The Psychology Behind Effective Thumbnails on YouTube: A Guide for Creators Who Want to Stand Out | Edi Liang | Skillshare

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What Makes People Click? The Psychology Behind Viral YouTube Thumbnails

teacher avatar Edi Liang, Physicist + YouTuber

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome to the Class!

      1:32

    • 2.

      Why Thumbnail Style Matters

      5:20

    • 3.

      What Thumbnails Should Show

      6:44

    • 4.

      The Power of Visual Quality

      5:11

    • 5.

      How Color Impacts Clicks

      5:10

    • 6.

      Composing Thumbnails for Clarity

      3:44

    • 7.

      When (and Why) to Use Text

      5:37

    • 8.

      How to Use Text Effectively

      7:39

    • 9.

      Consistency, Style & Branding

      3:52

    • 10.

      Common Thumbnail Mistakes to Avoid

      6:42

    • 11.

      Thanks for Watching!

      1:00

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About This Class

Think Like a Click: The Psychology Behind Effective Thumbnails is a creator-focused class that teaches you how to design thumbnails that genuinely earn attention (not with flashy software tricks), but with clarity, strategy, and intent.

As creators, we scroll past hundreds of thumbnails every day and often decide what to watch in a split second. This class will show you how to think like your viewer and make design choices that trigger curiosity and clicks, no matter what software you use.

You’ll learn:

  • Why different thumbnail styles work for different types of content
  • What to actually show in your thumbnails (and what to leave out)
  • How to make your thumbnails look high-quality and professional
  • The role of color, composition, and contrast in catching the eye
  • When and how to use text effectively — without clutter
  • How to stay consistent and build your visual brand
  • The most common thumbnail mistakes and how to avoid them

Whether you're just starting out or want to improve your click-through rate, this class will sharpen your thumbnail intuition and help you design visuals that stop the scroll.

Meet Your Teacher

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Edi Liang

Physicist + YouTuber

Teacher

Hey!

I'm Edi, a YouTuber and a Physics researcher. I was born in Portugal, studied Physics in Germany for 5 years, and am currently in Belgium.

Stories are what I love to share, and I've been watching YouTube since I was a little kid. Since a very early age, I have been making videos for myself, friends, and my partner. About 5 years ago, I started posting on YouTube, sharing interesting stories in the most engaging way possible. I had absolutely no background in any creative skills and can now proudly say that I'm pretty good at them! I combined it with my love of teaching and am now on Skillshare.

