10 Beautifully Designed YouTube Channels

Note: This post was first published on the Jun 17, 2011.

YouTube’s immense popularity makes it a prime platform for businesses to create professional channels, mainly for marketing purposes. Companies are increasingly recognizing the power of YouTube for brand promotion.

If you’re considering starting a YouTube channel for your marketing campaign, it’s wise to learn from the best. Explore the branding techniques of industry leaders like Apple, Lady Gaga, and Disney Video Games. This research won’t just be beneficial; it will be enjoyable too!

Here are 10 of the most stylish, beautifully designed, and popular YouTube channels. They are great sources of inspiration and can provide ideas for enhancing your own channel’s design to make it both beautiful and appealing. Take a look!

RockstarEVENTS

RockstarEVENTS is the official YouTube channel for Rockstar energy drinks. It features a black and gold color scheme, mirroring the design on their drink cans. The channel has a unique gray and black background decorated with Rockstar-themed items, arranged like a photo collage. The phrase ‘Drink Rockstar’ is strategically placed above the video player, enhancing brand visibility.

The channel primarily showcases extreme sports like MMA, snowboarding, motocross, and BMX biking. It also features content on RockstarEvent sponsored music festivals and includes the occasional glamourous model photoshoot.

SamsungTelevisions

SamsungTelevisions’ channel is modern and vibrant, displaying images of TV screens and media icons. Its design, reminiscent of a Tetris game and digital pixelation, creates a tech-savvy and media-centric atmosphere, aligning perfectly with their brand identity.

The channel primarily uses white with accents in bright, lively colors. It features concise tutorials on Samsung products, usually lasting less than a minute and a half, in a straightforward how-to format.

VenetianPrincess

VenetianPrincess, a channel known for its pop parodies, reflects its content with a glitzy and glamorous design. The channel’s playful colors and cartoonish graphics align with the humorous theme of its videos, striking a balance between extravagance and approachability.

The channel predominantly features parody music videos of popular songs by artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga. These well-crafted videos are sure to evoke laughter and entertain viewers.

Apple

The Apple Channel embodies the brand’s minimalist aesthetic with a sleek, gray layout and the iconic Apple logo. The simple design directs focus to the main content boxes, showcasing introduction and demonstration videos of Apple products and apps.

Notably, the channel features prominent advertising for products like the iPad 2 (as of the time of writing), effectively encapsulating Apple’s marketing prowess in its channel design.

LadyGagaVEVO

VEVO’s approach to YouTube channels, like Lady Gaga’s VEVO, is consistent across artists, featuring a bold black and white design with red accents. These channels mainly host official music videos, clips from live concerts, and behind-the-scenes footage, coupled with advertisements for media partners like Fuse.

DisneyVideoGames

The DisneyVideoGames channel features vibrant, game-themed graphics and semi-transparent content boxes. At the time of writing, the background highlights the LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game, and the main video is a clip from this game as well.

Content includes game trailers and a news feed text window with hyperlinks. One minor issue is the darker color palette due to the transparency, which might make some text challenging to read for those with less-than-optimal vision.

Xbox

Microsoft’s official Xbox channel showcases the classic white and gray color scheme of the Xbox system, complemented by their signature green accents. The design is both clean and distinctive, reflecting the Xbox brand identity.

A prominent feature is a large mockup of a TV screen displaying an Xbox Kinect, with a ‘Spotlight’ playlist below highlighting the latest and most popular content. The channel mainly offers game trailers, reviews, and videos about game creation, organized into well-curated playlists.

TaylorSwift

Taylor Swift’s YouTube channel has a charming watercolor background with soft pink semi-transparent content boxes. The youthful and artistic design aligns with Taylor Swift’s pop image and appeals to her fanbase.

Featured content includes behind-the-scenes footage and personal vlogs from Taylor Swift, as well as clips from her ‘Speak Now Fan’ videos, offering fans a glimpse into the experiences of those who meet her in person.

Wacom

The Wacom channel, befitting a digital art tablet company, showcases impressive multi-layer vector graphics. The background is visually engaging without overshadowing the content, which is presented in matching colored text boxes.

The channel offers demonstrations of Wacom tablets, useful tips, user-submitted art, customer support videos, and third-party reviews. It’s a treasure trove for digital art enthusiasts.

FUNimation

FUNimation’s channel, a distributor of Japanese anime, features classic anime-style illustrations. The design uses black, gray, and red accents, complementing the featured anime character. The channel’s only drawback is the use of dark text on a dark background, which might affect readability.

The channel excels in social network connectivity and offers a plethora of free streaming anime episodes, making it a haven for anime fans.

Reflection

Effective graphic design, especially for YouTube channels, hinges on understanding and appealing to the target audience. I hope these examples of channel designs have been inspiring and informative!