Some early concept sketches and banners I've used over the years.
All artwork done by the very talented Yuki (@cobaltchordata on Twitter).
My YouTube banner was one of the first things I ever had made and was my first time working with my longtime art friend Yuki who would proceed to make basically everything else for my channel going forward. The first idea I had was to make the banner my face on Fred the fish inside the Krusty Krab because it was my favorite meme (when you're at a blank and someone says blank). It's actually the meme I collaborated with Lessons In Meme Culture on his channel if you aren't familiar.
The execution was excellent by Yuki but it was just so loud with the colors and my channel wasn't THAT spongebob heavy so maybe a year later we reconvened with some ideas and sketches before landing on a banner with just my face and my name.
I would also down the road have a parody of the Ryu's shoryuken uppercut made as a banner for my Twitch channel as well as a "SumitoMediaIRL" banner that was supposed to be used for my 2nd channel and is currently the banner for my Patreon.
I've moved to just using a funny comment from a previous video as my channel banner on YouTube because nobody really looks at peoples banners anymore and its easy to change but this was a fun little project while it lasted.