If you'd like to find out more, follow my Skillshare profile. If you're a fan of my content and have ideas for classes you'd find useful, feel free to drop me a ... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Welcome to the Class!: Being completely honest, between this one and this one, which one would you actually click? This one really intrigues me, but this one, subconsciously, I know that maybe it's just not worth my time, and I just skip it. I notice how I didn't even show you the video and you already decided if you watch it or not. How important thumbnails are. Hi, I'm Eddie, and I've been doing YouTube for multiple years. I've done over 300 thumbnails, and I know exactly what makes one a good one. And no, it's not a cliche circle, at popping in my face with the shocked view. I understand different styles and their effectiveness. So when we're scrolling through videos, we just glance at the thumbnails. We don't really stop and look and interpret them. So clarity and curiosity are key. In this course, I'll teach you step by step, starting from the fundamentals, what you actually put in a thumbnail, all the way to the importance of color, composition, focus, text, how to use text. Everything to make your thumbnail clear, clean, aesthetic, and very effective. I personally use Photoshop to do them, but this course doesn't focus on the tools. It focuses on the concepts and what makes a thumbnail a really good one. You can completely follow this course and make an excellent thumbnail with any photo editing program free or not, it doesn't matter. But for the class project, you'll create your very own thumbnail, and you can share it for me or any other students to give you feedback. With that said, let's start off with a clear canvas and what to actually include or not in your thumbnail. I'll see you then. 2. Why Thumbnail Style Matters: Let's start off with a question. Imagine you're the viewer and you're scrolling through YouTube. What do you actually pay attention? Have you ever clicked on a video just because of the thumbnail or is it the title and the thumbnail? How do they combine with each other that made you actually curious about it? So when we're scrolling through a video, this is what I usually see. We usually see a thumbnail and a title. And what usually happens when you're in a sea of other videos with all other thumbnails and other titles, first, you just glance through them, and if anyone catures your attention, you look at the thumbnail first. And then if you're interested, you read the title, and then you might go back to the thumbnail. Or maybe you read the title and the title is interesting, and then you go to the thumbnail and you decide that the thumbnail is good and the quality is great, so you decide to click on it. But at a glance, when we're going through so many videos, having a clear thumbnail, clear meaning that you know exactly what the video is going to be about, or you know what the theme is going to be about, paired with a good title and a good thumbnail really makes your video very clickable compared to the sea of other videos. So why are thumbnails such a big deal? Well, there's two reasons. So first one, you have the click through rate, CTR, click through rate. And the second one, you have the watch time, WT. Click through rate means it's the percentage of people that actually see your video and click on it. And the watch time is when people first clicked on the video. So they click on the video, and the watch time is how long did they watch? Did they watch the video until the end? Then that's really good. If they watch only the first 10 seconds of, let's say, a five minute video, then that's pretty bad. So the watch time and click through rate are two things that YouTube knows to really know which videos to recommend to other people. Usually videos that are bad are not really clickable or the quality of the video isn't good, which will not really cover, then the watch time isn't good, that long. It's also relative to how long your video is. If your video is 2 hours, then having a watch time of a little less watch time is better, but if your video is short, having longer watch times is more important. But we're here focusing mostly on click through rate because that's what really that's when we really see. So let me delete this one here. Let me take this out. What we're really looking at is click through rate because when we scroll on YouTube, we see so many videos being the one that we choose. Oh, I like this one because it's clear and I like the theme. I like the idea. I see the title and the thumbnail. The combination of these two make you want to click, and they affect the clickthrough rate. So let's look at the spectrum of thumbnail styles. On one end, you have the flashy, the bright colors, expressive faces. The ones you really see that are more geared towards younger audiences, these ones get high click through rates, but they might feel a bit generic or untrustworthy. On the complete opposite of the spectrum, you have minimalistic, very aesthetic, a cohesive color palette, elegant colors, elegant, just aesthetic overall. And this one might have maybe a lower click through rate because they're less clear, but it builds trust, it builds a brand, but they might not really stand out through the crowds of the videos you see. You can personally choose to do any of these styles. You can go for bold colors or just aesthetics, minimalistic. You cannot go wrong with either of them. They just have different approaches. It just depends on your style. My style you ask, I go more, I would