Set 03 · Profile & Banner · LinkedIn
The banner, 1584 by 396.
The strip behind your photo is the largest piece of visual space on your profile and most people leave it as the default grey mesh. It is not decoration — it is the only part of a LinkedIn profile you fully control the look of, and it is visible before a single word is read. Three worked banner specs: the professional, the freelancer, and the job seeker.
SamplesThree, complete
Size1584 × 396 pixels
ReadingFree, no signup
Safe zoneRight two thirds
Sample OneEmployed · Building authority
A banner for someone who is not looking but wants the profile to say what they do at a glance. Everything here is a text and layout spec you can build in any tool.
Bilal Ahmed
Senior Accountant · Lahore
Canvas1584 × 396 px
Width 1584 px · Height 396 px · Export PNG · Under 8 MB
This is the only size LinkedIn accepts cleanly. Anything else is cropped by the platform rather than by you, and the crop is always worse than your own.
Where the avatar sitsLeft · 264 px
The circular profile photo overlaps the bottom-left of the banner.
On desktop it covers roughly the left 260 pixels and hangs about 100 px below the banner edge. On mobile it sits lower and further left, and the banner itself is cropped in from both sides.
Consequence: keep every word inside the middle and right of the image, and at least 120 px clear of the bottom edge. This single rule fixes most broken banners.
The text, in three linesRight two thirds
MONTH-END CLOSE · IFRS REPORTING · AUDIT
Senior Accountant — ACCA finalist
Lahore, Pakistan
Line one is keywords in caps, small and letter-spaced. Line two is the human line. Line three is location. Nothing else. A banner with a sentence on it is not read.
Colour and type
Background: one flat dark colour — deep navy, charcoal or oxblood. No stock photo of a handshake, no city skyline, no gradient mesh.
Text: white or bone. One typeface, two weights. Line one at about 28 px letter-spaced, line two at about 46 px, line three at about 22 px.
One rule at 2 px in an accent colour under line two, if you want anything decorative at all.
Check it on a phone
Roughly seventy percent of LinkedIn views are mobile, where the banner is shorter and cropped in from the sides.
Upload it, open your own profile on your phone, and look. If a word is under the photo or off the edge, move it in and re-upload. This takes two minutes and almost nobody does it.
Why this one works
- The keywords do double duty. They are not searchable in an image, but they are the first thing a human sees, and they say the same words his headline is optimised for.
- Flat colour beats a photograph. Text on a stock image is unreadable at mobile size, and every stock image on LinkedIn has been used ten thousand times.
- The safe zone is respected. Nothing in the left 300 pixels, nothing in the bottom 120. That is the entire technical skill involved.
- Three lines, no sentence. A banner is a sign, not a paragraph. It is read in under a second or not at all.
Sample TwoSelling a service · Needs a call to action
A freelancer's banner has one extra job: it has to tell a stranger what to do next. That is the only case where a call to action belongs on a banner.
Ayesha Malik
Freelance brand and packaging designer · Karachi
The text, four linesRight two thirds
BRAND IDENTITY · PACKAGING · ART DIRECTION
I design packaging that survives a shelf.
40+ SKUs shipped · FMCG & retail
ayeshamalik.design · DM for the deck
Line two is the only sentence, and it is short enough to read while scrolling. Line four is the action — a site and a way to start a conversation.
Why a claim, not a title
"Freelance Graphic Designer" is what a hundred thousand other banners say.
"I design packaging that survives a shelf" says the same thing, narrows it to a niche, and sounds like a person. Narrow beats broad on a banner — you are trying to be the obvious choice for a few people, not an acceptable choice for everyone.
The proof lineOne number
40+ SKUs shipped · FMCG & retail
One number and the sector it happened in. It converts the claim above it from an aspiration into a record, and it takes eight words.
Using work in the banner
A designer, photographer or illustrator can use actual work as the background — but only as a muted strip on the right, at about 30% opacity behind flat colour, or as three small thumbnails.
A full-bleed portfolio image with text on top is illegible on a phone every single time. If you want the work seen, use the Featured section, which is built for it and is clickable.
Match it to the Featured section
A banner that ends in "DM for the deck" must be followed by a Featured section containing the deck.
The banner sets an expectation. If the next scroll does not meet it, the visitor leaves, and you have spent your one piece of controlled visual space on a dead end.
Why this one works
- It has a call to action, and it is the only banner here that should. She is selling a service to strangers; a salaried professional is not.
- The claim is narrow. Packaging that survives a shelf. It excludes most work, which is exactly why the right client stops.
- The URL is written plainly, not as an icon. Icons are not links inside an image and a reader cannot click them — a readable address they can type is more useful.
