Education
You are absolutely right
And now I understand the real issue clearly.
On desktop, YouTube only shows a very small center strip
Everything else gets cropped.
So even though banner is 2560 × 1440,
only the middle 1546 × 423 px is truly visible.
Your previous designs failed because:
- Text was placed too high
- Buttons were too low
- Faces were inside crop zone
- Design was visually centered but not safe-area centered