say, here. So a bit further away from the flashy colors, but not completely minimalistic, I prefer to add some elements. I believe my thumbnails have a clear focus point. You can immediately tell what the video is about. And it also sparks and generates a little bit of curiosity. Everything I'm going to teach you in this course applies for the entire spectrum. What makes a good thumbnail applies equally for the aesthetics to the younger generation audiences, it really doesn't matter. All the methods apply. If you're a complete beginner, you might feel overwhelmed, but that's completely okay. I used to do thumbnails a bit more this spectrum, and then I went to complete with nothing, and then I ended up being more or less in the middle. Your style shifts just like your style of videos. You just have to do it consistently. And throughout the repetitions, you really get to understand what your style is. It morphs into something very unique that only you can do. So with that said, let's start off completely clean, a blank canvas. The question becomes, what do you even put there in the first place? There are some good thought exercises, and I'll see you in the next one. 3. What Thumbnails Should Show: So we've gone through the spectrum of the cell of thumbnails, and we noticed that it really doesn't matter which cell you pick. Good thumbnails are present in any part of the spectrum. You just have to follow a few certain rules. So let's start off completely blank. What should your thumbnail actually show? I look at my computer and it's completely blank. Okay, what do I do? And to best answer this question, I will give off a few examples. So for the first thumbnail, I'll just give you a few seconds to look. When I glanced at the thumbnail, I immediately got the impression that the video was about the camera itself and maybe that the camera can print all of these pictures. And it really just takes a glance to understand. And it's completely clear what I mean. And what about this one? Well, when I look at it, it feels like it's a video about that very same room, and it has a price. So I would think about, Oh, it's a video about how I stay at that place for that price. Clear. No doubt about it. What about this one? This is a more creative take on the thumbnail. I can see that the main focus is right on the right here. It's a phone, and the phone is transmitting so much information into my eyes. So the video should be something about distractions or something about the phone. And last example, what about this one? I'm surrounded by all this gear, so it should be a video, something to do with all my gear. As you can see, all of these examples have something in common, something that makes a thumbnail a really good one. So at the end of the day, a good thumbnail is first, it represents visually very well and clearly what the video is about. In all of these, at a glance, I could immediately tell what the video was going to be about. Two, it should grab the attention without being misleading or too overly flashy. In all of them, I don't add too many elements to make it too distracting. I know exactly what I see is what I'm going to get. And three, it should spark some sort of curiosity, but that really comes with the idea of the video. For example, when I see the camera and I see all of these beautiful pictures around it, I might get curious to know what does the camera do? How does it actually perform, and I might click on it. What makes this camera? So good. For this one, I might be curious to see how the room actually is. How did I spend time there? Well, what if I told you there's one level deeper? And this last one, you just see all the amount of gear, and in itself, I think it's a very organized picture. And if you're specifically interested on the gear, then this might be very helpful. So, yeah, these three things make a really good thumbnail, but most importantly, if I had to just give one global tip, it's that the thumbnail is clear. It's clear what the video is about. It really visually tells you in just a glance what the video is about. That is the most important part. It's clarity. You understand immediately what it's going to be about. Notice in all of these examples, I didn't even give you the title. The title wasn't even shown. And you could immediately tell what the theme was. So the thumbnail paired up with the title really creates the whole package. The first video is this $30 camera that I bought that was made for kids, but is really special because it can print. So the video ended up being about that. Now, let's flip around and do the complete opposite. A more realistic approach because when you first do a video, you first come up with an idea and then a title, and then a thumbnail. So I'll give you a title, and in your mind, you'll think about what would you actually add, and then I'll give you the actual thumbnail. Renting a friend in Japan, real connection or just business. So this was the one I took, and it's me pointing to a person, which was my rented friend. And the most important part, the thing that gives it clarity is the text. Without the text, you wouldn't understand that I would be renting him. So having the price, the exact price that he costs per hour, made the thumbnail that much more interesting and more importantly, much clearer. You really understand that it has something to do with about renting or paying someone to do something. And this thumbnail clearly tells that story. The next one would be to the ones that forget to celebrate themselves. And the thumbnail, yeah, it's here. You really see the