30 Free and Paid Services to Make a Unique Channel Design

Channel art isn’t just about making things pretty. It’s about understanding your niche deeply. Before you even jump into tools, take a step back. Look at the top channels in your niche across different linguistic markets.

What kind of design do Spanish-speaking creators use? What about Europeans? Check out the Canadian and Brazilian top channels, too. Look at everything—thumbnails, banners, membership visuals—and analyze the patterns.

Great design comes from seeing the bigger picture and really digging into your competitors’ channels. And it’s not enough to just copy what you see. You need to understand the design decisions behind each element.

Don’t Forget to A/B Test

And after you've picked your design style, remember: A/B testing is your best friend. No matter how confident you are in your choices, only your audience and their real behavior will tell you what works best. Run your designs through A/B tests and mix in some targeted advertising.

Let’s Count to 30

Below, we list the most popular design tools—both free and paid—for upgrading your channel. Each tool’s info comes with a price, what it does, and how exactly it can improve your YouTube strategy. Let’s start!

1. MidJourney

Price: Subscription-based, starting at around $10/month
Description: A powerful AI tool for generating visuals from text prompts.
How it helps: Allows you to quickly visualize creative ideas and generate unique designs that can serve as inspiration or final artwork for your channel.

2. DALL-E

Price: Credit-based pricing (115 credits cost $15)
Description: OpenAI’s image-generating tool turns textual descriptions into creative images.
How it helps: This tool is an alternative to MidJourney, and it’s ideal for generating custom thumbnails and visuals for your channel.

Do AI Tools Understand YouTube Design?

Keep in mind that AI tools like Midjourney or DALL-E won’t deliver a perfect result immediately. Expect to go through 10-20+ iterations before it looks right. And even then, it’s not final.

Once you have a base design, you’ll still need to refine it in Figma or similar tools—adjust text, optimize layout, and ensure the image conveys both emotion and message without clutter.

YouTube design isn’t just about aesthetics. It needs to align with user behavior, algorithm preferences, and engagement strategies. A great-looking thumbnail that doesn’t drive clicks is useless.

If you want to skip the trial and error, you can always get a professional channel design from a team that has worked with thousands of YouTubers. Just reach out to us to get started.

3. DreamStudio

Price: Credits-based pricing ($10.00 per 1000 credits)
Description: A creative platform that uses AI to transform ideas into reality.
How it helps: One more convenient tool to quickly generate unique images for thumbnails and banners. The main differences from similar tools are interface and personal preference.

4. Adobe Firefly

Price: Included with Adobe Creative Cloud or available as a standalone subscription ($9.99/month)
Description: An AI-driven design tool that integrates with Adobe’s ecosystem, perfect for both creative pros and beginners.
How it helps: Streamlines the creation of channel art with AI-powered features, saving you time and ensuring consistency thanks to prompts. Also, it lets you generate high-quality audio and videos, which is super useful for content creation.

AIR Media-Tech has helped hundreds of channels improve their design, turning simple video blogs into strong personal brands. Our experts focus on creating visuals that leave a lasting impression on your audience. Contact us to get started!

5. Huemint

Price: Free with premium options
Description: A color palette generator that provides unique color schemes tailored to your brand.
How it helps: It refines your channel’s look by offering fresh color combinations crucial for standing out. You can play and experiment with this tool to pick the most suitable colors for your niche.

6. Looka Logo Maker

Price: Freemium, with paid downloads starting at $20
Description: An AI-powered logo maker designed to help you create a professional logo in minutes.
How it helps: Provides personalized options for professional-looking channel icons, which is crucial for a strong visual identity that can be used across your channel, social media, and merchandise.

7. Figma AI

Price: Freemium with premium tiers
Description: A collaborative design tool that now includes AI features to speed up your creative process.
How it helps: Enhances teamwork in design creation, making it easier to revise your channel’s visuals. Also, it lets you generate the first drafts fast, so you just need to refine them to your liking. 

8. Vectr

Price: Free with subscription options (Plus–$3.99/month and Premium–$7.99/month)
Description: A straightforward vector graphics editor for creating crisp, scalable designs.
How it helps: Perfect for clean logos, icons, and channel graphics that maintain quality at any size.

9. Designs.ai

Price: Subscription-based ($29/month)
Description: An all-in-one creative suite that uses AI to generate logos, videos, banners, and more.
How it helps: Lets you create AI images, video scripts, and audios, making it simple to produce consistent visuals across your channel.

10. Fotor

Price: Freemium with paid upgrades (Fotor Pro–$3.33/month, Fotor Pro Plus–$7.49/month)
Description: An easy-to-use photo editing and design tool with a wide range of templates.
How it helps: Simplifies the process of creating eye-catching channel art without needing advanced design skills. It has features like AI photo editing, AI images, filters, effects, and presets.

11. Designify

Price: Free trial and subscription ($39/month)
Description: An AI tool that automatically enhances and cleans up images.
How it helps: Saves you time by removing image backgrounds in seconds and offers design options.

12. Hotpot

Price: Credit-based payments for full resolution and commercial use ($0.01 - $0.30 per image)
Description: An AI-based design assistant that helps create social media graphics and thumbnails.
How it helps: Offers YouTube thumbnail templates, an AI image generator, a photo editor, and much more.

13. Kittl

Price: Subscription-based plans (Free, Pro–$10, and Expert–$24)
Description: A graphic design tool that balances ease of use with powerful editing features.
How it helps: Offers flexibility in creating customized designs that match your channel’s style. Remove backgrounds, edit images, upscale them, generate them, and more.

AIR Media-Tech specializes in creating sleek, on-brand animations that capture attention without overwhelming the viewer. With expert help, these elements can boost retention, enhance professionalism, and strengthen your brand’s identity. Contact us to transform your channel!

