Twitter Background Images - Standard -vrs- Widescreen formats

Hi, and thanks for visiting my blog. This is the first of many to follow. This blog is about Twitter Backgrounds. Shall we begin?

I have to admit; I'm quite new to Twitter. But in last few weeks of involvement, I have learned lot; mostly that I have a lot more to learn. I have read Joel Comm's new book "Twitter Power" and enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it to anyone involved with Twitter. I have searched and browsed Twitter pages more in the last few weeks that you would think I should be completely tweeted out, but I'm not. It's a lot of fun. I've been trying to learn what works and what doesn't. Again I have a lot more to learn, but there is one thing on Twitter that I just don't quite understand. You see, I’ve been a graphic designer for over 25 years and one thing that really bothers me on Twitter is the custom background images that some have designed or have had designed for them. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for custom backgrounds on Twitter. It’s really the only thing you can do with Twitter to make it your own. It’s great advertising space or if you have nothing to promote then it simply could tell more about yourself than the short profile that you wrote. If you don’t have a custom background, design one, they are easy to make if you have any photo editing software, like Adobe Photoshop. If you don’t know how, there are a lot of services available online to pay and have one designed at a reasonable cost, or I’ll be happy to design one for you for a small fee ($49.95) to cover my time. But, before you design one finish reading this blog, and if you already have one you should also finish reading this blog, you may decide to make some changes.

For the life of me I don’t understand the reasoning or the logic behind setting a background image to a widescreen format. I’ve asked a lot of people this question and have yet to hear a satisfactory answer, yet most everyone on Twitter are doing so, with very few exceptions.

Setting a background image for a widescreen format really makes things difficult for viewing with a standard format monitor. The timeline simply gets in the way. You typically see half of what is intended for viewing; part of a photo or more annoying half of the text. Although viewing with a widescreen is very nice, the fact is that there are a lot more standard size monitors and screens in service today than widescreens. This is the case in my home and office and I’m sure this is probably the case in most offices and households across the nation. CRT’s (standard monitors) have been around for years, and hardly ever dye. Used ones are a dime a dozen, so I’m thinking that they are still going to be around for a while yet.

Lets just think a minute about why most of us use a background image, personalization, but mostly they are used for advertising, right? I don’t know about you but when I advertise I want to advertise to everyone, not just to widescreen users. I set my background image up to fit a standard monitor. This way you can see everything I have to offer at a glance no matter what size screen you use. If you’re lucky enough to be using a widescreen you can easily and quickly adjust your window size so that nothing is hidden behind the timeline and will be able to see everything intended for viewing. In fact I even have a note on the right hand side of the image that says just that (see example below). With the exception of an option to view background image on a PC by right clicking on the mouse and/or searching the code for the image on a MAC and copy and paste it in the browser, standard monitor users have no other way of seeing what’s hidden behind the timeline. Frankly I can’t see to many people doing this, or even knowing that this option is available. I’ve done this a few times myself and really don’t care to do it again. I would really have to be interested in someone’s timeline to consider doing so. It’s just a bother, and who wants to go out of there way just to see ads.

I hope you keep this in mind when laying your background image out. Just remember the first rule in advertising, you have no more than 3 seconds to grab your customers’ attention and when they get frustrated because they can't see your graphics or read all your text he or she will quickly move on, without hesitation. Not only this, but I find it very difficult to read peoples tweets when I’m distracted by layouts that I cannot see. At this point no background would be better for me than one that I can only see half of.

I was going to have some examples (screenshots) of this on this blog to show you, but I felt it was not worth the risk of offending someone so I just included my own. I’m sure you have been on Twitter long enough and have experienced what I'm saying more than once and if you haven’t just browse around on Twitter with a standard monitor for a minute of two. You will soon feel the frustration that I’m talking about. Maybe I’m just anal when it comes to design from my experience in the industry and maybe it really doesn’t bother the most of you, but I find it distracting and think most of you do too.

Thanks for reading my Blog. This was only my opinion. I'm sure you have your own and I would love to hear from you. Maybe you can change my mind.

Comment: iTweetArtHi Dan, my goodness your Largemouth Bass is fabulous!! I also like ur take on widescreen vs standard bkgd images, never even thought of that.

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