celebration part of the story. It's a video about me graduating from my masters in physics and how important it is to celebrate these moments. So yeah, the thumbnail really in itself tells the whole story, me celebrating in the room that I actually graduated in. And the last one Capsule Hotel versus Internet cafe. So, yeah, this one is also clear. Is just an image in the middle of a capsule hotel and the other half as an Internet cafe and with a verses in the middle, you can clearly see that this is against this and see which one is better. That's what the video is about. How were your ideas? Were they similar to how actually the thumbnail was? I mean, there's no right or wrong answer. I got to be honest. As long as it's clear and it shows exactly what you're trying to show, and the story that it conveys, then you're doing a good job. And that's really the magic of it, because a title can have so many thumbnails that might adapt really well. It's all up to you and your ideas what you can do and what you want to show. There's no right or wrong answer as long as it's clear what the video is about. So now that you really know the importance of clarity, this is where we're going to tackle all these different components, color, composition, text, all of these things that make the thumbnail clearer. And I will explain step by step each component for you at the end to combine everything together and get a clean, aesthetic and effective thumbnail. So with that said, I'll see you in the next one, which is about the quality. See you there. 4. The Power of Visual Quality: The title doesn't really interest you and the thumbnail is of bad or just not good quality, then what you usually do is scroll away, and that's it. You don't really think about it. You subconsciously know that the video was just not worth your time. Therefore, quality is the first base of every thumbnail. When I mean, the quality, I mean, two things. So the first one is the quality of the actual photo because yeah, a thumbnail is a photo. And a lot of beginners do this mistake and that they use a print screen of one frame of their video after so they first do the video, and then they uploaded and they see they have to have a thumbnail. So they just take a print screen of a frame of the video, and they use that as a thumbnail or just let YouTube automatically choose a random thumbnail from the video. And immediately, you can tell that that is not a good thing. Because when you take a frame from a video, the quality will nowhere be near as good as taking an actual picture. Taking an actual picture makes the photo crisp, high definition, and really nice quality. And the second part of the quality is that when you let YouTube choose a thumbnail, you're not really trying it's not clear, and there is no effort into it. A good thumbnail has a clear purpose, and just choosing a random frame of the video doesn't have that laser focus that you want. Again, how I said it before, clarity is really important. When you scroll through your phone and then see just the video, you should immediately know without really thinking about what the video is going to be. And by having a well thought organized thumbnail will make your video pop out that much more because it's much clearer. Let me give you an example. Imagine you're buying your phone online and you have the photos of the phone and you don't know through the website which dimensions the phone has. Maybe you think that's not important, but maybe for a certain type of customer, they have maybe a small purse or small pockets. So maybe the size is really important for them. Imagine that you really care about the size, and on the website, they don't really say it. There's no dimensions. Then it creates this uncertainty. You don't know. You can ask, but are you really going to do that? Not really. What you usually do is you go away, and that's it. You go through another product because that's how YouTube works in a way. You have thousands of videos, just like thousands of phones or products. If one creates a bit of uncertainty and you're not sure, and you just scroll away because you have so much other choice. The same applies for products. That's why they have all these detailed and detailed photos describing everything you need to be described, the same should be done for the package that's just a video, that it's your title and then thumbnail. It has to be clear. If it creates any bit of just uncertainty or any sort of doubt of, like, the quality, I'm not too sure, then people just give up. So that's why I say the first layer, and it's an important. Of course, not all thumbnails need to be a photo. I say the example of photos because that's what I do. I like to take my time and then frame the photo and take the picture exactly thinking that it's going to be the thumbnail, because it gives a clear direction of the video. There are some other YouTubers. I'll give you one example Tomato anus. Yes, that's the actual name that has impeccable thumbnails that are Mm. You look at them, and they're just clean art design, just clean graphic design, and it's incredibly satisfying to see. And it's effective because you know, first of all, the quality, it's there. It's really good. And second of all, gives the clarity. You immediately know what it's going to be about. If you're into gaming, you see the logo, and you know immediately that the video will be about that certain game. Combine it with the title, and you got a killer combination. So at the end, that's why I really urge to give a little extra effort. I know you've done the whole video, but