10:11:00
It’s late spring, your blog is overdue for a makeover, and you don’t know where to start. Sound familiar? Creating a new custom header is one way to refresh your site’s look and inject a fresh spark of personality at the same time.
Last week, Cheri explored Pablo and Canva, two free tools you can use to create custom images to use in image widgets, blog headers, and to unify your brand across social profiles. Today, we’ll go a little deeper and learn how to create a custom header using Canva, in under ten minutes flat. Are you ready? Here we go!
Get your blog header’s dimensions
Heather Armstrong, who blogs atDooce, changes her blog’s header once per month. Here’s her archive of often hilarious mastheads.
Go to My sites → Customize → Header Image. If your theme supports a custom header, you’ll see the message outlining the optimum image size. Note my header image below is 960 pixels wide x 180 pixels tall:
Note: you can also find key theme dimensions at the bottom of your theme’s showcase page. Here’s the entry for Suits, my test blog’s theme.
Create a Canva account
Create an account with Canva, and they’ll show you a very short, 23-second tutorial. It walks you through the basics of creating custom imagery on their site, including how to drag and drop images, add text, and download your finished work.
Set your blog header’s dimensions
In Canva, click on Use custom dimensions to set the image size you’ll create:
I’ve entered 960 x 180:
Choose a background
Once you’ve set your image size, poke at the different backgrounds available. You’ll see a preview of your image on the right-hand side. You can use one of the free patterns, select a solid color, or click on the “plus” symbol to reveal a color wheel. You can click anywhere on the wheel or enter the hex value for the color you’d like. I went with a lighter orange background with a funky circular pattern in it:
Add some text
Next up, add some text to your new custom header. Here, I’ve clicked and dragged one of the fetching sample text elements on to my background. You can adjust font, size, and color as you see fit:
Play with graphical elements
Canva offers plenty of free images to choose from, and you can also upload your own. Here’s a list of great sources of free photographs:
Next, I added a fun little “voice bubble” (also a free element you can click and drag under the text options). And finally, for a little visual interest, I searched dog illustrations and chose the universal symbol for barking dog. There are plenty of free images and illustrations to choose from, so with a little time you can mess around and create the look that’s just right for your blog’s brand and your personality:
Download your image
Once you’re satisfied (and you can easily get lost for hours playing around with Canva — it’s that much fun), click on the Download button in Canva’s main navigation and save your new custom header as an image in a location on your computer:
Upload your new header
Go to My sites → Customize → Header Image and click Add new image to upload your new custom header. Finally, click Save and Publish to add your new header to your site:
