How To Make A YouTube Graphic Intro

If you watch some YouTube videos, you may notice at the beginning of people's videos, you may see a montage of photos or their brand colors or their logo with some music, and it looks really cool, right? Well, here in the YouTube world, we call them bumpers or branded intros. In this video, I'm bringing on an expert to show you how you can create your own YouTube bumper so that it looks as pretty as everybody else's. Hi, my name is Trina, and I on this channel, I help creative entrepreneurs like you get started on YouTube to grow your business. Now, if you're getting started on YouTube, you probably want to make sure you've got all the little brand elements figured out for your channel. So your channel banner, your icon, your thumbnails, templates, and your bumper. I just recently added a bumper. You would have seen it at the beginning of this video. And I asked my friend Louise of solopreneur Sidekick to create my bumper. And today she's going to show you how you can create your own YouTube bumper. Take it away, Luis.

Hey, Trina, thanks so much for having me on your channel. Hey, everyone. My Name's louise of solopreneursidekick.com and I help online entrepreneurs master the tech in their business so that they can work smarter and grow faster. In today's video, I'm going to show you how to easily create an animated YouTube bumper. Now, because it's animated, you're probably thinking that you need a really complex software, but, well, that's actually not the case. You can create your YouTube bumper using Keynote. Yep. That free software on your Mac. This will do the trick. So first things first. Let me show you an example of a YouTube bumper so you know exactly what we're talking about. This is Trina's channel, and she does an introduction to her video, and then it cuts to this little animation here.

Getting into those rough.

So that is a YouTube bumper. And the awesome part about this is that it builds in that brand recognition right at the beginning of your video and lets people know what your channel is about. So let's get started creating one. So you're going to open up keynote and then click New Document and make sure that you select wide. Then I would just start with the white presentation, click choose, and then I'm just going to zoom out a little bit so you can see the entire slide. And this is great because this is already the correct dimensions for YouTube. So just delete those boxes that are already there. Awesome. So we can start with a blank slate. Now, I actually don't have a bumper for my channel, so I'm going to build one right now with you guys. Now, let me show you an example of my thumbnails, because what's important with your bumper is that it is on brand. So let me show you my thumbnails. This is an example of one of them. And as you can see, I have my logo. I have this text that I use on every single one of my thumbnails, as well as these little icons all related to business. So I'm going to drag this in and use this as my inspiration. Okay, so the first thing that you want to do is start with the end in mind. What do you want your end screen to look like once all the animations have happened? So I'm going to drag this down and start with my background. To change the background, you can just click the color wheel over here. And if you want to match your thumbnail, you can just click this little icon right here and then click over here, and it will match that color for you. All right, so I'm going to delete that thumbnail and start building this out. So I'm going to add in my logo first. So all I'm going to do is grab that file and drag it in. Now, you want to make sure that this is a PNG file so that there's no background around your logo. So I'm going to just drag this into position, and to change the size of it, you can just grab the corners and drag in. And then I want to add in my business tagline. So I'm just going to click text up here and add that in, which is your online biz tech Sidekick. Highlight that, and you can adjust your text, you know, as usual, just as if you were using a program like Word or Pages. So I'm going to increase the size. I'm going to change it to one of my brand fonts. So I use Cooper Hewitt Heavy. Okay, awesome. Going to drag that down. And I am also going to add a shadow to this because I like the way that looks. Okay, great. So we have that. And then I'm going to add in one of those icons as well that I use on my thumbnails. So I'm just going to grab in a mouse icon. Okay. And again to resize, Just grab the corners. And then if you want to rotate it, just click arrange and then rotate. Okay, so resize and move the elements around however you want. All right, so that looks pretty. Pretty good. I'm happy with that. And I forgot to mention There are grids. So, for example, a yellow line is going to come up through the middle to let me know that my logo is centered. So that's really helpful. All right, so now it's time to start the fun part, which is animating. So if I wanted to start with my logo, I would just click on it and then click up here where it says animated. And then I'm going to click add an effect. And you're going to see all these different effects that I could use. So, for example, do I want it to spin? Do I want it to twirl? There are so many options, so you can have fun going through all of these. There are simple ones, you know, just like appear, blur, or dissolve. Here's blur. You know, there are a few very simple ones, and then there are a few more that are a bit crazier, like that one. So you actually have a lot of options here. So I'm going to go with drop. Because it's a circle, I think it's cute that it bounces in. So I like that. That's my logo. And then I'm going to go to my text. So again, because we are already on animate, you should find that it's already there on the right side. So I just click on it and then I click add an effect, and I do the same thing. So now I need to find an effect that works for my tagline. So I'm going to try a few. For example, there's fly in. There's. Let's try cube. Okay, so as you can see, there's quite the variety. I am going to go with typewriter. Okay, I think that looks pretty cool. And then lastly, I have my mouse. So again, add an effect. So have fun with this part. I'm going to go with. Nope, I'm going to stick with the last one, spin. So now you're going to want to click Build order and click on the first one that you've animated and then just click start after transition and then with the next 1 after build 1 and the following after build 2. Okay, so let's see what we've got so far. Gonna click play up here, and we can see our animation in the works. So pretty simple, right, guys? And again, there are so many options here and a lot of things that you can do creatively, But I'm just going to show you this as a quick example. So then what you're going to want to do is export this. So click file export to, and then QuickTime, and you're going to select self playing. Awesome, you can Change this to 1080p is even more high res. Click next and save this as your YouTube bumper. All right, awesome. So then what you're going to do is open up whatever editing software you use. I use imovie, for example. So then all you need to do is drag that file into the movie that you're working on. Okay? And then as you can see, we've got our animation complete. So then another thing you might want to do is add in some music or sound effects. And you would just do that in Imovie. So, for example, let me grab a song that I have going to drag that in below the bumper and let's see how that looks. Awesome. So Trina has told me that it should be between three to five seconds long. So keep that in mind. This is just a short animation, and once your bumper is in Imovie, you can just edit it like a regular clip. So, for example, if I wanted to crop off a bit at the end, I could do that. So, of course, guys, there is a lot more that you could do, but the main places that you want to pay attention to is adding your text. Using this button up here, you can add in shapes. You'll see that they already have your basic shapes that you might want to use, but they also have cute ones like objects and animals. So those are two that I think you will use. And then you might use, you know, any icons that you're already using in your business, or illustrations, for example, just make sure that those are PNG files with a transparent background. And then over here, mostly you'll want to click on text in order to get this panel to appear. Other than that, all you need to do is focus on animating. All right, that's it. I hope that this has really simplified the process for you guys, and I can't wait to see what YouTube bumpers you create. Thanks again, Trina, for having me on your channel.

That was so helpful. So if you cannot afford to get somebody to do this for you, easily follow Louise's steps so that you can have your own branded intro. Just remember to keep it three to five seconds long, max. Who's going to be creating their bumper? Let me know when you get yours done down in the comments below. Okay. If you need more help on how to get your YouTube channel started, make sure you click that playlist that is on your screen right now. And don't forget to subscribe to this channel by clicking that little circle picture of me right now. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.