Transcripts
1. Introduction: Welcome to Cava for beginners, How to Make YouTube thumbnails. If you would like
to learn how to make YouTube
thumbnails like these, these are a range of
templates that you can edit, and I'm going to teach
you how to do that. So you can make your
own personalized ones to use in your YouTube
videos as thumbnails. Here are a couple of examples
of ones I've created, this one, and this one
on a baking theme. This is the one we're
going to work with. I'm going to show
you how to edit it. So you can make your own
professional thumbnails for YouTube quickly and easily without any graphic
design skills. Join me on the course today.
2. Choosing A Template: What's really important
to mention to you as we begin this course
is the importance of finding a great template because that is going
to be the basis which we are going to work with to create your
YouTube thumb now. So if you haven't done already, set up your Canva
account, which is free. You don't need Cava Pro. All of the things that I'm
going to show you on here are in the free account. So set up your Cava account
if you haven't done so already and then join me again, where I will show
you the next steps. So you can type in to the
search bar, YouTube thumb now. As in the introduction, you can see all of these
different templates that have been created for you. So you don't need any
graphic design skills. I'm going to show
you the basics. So let's say that we were
going to do a baking video. Let's have a look
at what comes up. Well, that is yoga,
that's not baking. How to make the
perfect coffee latte. We could probably adapt
that one in Canva, you can change all
of the elements. One thing to mention is, this is a pro template, which you need to pay
for the ones with the little crown that says
P. So go for the free ones, and then you can edit
all of the elements, which I'll show you
how to do in a moment. Let's see if they've
got anything more baking them. There's that one. There's this one,
banana pudding recipe, but that one is a P one. Let's see what else you've got. This one's good. Fluffy
and easy muffins in minutes without eggs. So if you click on that, so find one you like, it'll give you more suggestions underneath. A mix of three and the pro ones. So be careful of that. They will show you
the designer's name. That's the resolution, the
size of the thumbnail, so they all should be one, two, 80 by 720 pixels, and then you can
customize the template. I would recommend, as
you're starting to maybe have a look at a
few different ones and then shortlist them, which you can do with the star. And then join me
in the next lesson where I'll show you
how to customize. So you just select
customize this template, and it will open that
up for you and load. And then I will show
you in the next lesson. Now we've chosen our
template, how to edit it.
3. Working With Text: All of these elements
will be editable. So we've got first,
I'm highlighting this. You see the box around
it. This is the photo. And then we've got
this graphic here, which you'll be able to change. You can move it around,
change the color of it, flip it, et cetera. Then we've got the text. This one's really
nicely designed because each part of the text is a separate element that you
can then click on and change. Same here with that bit and the little subscribe graphic there, which you
can take it out. If there's anything
you don't like, just click on it and delete
and that will remove it. This button here duplicates it. If you wanted another one, say with the graphic, if you like that and wanted
to put one somewhere else, you can see there's
another one there that they've done in
a different color. But if you wanted to add more, you can press the
duplicate button there. And so on. Let's change this. What should we do? We'll
do pancakes instead, just click on it and then type in what you would like instead. I'll put American
style pancakes. Now, you could
change if you want to change the color of the text, you can do that up
here. Click on the A. When you've
highlighted the text, you can then change the color of it and it will show you in here. The document colors. So that will be all
nicely color coordinated. And you've got photo colors
that it would pick out, it's picking out
some things from the subscribe graphic, as well. And then if you scroll down, it's got other colors. I would recommend sticking to the document colors
and the photo colors. So you can also change
the size of the font. Pressing the minus or the
plus button, see that change. Or you can click
on the font size in the middle and
then just type and press the return nto key or select one of these
sizes. Let's do that now. See how that changes. If you want to go back,
just press the undo button, and that will take you
back to where you were. So that's editing the text. You can underline it
if you wanted to. Now if you see here, that is further back. Things are done in layers, so that is further back, and that the underlining
isn't showing. So let's take that off. You could change the color of the bit where it says recipe. So if you remember
you go to text color, let's change that to
that color instead. We could change it to that one. There we go. We could make
it bold if we wanted to. It looks a bit like
word or pages if you use those. So that's that. And you can also
change the font. If you wanted a
different style font. You've got all these
different options. Let's try that one. That one's quite
nice. I recommend, if you want to keep
things simple, just keep it as it is in the template and just make
your edits as you want to. So let's change that
back to recipe. Then in the next lesson, I'll show you how to
change the photo.
4. Working With Photos: Wanted to upload your
own photo and use that, you can go to the upload
section on the left here. Or if you want to change it to a stock image that is
provided, they've got lots free. You can go to elements and
then go down to photos. Se all and then type
in what you want. So let's put cake. Then we've got all
of these images. Notice, as I mentioned before, you've got the pro options, you need to pay for either
the license to use that image 99 P or pay to upgrade
to Canva Pro membership. But I would recommend sticking
to using the three images. Let's have a look
what we've got here. We're doing pancakes, actually, let's see if we've got pancakes. Of pro ones. This one I quite like. So the way you change
it is you just select the image and then
drag it and drop it, you see it's already
put it did do that. What happened there? Let's try again. Drag and Drop, and then it's changed it. So I'll keep that
mistake in so you can see it may do that. There might be a little glitch. You can do that like that. So that is how to
change the image. You can make it larger
if you wanted to. You can make it more
transparent by doing that. Less transparent. So those are the
options with the photo. Next, I'll show you more on
how to change the background, and then we'll move on to
graphics. Join me then.
