 1: Top 10 History YouTube Channels to Follow

Down to business, we have ten of the best history channels on YouTube provided for you on this list.