- Work stays out of the background. The Featured section carries the portfolio; the banner carries the sentence.
Sample ThreeActively looking · Open to work
When you are looking openly, the banner can carry the availability so the headline does not have to. This is the one arrangement where "open to work" earns its space.
Nadia Aslam
Finance Manager, returning after a career break · Karachi
The text, three lines plus a stripRight two thirds
FINANCE MANAGER · ACCA · IFRS & AUDIT
PKR 12B group reporting — close cut from 12 days to 6
Available October 2026 · Karachi or remote
Availability is line three, after the evidence. A banner that leads with "OPEN TO WORK" in large type reads as a plea; one that leads with a result reads as a person who happens to be free.
The green frame, or not
LinkedIn's built-in Open To Work setting has two modes: recruiters only, or the green photo frame everyone can see.
The green frame is worth using when you are openly unemployed and want the reach. If your search is confidential, use recruiters-only and leave the banner factual — a banner is visible to your current employer and does not disappear when you get hired.
What not to put on it
#OpenToWork in large letters across the whole banner
A countdown or "immediately available!!"
Your phone number
A photograph of yourself, when your profile photo is right there
The first two read as anxious. The third is a privacy problem on a public profile. The fourth is a duplicate.
Change it the day you start
Set a reminder. The most common LinkedIn mistake is a banner still advertising availability three months into the new job.
Swap line three for your new employer and the banner becomes a professional one with no other edits.
Why this one works
- Evidence comes before availability. Two full lines of record, then the date. The order is the entire difference between confident and desperate.
- It carries the availability so the headline does not have to. Freeing those characters for keywords is worth more than any image.
- "Karachi or remote" answers the second filter. Location and working pattern are what a recruiter checks immediately after the role.
- It is designed to be edited, not replaced. One line changes on the day she starts.
The specification
Every banner problem is one of three things: the wrong size, text under the photo, or text too small to read on a phone. Fix those and the rest is taste.
- 1584 × 396 pixels. Export PNG. Keep it under 8 MB.
- Keep everything out of the left 300 pixels. That is where the avatar sits on desktop, and mobile pushes it further left still.
- Keep everything at least 120 pixels above the bottom edge. The photo hangs below the banner and eats that strip.
- Assume side cropping on mobile. Roughly 10% comes off each side in some views, so nothing important goes near the edges.
- Minimum text size 22 pixels at full canvas size. Anything smaller vanishes on a phone.
Build it in whatever you have — Canva, Figma, PowerPoint, even Google Slides with the page set to 1584 × 396. The tool is irrelevant; the safe zone is not.
What actually reads
The banner is seen at about six centimetres wide on a phone, for roughly one second, usually while scrolling. Design for that and it works everywhere else too.
- Flat colour background. One dark tone. Text sits on it cleanly at any size.
- One typeface, two weights. Mixing three fonts on a strip this small looks like a flyer.
- Three or four lines, maximum. A keyword line, a human line, a proof line, and possibly an action line.
- No stock photography. Handshakes, skylines, laptops on desks, glass office towers — all of them say nothing and make text unreadable.
- No logos of employers unless you own the company. It is their mark, not yours, and it dates instantly when you move.
One exception to the flat-colour rule: if your work is visual, a heavily muted crop of your own work at low opacity behind flat colour can work. Test it on a phone before committing, and if you hesitate for even a moment reading it, go back to flat.
The rest of the visual profile
The banner is one of four visual decisions on a profile, and the other three are usually left alone entirely.
- The photo. Face filling roughly sixty percent of the frame, plain background, natural light, looking at the camera. Not a cropped wedding photo, not a group shot, not sunglasses. Profiles with a clear photo get substantially more responses than those without one.
- The Featured section. Three items maximum, each with a real thumbnail. This is where a portfolio, a deck or a published article belongs — it is clickable, and a banner is not.
- The custom URL. linkedin.com/in/yourname, not a string of digits. It goes on your resume and in your email signature.
- Consistency with everything else. The same colour and typeface across your banner, your CV header and your portfolio cover is a small thing that makes an application look considered.
None of this substitutes for the headline and About section, which are the parts search actually reads. The banner is what makes a profile look like it belongs to someone who pays attention — and on a platform where most banners are still the default grey mesh, that is a low bar and a quick win.
A sign, not a paragraph.
All three specifications are free to read and copy. Want the banners as editable files sized correctly, or one built from your own headline and record? Both take a minute.
Build mine with Hexa →
Download all three · Free
The people above are illustrative examples written for teaching purposes.
Names, employers, registration numbers and figures are invented and should not be copied
into a real application — use them as a shape to pour your own verified numbers into.