You don’t have to look too far on Twitter to find a background that just isn’t working. Here are a few things to look out for when designing yours.
Huge file size
800k is the limit, not the goal. Twitter’s servers are getting better, but their growth is also skyrocketing. Don’t add to your load times with a gigantic background image. Keeping it under 300k is a must. Shoot for 20k or less for an ideal experience. Or, if you really want to trim the fat, opt to simply use a color with no background image.
Picking the wrong format
JPEGs are great for photographs or images with a lot of detail. GIFs are great for everything else, and a must if you’re including text in your image.
Take a look at Sarah Evans’ Twitter page for an example of why JPEGs and text generally don’t mix:
Her picture looks great, but the text is hard to read because of the compression. On the other hand, a GIF would probably end up making her photographs look like something out of Windows 3.1. In general, if you have text, you should limit the photographs to just one, or multiple with similar palettes, since GIFs are limited to a palette of 256 colors.
It’s a balancing act, and sacrifices are required, but that’s why we have the different formats in the first place. Photoshop, GIMP and similar programs will relieve some of these woes.
Full page backgrounds
Never go full page. It might look great on your computer, but it won’t look great on someone else’s.
One day, Twitter will implement a checkbox that lets us center our background images. Then we’ll be able to go full page all we want, putting whatever elements we desire on both sides of the page. But for now, Twitter backgrounds are left-aligned, which means it shows up differently in relation to the content depending on the resolution.
For this reason, stick to backgrounds that work on the left. Keep the content less than 250 pixels wide– 120 if you want folks using 1024×768 to see it.
Of course, keep in mind this only applies to content and framing elements. There’s no problem with extending a simple background schema (a line, a pattern, etc) across the page.
Mismatched color
You don’t need to be an expert in color theory. You don’t even really need a natural eye for color. We color-challenged people have color tools to help us out. If you aren’t feeling confident in your color chops, give the color wheel a whirl.
Forgetting they exist
The last mistake is forgetting all about Twitter backgrounds. With literally hundreds of Twitter apps to choose from, a lot of Twitter users end up skipping the site itself altogether. Don’t neglect your Twitter background just because you made the jump to a Twitter app.
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