Making a template your own
A template that still says YouBrand is a template. Four changes make one yours, and they take about a minute — the rest is optional and worth doing in order.
The words, first
Your channel name, your handle, and whatever the graphic is actually saying — the prompt above a subscribe button, the city on a location plate, the code on a sponsor card. Select the text and type over it.
Layouts here are derived from what they hold rather than drawn around a particular string, so a long name and a short one both come out balanced. You do not have to move anything to make room.
Then the colours
One accent does most of the work. Change the button and the mark to your channel's colour and the design reads as yours immediately, before you have touched anything else.
If the design uses a gradient, it has two colours rather than one, and keeping them close to each other in tone is what stops it looking like a different design. Glass panels have a third thing to set: how much they blur what is behind them, which is what decides whether the pane reads as thin or thick.
Then the shape, if you want it
Corner radius changes the character of a plate more than anything else you can do to it — the same bar reads as friendly at a large radius and as serious at a small one. Borders and shadows are per layer, and a shadow that is too deep is the most common way a clean design stops looking clean.
Everything is a layer, so anything you do not want can be deleted. A channel bar without a subscribe button is a channel bar; removing the button is removing a layer.
The timing, last and rarely
The entrances in these are built to land in a sequence — a plate arrives, then the mark, then the name, then the button — and the gaps between them are what makes the sequence read rather than blur. Moving one keyframe usually means moving the rest.
If you want it faster or slower as a whole, change the speed rather than the keyframes. That retimes everything together and keeps the shape of the sequence, which is the part that was worth having.
Questions
- What should I change first?
- The words, then one accent colour. Those two make a template read as yours; everything after that is refinement.
- Will a long channel name break the layout?
- No. The layouts are derived from what they hold rather than drawn around a particular string, so a long name and a short one both come out balanced without moving anything by hand.
- Can I delete parts of a template?
- Yes. Everything is a layer and any of them can go. A channel bar without its subscribe button is still a channel bar.
- How do I make the whole thing faster?
- Change the speed rather than the keyframes. It retimes every keyframe together, so the sequence keeps its shape instead of collapsing into one beat.