thumbnails, I would say, are a completely different part. Some people hate it some people love it. I personally like it because it's like a different type of creativity. You have to really show well what the video is really about, and taking the time by framing the picture or doing this graphic design really shows and gives the package a really good boost. With that said, I hope you got to understand the importance of quality. Next lesson we'll go over color. I'll see you then. 5. How Color Impacts Clicks: Color is one of the aspects that I tend to think about when designing a thumbnail. Again, being completely brutally honest when you're just scrolling through videos, you don't really think about it. So if the thumbnail has a lot of colors and it doesn't mix up very well, it makes it very confusing, then the use of color is wrong over there. I'll give you a few examples where I really thought actively about the color. So the first one you see here, it's me in Japan with a price. And immediately you see what pops out is the text, which is the price because it was a video about a whole an entire day in Tokyo without spending a single yen and also me that pops in the middle. What if I were to show you the original picture? It looks like that. So you see the thing that really pops in this picture is here, the text on the left because it's bright red. It's red compared to anything else. It takes all the focus. So to fix that, I just made it black and white, only that part. And all of a sudden, the focus goes back to where it's supposed to be, which is me in the middle and the text that was added afterwards. So that's one of the examples where color might take away the attention. That's why I don't use a shirt that has the same color as the background because it blends in too much. I wear this darker green shirt because it makes me pop out of the frame. That's why I think about these things. The next example here is the color of the camera was intentional. I could use well, there was no other choice. These kids' cameras come in bright colors, but it came out perfectly because the photos, the prints are only in black and white. So you see surrounded by black and white, and the thing in the middle is colorful. So immediately when you glance through it, you just look at the thumbnail, you see immediately the camera, it pops up compared to anything else. That's the thing you see. The things around it tell the story they're also important. But having a clear focus point gives the photo clarity and your thumbnail a good story, a thing to really focus on. And in this case, it's the center, which is the camera. Going back to the zero Yen video, you see that what really pops is the price and me but what's around it is also important too. Tells the story of where I am and you clearly see that I'm somewhere in Asia. But again, if the text were to be read, it would really compete the attention between me and the text. So if it were red, it would really compete between attention and make it uncertain. Where should I focus? And this uncertainty is not good. We want clarity. The next photo here we have is the opposite of the other camera video. We see this camera now takes pictures in bright colors. And all around it, surrounding the camera are just colorful pictures. And that's why I purposely chose the white camera. These cameras come in all patterns, all colorful patterns. And if it were also colorful, it would compete the attention with everything else. So we want some sort of contrast. The camera is simple, white, and everything around is colorful. That's why it contrasts a little bit better. And talking about contrast because contrast gives that much more clarity to the picture, we see that me and all the gear. And I chose purposely a floor that would be a bit lighter because I knew that all my gear is black, all dark colors. That's also why I wore the dark turtleneck, because I would contrast with everything that's in the background, which is the floor. It makes it clear what the focus should be. So color is very important in post production. You could remove color to make everything more cohesive. You can choose the color of your shirt. Maybe if you're in nature and you choose maybe a bright yellow jacket, then you'll really pop out in the middle of the frame. These tips are not only for thumbnails. They also apply for good photography because good photography is all about knowing where the viewer will look at. Surprise, these two things come in hand together. A clear focus gives a clear explanation which gives a good photograph, and the save time is also a good thumbnail. Everything is about clarity. I hope you got to understand the importance of color and color manipulation or choices of color. And in the next class, we'll go through the importance of composition. So how you frame things. I'll see you there. 