We could spend a ton of time doing an introduction to this article, but I believe our time is better served by diving right in and exploring the do not's first.

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Set 1

Take a moment to look at each of the images above.  What is the common thing you notice about each on of these examples?  It is okay to look at each closely and pause your reading for a moment to decide.  Do not worry, the article will be here waiting for you.

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What did you take away from the above images? Each of the above overlays are "over doing" it. They have so much on their overlay that it makes it very difficult to truly follow their gameplay during the stream. This is a worst case scenario for a stream overlay. Do not do this. Do not put so much on screen that you distract away from the content you are trying to produce.

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Set 2

Looking at our next set of examples, you can see that both images show a much cleaner setup, but they are making a truly horrible mistake. Can you identify it?

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If you took a moment to look it over, hopefully you see that each has made the cardinal sin of covering important information of their content. Both creators are playing Overwatch, and both have their goal widgets setup to cover main elements of their gameplay content, in this case the score board. Please do not do this. Never cover up important information from the content you are trying to portray. Don't block the scoreboard, mission critical instructions, etc.

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Set 3

As we look into Set 3, we have only our one example. This one may be a big harder to identify the mistake. Take a moment and see what you can find.

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Did you catch the mistake? The overlay portion along the top is a bit large, I agree, but that can be worked around. The true mistake is the resolution of the gameplay. It appears that the creator did not like that the overlay was covering the important information from the gameplay, scoreboard, time, etc., so the game capture was resized so that it was squashed vertically. It is not nearly as noticeable as other mistakes, but you can tell it has been done by looking at the "ultimate" gauge in the bottom center.

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Please do not do this. Please do not stretch or shrink your resolution disproportionately to the ratio of its original size. Most of you are playing at 1080p, leave your ratio as 16:9. It just makes the content look bad.

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Set 4

As we now look at Set 4 (again with a single image), I am sure you can already tell what is wrong here.

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How in the world is someone supposed to be able to watch the gameplay content of this stream? It is quite obvious that this content creator was more focused on showing off her "assets" than her gameplay.

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At one point, a few years ago, content creators, like the one pictured above, were frowned upon quite a bit. They were, unfortunately, referred to as "titty streamers" or "cam whores" because they were streaming to exploit their own "assets" to make money from gamer guys on the net. Their focus was solely on their bodies and not their abilities. Granted, they would breed a toxic following at times, but they knew how to generate an audience and a following.

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That being said, please don't do this. Place your focus of your overlay where it should be.

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So what now?

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With those examples being shown, let's look at what we consider to be some clean, minimal overlays that function wonderfully for their purpose.

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T1Riot (www.twitch.tv/t1riot)

What makes Riot's overlay so good in our minds? It is the simplicity. He has his webcam, which he can move to any location on the screen that fits what he is doing, and just an event list. That is all he needs. He lets his content shine above all else (and he can as he is one of the best Destiny 2 players you will find).

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GoldGlove (www.twitch.tv/goldglove)

What do we say about GoldGlove? Well, his stream has grown from a very, very poor look in the infancy days of Twitch and Justin.tv. He now has a slick look based around his GG branding and Zombie based logo. The screenshot above shows him while he is in-between games and just chatting with his viewers. The overlay may seem like there is a lot going on, but it really is pretty simple. He has chat scrolling on the right side, just his webcam blown up quite larger (but not full screen), and a tracker for tips, top tips, and most recent subscriber, along with his sponsor logos. It is sleek and clean. It is really minimal in nature.

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Conclusion:

So, what does this mean to us? What are the do's of a good stream overlay?

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It comes down to one simple piece of advice. Keep it simple. You don't need all the fancy things. You don't need all the animated screens. All you really need is a simple and sleek look that aids in the presentation of your content.

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If you ever question if your overlay works, ask for someone to give you their opinion. Heck, I am sure if you reach out to us, particularly me (rick@spection.co), we will gladly come, check it out, and tell you what we think.