Keep Your Old Facebook Profile With A Creative Timeline Design

Ever since I opened my Facebook profile to the public, I’ve enjoyed connecting with people from all over the world. I’ve noticed one of the recurring topics of conversation with people is Facebook’s latest change, Timeline. Since Facebook decided to change the profile layout (again…) the new profile has been gradually rolled out over the last few months, and many users have been inquiring about my cover photo featured on the first Mashable Timeline gallery.

Rather than answer each inquiry individually, I decided to make a template that can be easily used to design anyone’s cover photo to make it look like the “old” profile. If you play a quick game of Spot the Differences you’ll see that several parts of the design (no profile picture, the “Write Something…” box, the “Friends” star) look different than your old profile—this is by design. It is meant to look like what your friends saw when visiting that profile.

Since you cannot go back and take a screenshot of your old profile if you already have Timeline, this template enables you to still have the old design. It should only take 5-10 minutes if you are familiar with Photoshop, but if you are using a program like Microsoft Paint it might take a little longer since you will have to manually trim down your five thumbnail photos (100 pixels wide by 70 pixels high).

Download my Photoshop template by right clicking Old Facebook Timeline Template and selecting “Download Linked File As…”.

I’ve sized the photo 850×315 pixels, the exact dimensions of the cover photo. Each thumbnail picture is its own layer. All you have to do is select a layer, shrink a photo down to your desired size and position the photo behind the appropriate frame. Repeat five times.

Here is what it looks like filled out with my information and pictures.

For the descriptions, you simply choose the description you want to modify from the layers section (education, occupations, etc.). Then select the text edit tool (the button that looks like a big letter T), and double-click on the description in the photo. Now you can edit the description to make it unique to you! If you want to add any other sections, Facebook uses size 11 point font Lucida Grande.

Now just upload to your Timeline (as seen below) and you have a final product! Have fun keeping your “old” profile and making your friends do a double take when they see your cover photo.

Cover photo complete! Note: If the text in the above picture is a little blurry, that is because this is a picture within a picture within a picture within a picture. You are bound to lose a bit of sharpness when you go Inception on your photos.

Was this template helpful? Post a link to your new design below, and if you still have any questions, leave them in the comments.

Happy designing!

Andrew