6. Composing Thumbnails for Clarity: If you've dabbled in the hobby of photography, you've probably heard these rules of compositions like Rule of Thirds, the golden rule. They are important to a certain extent. But for thumbnails, we're just quickly going through it. So they become a little less important. When we look at a video, the first thing we usually see is the center. Naturally, it goes to the center. That's why I'm in the center right now. If your focus point is here, then it really creates a bit of confusion. So that's why most of my thumbnails are centered. Let's go through a few examples. The ones you saw already were the camera one or me in Japan, also me in that room or me celebrating. And the reason this works so well, being centered. It's because it creates this symmetry. It creates predictability. Predictability creates clarity, and clarity gives the thumbnail a overall balanced feeling. So I would say most of my thumbnails, if there's only one thing to focus, I would really just put it in the middle. If there's a product, I will put it in the middle because that's the focus point. That's the first thing most people will look at. Now, all the other composition rules like the golden ratio, the rule of thirds are also useful, but they're more useful for photography because in photography, you stop and look at the frame. And what is the story it's trying to tell in the picture? In YouTube thumbnails, you go like this really quick. That's why in the middle, it's the best option. Now, if you're focusing on multiple things, for example, this Internet cafe versus Capsule Hotel, you can just split up in the middle and use these two rectangles to tell each one a different story. You can also use the rule of thirds to create balance between the picture if you have multiple things. So if I'm in one of the thirds and something else is here that's to be focused on, then yes, you can use the rule of thirds. For example, in this one where I have this floating white phone. The first thing you look at is maybe the phone because it's closer to the frame, and it pulls into my eyes all the information to the other third. It feels balanced. Nothing feels too tight or too loose like it should be. There are a lot of rules that go into composition. I would say for thumbnails, focus mostly on primarily just being centered and being symmetrical. That makes it really clear. Of course, if you want to show multiple things, then there are other ways to do it. You can use the rule of thirds or just cut in half and then show two different things. Don't use too much too complicated. It usually doesn't work out. It becomes fusing pretty quickly. So sticking to the basics, because what people are doing is scrolling quick. That's what most important is. I have a course on composition, a full course on all the rules of composition. Feel free to watch it if you want to learn more about the photography side of things, it helps. But if you're just doing thumbnails and you want to focus on something really simple and that works, then usually center the subject, the subject, me or the product or anything. It makes everything much clearer. That's the main rule, I would say for everyone. I hope you got to understand the importance of positioning anything you want in focus. And with that said, we'll go on to the next lesson, which is the use of text. I'll see you there. 7. When (and Why) to Use Text: You probably seen throughout this course that some of my thumbnails have text and some just don't have any text. And why is that? In this lesson, we'll cover one, two, and one not to use text in your thumbnails. In the next one, we'll cover how to use the text. So for this one, let's focus on one or one not to use text. So let me give you a few examples. So you're seeing this thumbnail. Now imagine seeing the thumbnail without the text. Do you see the problem, the one without the text? It doesn't have any clarity. When I look at this picture, me in Tokyo, I have no idea what's going to happen. Why am I there? And what is the video about? It's just a picture. It's just a nice picture of me, and that's about it. But as soon as I had text, everything becomes clear. Oh, it's about zero. So 0.00 yen. It's about not spending money. I immediately know. The same applies to this one where I'm with my rental friend. If the text weren't there, it would just be a normal picture of me and another person. You wouldn't know what relationship I would have. And me pointing to the person plus having the price per hour of that person really makes it clear that it has something to do something transactional. It gives the thumbnail a purpose. The text makes a big difference being there or not. And that's when you know you should use text. Let me give you an example where you should not use text. So the camera one is already filled to the brim with information. It's all with printed pictures and the camera, the bright blue camera in the middle. If I were to add some sort of text, maybe it would be possible but it would just be giving too much information. Yes, you can make it work, but it's just I feel like, at least, in my opinion, it would be too much information. It's too much things to focus without the text, just already without the text. You can already tell what the video is about, and it gives the complete story. That in itself alone, it's good. Whereas in the other examples I showed you, it's just a nice picture of me somewhere and I have no idea what's going to happen. On the photo of with all my gear, I tried to add text of the prices of what each gear cost, but it became too crowded with information. At the end, it wasn't clear because the text was too small and it was just ugly. It didn't make any sense. So just the gear itself being there already told the story and I gave up and I scrapped completely the idea. So I didn't end up using any text. So these are two very strong examples. One text isn't really needed. You might try but already the photo itself already tells the story very well. It's clear enough, so you don't really need the text. Use the text only when the photo isn't really clear. Now, there are a few examples I'll give you that's in between. With the text or without the text, maybe yes, maybe no, and it's really up to you. So the first one is this projector. You see