Update: As Facebook has a tendency to do, they have made a change that affected the banner template I’ve provided here. The icon image is now slightly larger, but the image inside is slightly smaller, so I have in turn enlarged the icon in my template. However, the new method that Facebook uses does not seem conducive to creating an easy template to work with. Because of Facebook’s tendency to change things without notice (and seemingly often) I will not be able to keep the template updated. I’m sorry for the inconvenience!
On March 30th, Facebook’s Timeline will automatically go live for everyone whether they have prepared by switching over their pages ahead of time, or not. For my personal page, I switched long ago and have gotten quite used to Timeline. I actually kind of -like- it, but the opinions I’ve seen among my friends are very mixed.
The new customizable banner image is one of the most obvious and prominent features of Timeline and one that I really love. Yes, yes, it could possibly have the tendency to look a little gaudy and Myspace-ish but if we all keep that in mind and make tasteful/beautiful banners for our pages, we can do our own little part to prevent this from happening. 
For my personal page, I simply used a photo from my albums, but for my business page, I wanted to do something a little special. Some of my favorite Facebook banners managed to make the icon appear to be a seamless element within the main banner image, so I decided to do a little work in Photoshop and make something similar for myself. My banner/icon integration is very subtle, but with the right selection of photos the look can be even more obvious.
You can view it live on my Facebook Page. Be sure to “like” me while you’re there!
I also designed one of these banners for a friend, Neil van Niekerk, who runs a very popular photography tutorial website and he received a lot of positive feedback. Since there seemed to be quite a bit of interest on how I created the banner, I thought it’d be nice if I created a Photoshop template to share. This template and the following instructions should help you create your own Facebook banner with a seamless appearance between the user icon and the Facebook banner itself.
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Photos Taken in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States.
