Did you know that there are approximately 2000 Twitter clients; but still the most widely used interface for sending tweets (approximately 65%) is the official Twitter site. (Source: Rapleaf Study on Popularity of Twitter Clients)
This also means that majority of your current and potential Twitter follower probably do check your Twitter profile page. Whether you do all your interaction on Twitter using some awesome client application or not; you should seriously consider customizing your profile page to match with your image, brand, identity…
One of the most important thing that can make your Twitter profile page stand out from the crowd is its background image. W3Avenue has compiled a list of resources that will help you create, customize and find perfect background image for your profile page.
Create Custom Twitter Background From Scratch
Creating a background image should not be a problem for most designers; however you have to carefully plan for Twitter background image because of specific layout and dynamics of a profile page. These tutorials and guidelines will help you quickly get up to speed:
- Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices – Chris Spooner
- Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Best Practices – Saud Khan
- Twitter Background Guidelines – Kris (Croncast)
- Create A Twitter Background Using PowerPoint – The Closet Entrepreneur
- Design a Unique Twitter Background – CreativePro
- 4 Ways to Optimize Your Twitter Background – 10e20
- How To Create A Twitter Background That Flows With Your Website Design – Design Blog
- How to Create a One-of-a-Kind Twitter Background in Photoshop – Psdtuts
- Free PSD Twitter Background Template – Chad Engle (Fuel Your Creativity)
When talking about custom design, you also need inspiration. Good thing there are lot of twitter users with custom backgrounds to full fill your appetite. You can always look at profile pages created by people that you follow, or browse through some dedicated showcases like Twitter Backgrounds Gallery. But we have compiled a list of handpicked showcases for your eyes to feast upon:
- 35+ Creative Twitter Backgrounds by Designers – Pro Blog Design
- 20 Creative Twitter backgrounds & 10 Graphic Designers to follow – Graphic Design Blog
- 40 Beautiful Twitter Theme Backgrounds – Dzine Blog
- 90+ Smashing Twitter Themes – InstantShift
- 22 Beautiful And Inspirational Twitter Theme Background Designs – WebDesignDev
- 30 Creative Twitter Theme Backgrounds – Lee Munroe
- 125+ Incredible Twitter Themes – InstantShift
- 12 Beautiful Twitter Themes – ProductiveDreams
- Another 15 Beautiful Twitter Themes – ProductiveDreams
- 30 More Inspiring Twitter Backgrounds – The Twitter Tour!! – Graphic Design Blog
- 65 Absolutely Cool And Creative Twitter Backgrounds – WebDesignBooth
As an added bonus, here are few online tools that you may find useful in your search for a perfect background image:
- Peekr (Highly Recommended)
A bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser’s toolbar and click on to see a twitter user’s entire background graphic and then click again to get things back to normal. - ClickableNow
Add Clickable Links to your Twitter background image. - Twitter Background Checker
Lets you check how your Twitter profile looks in smaller or higher resolutions.
Customize & Generate Twitter Background
If you don’t have the skills or time to create custom Twitter background from scratch, here are some online services which will let you quickly customize and generate a Twitter background:
Find & Download Free Twitter Background
Last but not least, you can use following resources to locate and download a perfect background image for your Twitter profile:
- TwitterBugg
- Twitpaper
- Twitter Gallery
- Twitter-Images
- Twitter Patterns
- TwitterImage
- MyTwitterBackgrounds
- Free Twitter Gallery
- TweetPlate
- Twitter Treats
- Twitter Background Images
- Hipandtwendy
- TwitRounds
- Custom Tweets
- Twitter Showcase
Note that the above list include resources dedicated to providing background images specifically for Twitter profile pages. You may also want to consider Free Pattern and Texture Resources For Web Designers.
Thanks so much for featuring TwitterBugg.com in this post. Highly appreciated. It’s a pleasure to provide free backgrounds for a community that I take part in on a daily basis, and having our site recognized as a helpful resource makes it that much better.
Take care!
Jonathan Anthony
Nice and complete compilation.
Here is another list of background providers for your readers:
http://www.geeksucks.com/freebies/22-websites-for-free-twitter-backgrounds.htm
Thanks for mentioning Tweetplate! This list is one of the best compilations I’ve seen, and love how you offer options for users of all levels.
Really nice post and it has good timing for me.
Great article! Thank you for listing us :-)
I thank you for your article.
I followed these links and found, that you don’t actually have to pay to get cool Twitter backgrounds. I found many web pages, which also offer cool and interesting design for Twitter and you can get them for free.
I hope that this will help you and the readers of this blog. Thank you again and I encourage you to write even more articles like this. They inspire a lot!
Here is the link to article an article, which I wrote
You can also get very nice custom designs at http://www.tweetyback.com