When it comes to creating a channel, making sure that you have an aesthetically pleasing, eye-catching design is certainly of grand importance. If your channel art is well designed, it'll add a great deal of value to your channel.

Your channel design/art can be split into two areas: your channel icon and channel header. The former is the avatar sized art that accompanies your channel's name throughout YouTube; in areas such as the related channels section, the subscription box and InVideo Programming (which I'll elaborate on further on in the post), and it's also displayed on your channel header image. The best practices for creating an icon are simple; make sure that it is 800×800 in size and that any text is visible throughout the website.

Now, the latter is the channel header. This is the image that is displayed at the top of the page on your actual channel. With YouTube changing their design this year to "YouTube One", your header will have to adhere to several different dimensions, as it will be seen on televisions, desktops, tablets and mobiles. Google have provided a guide for the dimensions that should be used:

There are a few more aspects to the channel header aside from just the custom design that you've created. You're allowed to post several links within the header, both to custom URLs and to social media outlets. This is a great feature, as it gives you the ability to drive viewers and subscribers to your online presence.