14. Snappa

Price: Subscription-based plans (Free, Pro–$10, and Team–$20)
Description: A user-friendly design tool focused on social media graphics and online content.
How it helps: Helps you create professional-grade visuals for your channel quickly and efficiently, thanks to intuitive design, templates, and high-res stock photos.

15. Adobe Express

Price: Included with Adobe Creative Cloud or available as a standalone subscription ($11.99/month)
Description: A simplified design tool for creating graphics, videos, and more.
How it helps: Provides a quick and accessible way to produce high-quality channel art in several clicks without experience in design. You can generate your own templates, customize them, and add text.

16. Befunky

Price: Freemium with premium subscriptions ($14.99/month or $83.88/year)
Description: An online graphic design and photo editing tool that’s both fun and functional.
How it helps: Ideal for adding a creative touch to your thumbnails and channel images without overcomplicating the process. The tool has various YouTube thumbnail templates for you to edit and personalize. 

17. Canva

Price: Freemium with subscription options (Canva Pro–$120/year)
Description: A widely used design platform that offers templates, elements, and collaborative tools.
How it helps: Easy to use for consistent, attractive visuals that align with your brand’s identity. The tool will help you create the whole package needed for YouTube design—thumbnails, banners, icons, intros, outros, animated transitions, and more.

18. RelayThat

Price: Subscription-based (PRO–$15 and PRO plus–$25)
Description: A design automation tool that generates multiple variations of your projects.
How it helps: Saves you time by ensuring your channel art looks great across various formats and platforms. It contains a headline generator, curated libraries of the best color and font combinations, and more than 3 million stock images.

19. Easil

Price: Freemium with subscription options (PLUS–$7.50/month, EDGE–$59/month)
Description: A drag-and-drop design tool that’s great for non-designers and pros alike.
How it helps: Simplifies the process of crafting visual content with image & video templates, free fonts, a color palette generator, and a Design Approval process.

20. Visme

Price: Freemium with subscription options (Starter–$12.25/month, Pro–$24.75/month)
Description: A comprehensive visual content creation tool ideal for infographics, presentations, and more.
How it helps: Offers features to design dynamic channel graphics—eye-catching intros and outros, customizing your favorite video templates.

21. PosterMyWall

Price: Freemium with premium options (Premium–$9.95/month, Premium Plus–$29.95/month)
Description: A platform focused on creating posters, banners, and social media graphics quickly.
How it helps: Makes it easy to produce professional-looking channel art, even if you’re not a design expert. It has 1M+ design templates, an AI image generator, an AI writer, and much more.

22. Pixlr

Price: Free with optional premium upgrades (Plus–$2.49/month, Premium–$9.99/month, Team–$16.99/month)
Description: A cloud-based photo editor that provides a range of tools for editing and design.
How it helps: Offers solid design features such as an AI image generator, background remover, templates, animation, collage maker, and touch-ups.

23. Remove.bg

Price: Free for low-res images, with credit-based payments for high-res
Description: An AI-powered tool that automatically removes backgrounds from images.
How it helps: Streamlines the process of isolating key visual elements, making it easier to create standout thumbnails and banners. It is great as an additional tool in your arsenal.

24. Pixelied

Price: Freemium with Pro plan ($9.95/month)
Description: A simple, lightweight online design tool for creating professional-looking visuals.
How it helps: Offers an easy way to create YouTube thumbnails, banners, and graphics without needing advanced design skills.

25. Renderforest

Price: Freemium with subscription plans
Description: A cloud-based tool for creating videos, animations, logos, and websites.
How it helps: Enhances your channel’s design by offering dynamic video intros and animated graphics that engage viewers. Also, it can help you generate logos and business names, turn your text into videos, and even design a website.

26. Stencil

Price: Freemium with paid upgrades (Free–$0/month, Pro–$9/month, Unlimited–$12/month)
Description: A simple design tool built for creating social media graphics and quick visuals.
How it helps: Enables you to produce crisp, on-brand visuals fast—perfect for busy YouTube creators. Create social media graphics, compelling advertisements, blog headers, and more.

AIR Media-Tech can help design visuals that truly engage your viewers and deepen their connection with your channel. Custom badges, perks, and icons that match your brand can enhance audience loyalty. Feel free to reach out!

27. Placeit

Price: Subscription-based ($7.47/month) or pay-per-item
Description: A versatile design tool for social media creators.
How it helps: Provides ready-to-use templates for intros, ontros, podcast covers, various mockups, text animations, Twitch & YouTube banners, and merch designs.

28. Affinity Designer

Price: One-time purchase (around $50)
Description: A professional graphic design software that rivals the big names in the industry.
How it helps: Gives you robust tools for creating intricate, high-quality designs that elevate your channel’s brand identity. Absolutely not for beginners, but if you're ready to dive into learning the new software, the rewards could be amazing.

29. Creative Market

Price: Varies per asset (with many free options)
Description: An online marketplace for design assets, including fonts, graphics, templates, and more.
How it helps: Offers a vast library of ready-made design elements and animations that can boost your channel art and videos.

30. Photopea

Price: Free (with optional premium subscription)
Description: A browser-based image editor that mirrors the power of Photoshop without the cost.
How it helps: Provides a familiar interface of Adobe Photoshop for tweaking and refining your thumbnails and banners.

Final Round: Choose Your Fighter(s)

So, start by understanding your niche and identifying what works across different markets. Next, choose the design tool(s) most suitable for your needs. Lastly, put your ideas through proper A/B testing to see what works and what does not.

Or, just contact AIR Media-Tech for the all-in-one design solution. If managing multiple subscriptions and spending hours learning new software isn't for you, we're here to help. Let us professionally design your channel art, membership perks, icons, intros, outros, and animations to boost your channel’s CTR and make it visually appealing.