We recently had a question about Twitter background : “for a client we want to create a custom Twitter background. Did a few Google searches and saw there are open source editing tools that can be used but figured I’d check with you if you have advice on how to do this for them. The client wants to model it something like this: http://twitter.com/vodafoneuk”

Hereunder, you’ll find some tips and tricks related to the question of Twitter background 🙂

• The Twitter background is basically just a picture that is uploaded on Twitter.
• It can be a whole image or a tiled image.
• So any image editor can do the job (from photoshop to its remarkable open source equivalent – Gimp).
• Some basic recommendations
  • File Dimensions: 2048 px by 1707 px
  • Branding Dimensions: 80 px by 587 px
  • Coordinates: X=20, Y=14
  • Horizontal position: 20 px from the left (give yourself some padding)
  • Vertical position: 14 px from the top (will line up your graphic with the top of the twitter logo. our eyes like symmetry) File size and type according to Twitter: “Images must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPG, PNG.”
• I recommend you to make some testing for 1024×768 screen before final launch.
• Some additional recommendation : http://garmahis.com/tutorials/how-to-design-twitter-background/
  http://mashable.com/2009/05/23/twitter-backgrounds/
• I hope this answer to your question – let me know if you need further details 🙂

Please note that if you really want something nice and consistent with the graphical identity of a company, the help of professionnal designer can be required (and a bit expensive :S)