5. Working With Backgrounds: I'm going to show you how to
change the background now. You may find the template has a plain background
like this one does. If it does, then you
can just click on it. You'll see it's got the highlighted purple
rectangle around it, and then you can go here to background color and change
the background color, as you wish to document colors, photo colors, whatever you like, really, you could
make that like that. See what you would
like to change it to. Or some templates might have a photo as the background
which you could then change. But I'd recommend keeping
it as simple as possible, sticking to what is
in the template. But you can change those
if you would like to. So I'll share in the next lesson how to change the graphics.
6. Working With Graphics: Two graphic elements here. These squiggles, you
just click on them. You can do a few different
things with them. You can duplicate it like so, and then drag the
duplicated one. But it's somewhere else
if you wanted to do that. If you wanted to turn it, once you've clicked
on the graphic, go to these arrows here, click on that and that will move it and it shows
you the angle. You can do that. And you've got some other options
such as layering. That's a bit more advanced. You can send it backwards if you want to so that if you then had it underneath the wording, you can see it's behind. But don't worry too much
about the layering, that's a bit more advanced. So those are the options. You can also change
the color of it by clicking on the
graphic app here, clicking on color as
we did with the text. You can crop it
if you wanted to. You can also flip
it horizontally, like so let's change the
layering back, bring to front. And you can flip it
vertically as well. Remember, you can always go
to the Ando button if you want to go back on what
you've already done. And see at the bottom here, they've got the different
colored swigle there. That looks really nice. So you could change the color
of that one if you wanted to make it that color. I don't know why. There we go. I think they must see they've got the transparency very low. So if you change it back, then it makes it like so you can adjust the
transparency as well. Corner rounding. So that's graphics. And if you wanted to change
graphic to something else, you can go to elements. So let's type in pancakes again. Go to graphics,
see what comes up. It's quite fun, isn't it? The little pancake image. We could add something else. That one is nice,
that one's a pro one, see if they've got
something similar. I like that one.
Let's add that in. We can make it transparent,
more transparent, perhaps reduce the size by clicking on it and then going to the circle in the corner. Just put that there. Well,
let's make the transparency, make it less transparent. There we go. So if
you wanted to add a graphic in like so, if you wanted to take
that one out and pop the pancake
graphic in there, and that is how to
change the graphics. You can change the color
of the graphic as well. And the elements, it's letting me change some of the
elements in here. That's more complex,
so just keep it simple and choose a different graphic
if you would like to. That's how you do that. That needs to go to the front. You see, we've made
the text larger, so it's now overlapping a
bit that says without eggs. So let's make it a bit smaller because
I've adjusted that. And we've also got that layer, bring to front, and
that sorts that out. So it's best not to change
the size of the font too much if you want to
keep all the formatting and everything so you don't have to worry
about the layering, that's a bit more complicated. So in the next lesson, I'll share with you how to
save your work and download.
7. File Management: So here we have the name. This is the template name. So you can change that
because that's what will appear as the file
name in your project. So let's change it to
pancake recipe, template. And then we'll save
that like that. If you want to then
do a copy of it, you can go to file. You can also edit the
name of the file here. The typing in there,
pressing that. And you can make a copy here. So you make a copy and
then you want to make some changes to it because you like this style of template, and you're going to do
several different ones where you just change the text
for various recipes, go to make a copy. And then join me
in the next lesson where I'll show you
how to download.
8. Downloading Your Work: Show you how to
download your work. You go to share the top right here and then go to download. Then you've got
different files types. If you're doing it for YouTube, you could go to JPEG. You can't change the sizing, but it will be the
correct sizing if you selected the
YouTube template, and then you just press Download and it will show you
that it's downloading. There. And at the top here, and then you can open that
and upload it to YouTube. So have a go yourself, experiment with the templates, see what you can create and join me for your project where you can make your own
template and upload it to the course to share
if you would like to. Happy designing and
enjoy using Canva.
9. Conclusion & Congratulations: Congratulations.
You've completed this Canva for beginners course, how to make YouTube thumbnails. I hope you've enjoyed it. Please complete the
class project and upload your first YouTube thumbnail to share on Skillshare.
If you'd like to. Remember, you can use a template and adapt it as much or as little as you'd like. This one is one I
created from scratch. But as a beginner,
you may want to just adapt a template
like I've taught you how to do in this
course and just make a few changes to
personalize it for whatever you want
it for the texts, the graphics, the photos, the background,
change the colors. Remember, you can adapt it as much or as
little as you like. If you don't want
to adapt it much, then find a suitable
template that meets your needs and
what you want to create. So happy designing with Cava, and I look forward to seeing
what you create. Good luck.
Anna Skoyles, Children's author & singer/songwriter
