Make Your Own Twitter Avatar

An avatar is an image that represents you. On Twitter, an avatar appears next to each Tweet and on your profile page. An avatar can consist of a photo, a drawing, a funny saying, or anything else you can imagine. Making your own avatar is very simple.

1. Choose a background image. A single color, a photo or a drawing can be chosen. In the example, I selected a cute picture of a cat looking at a computer monitor.

Example background image:

Photo courtesy of MorgueFile

1. The second step is finding a photo editor. There are many to choose from, online and using programs installed to your computer. For the example I used an online site called Fotoflexer. Once you have loaded your image to the site or program you can start editing it.

1. The third step is cropping and resizing. Avatars on Twitter are square, so you need to make your chosen picture square. Using the crop tool on your program, cut off any unnecessary sections of your photo. After you have cropped the photo, resize it to a perfect square.

Example cropped image:

1. Once you photo is the proper shape, you can fool around with the appearance. Use the design tool bar to upgrade the color scheme or add effects like black and white or sepia.

Example color-boosted image:

1. Now on to the fun part. Adding your own text to the image really makes it come alive. Just think of something cute or funny that fits. Once you have the idea, choose the text option and write away! You can have the text appear against a background or just plain, whichever way works best for your image. Make sure you make the text big enough to be readable and bold so that it shows up well on any background.

Example text in progress:

1. Last but not least, take a final look at your avatar. Is everything perfect? If so, save a copy of the avatar at the required size. Twitter requires a size of 150×150 pixels for avatars currently.

Example finished avatar:

There you have it! You have your very own Twitter avatar, personalized. Now everyone can see exactly who you are online. Feel free to change avatars frequently to express your changing tastes and remember to have fun!

Author Bio : This Guest post is by Christine Kane, a graduate of Communication and Journalism. She enjoys writing about a wide-variety of subjects including internet provider for different blogs.