immediately the focus is a video that's going to be about a projector, and I felt like it was lacking something. So that's why I added the text behind the projector. The photo itself without a text already gives the clear vision of the video, the story. But I felt like in a pool of other videos, this wouldn't really stand out. So I really needed something, a bit of text to put it. I understand that already in itself, it's good, so I wanted to elevate it a little bit more with text. That's at least my thought process. And as I told you, there's 1 million ways you can do a thumbnail, a good thumbnail for a video. Sometimes there's no right or wrong answer. There's multiple right answers, and that's what this art is about. And for the last example I wanted to give you is this one. You see me in this tiny compact room, and you see the computer screen. You immediately see that's an Internet cafe. The text itself there isn't really necessary because if I remove the text, I can still tell what the video is going to be about. It's clear enough. But to add some extra clarity, I added a text right in the middle, a bit smaller, so it wouldn't crowd with anything else, because the main focus was that it would be the cheapest place I slept in Tokyo. That's why I added the text. It gives a little extra to the thumbnail. Without it, it would have worked probably just as well. But with the text, it gives a bit more clarity into the direction of the video, and that's why I added it. Now, the position of the text, how big it is, how to add text, that's what we'll really cover in the next one. I hope you got to understand one to use and not to use text in your thumbnails because some people overuse it, and some people could use it because the picture itself or the thumbnail isn't really clear enough. So with that said, I'll see you in the next one. 8. How to Use Text Effectively: Well, you decided to use text in your thumbnail, and you've come to the right place because here, I'll focus everything you need to know about text and thumbnails to the number of words, the size, and how do you contrast with the background. So first of all, I'd like to talk about font because that's the first thing you choose. It really depends on your brand. I wouldn't mix fonts for every thumbnail because then your viewers don't know what to expect from you. And your brand just becomes a little bit confusing. I would choose a font that's clear easy to read even from afar because you have to understand that when we edit thumbnails, they become really small when you actually see them. So they have to be really easy to read. Otherwise, if you cannot read them, what's the point of the text? In my case, I always use Helvetica bold because I just like the aesthetic of it. It's easy to read. It's clean. It makes it really clear what to focus your eyes on when you put that in the thumbnail. But that's just my personal choice. You can use any other font. There are probably other fonts that are more aesthetic. It really is up to personal preference. Just make sure it's easy to read. And the second point I want to focus on is the number of words. Some people use too many words on the thumbnail. It's not supposed to be a paragraph or too much information. You want to talk about this. Oh, this is the best thing or something like that. You really have to narrow it down. I would say five words, Max, because you give you spark the attention of the viewer. But if it's just too many letters, the viewer is not going to read all of them. It's going to be confusing. And anything that's uncertain, you just give up. You continue to go on to the next video. So that's why three, five words are an optimal amount of words, maybe one, two, if you can. Try and reduce to the maximum. You know, rules are meant to be broken. You can use more, but it just becomes a little bit too long. For example, all of these prices, I just put the prices. The price is really easy to understand. You look at it immediately, you know what it means. For the rental friend thumbnail, I could have put, Oh, rental friend and then price, but I thought it would be too much. Already, the price per hour tells me enough what I need to know or what the viewer needs to know about the video, along with the title. Describing anything else would have been too much information. So the key point is trying to reduce the information to the maximum what you really need. Because if you give too much information, it becomes A, redundant and B a little bit boring. And the last point that's the most important for a text is actually how much contrast there is between your text and the background. Because if you have a bright background and you add a text that's also white, it becomes really hard to read or these funky colors that you have maybe a blue background and add like a light blue color. You don't want to use that. You usually want something that really pops out, really contrasts well with what is in the background. Sometimes the background matches well with where you position your text. In this case, in the London video, there was a bit of shade from the building itself, and it matched really well where I could put the 0.00 pounds. And the white text and the darker background really contrasted well, made it really easy to read. Now, the same series, the 0.00 Money. In Tokyo, it didn't work as well because the background already was pretty bright. I tried a black text, but it didn't really work out very well. It became a bit too confusing. I couldn't read so the trick was to make the background slightly darker. So do this, at least in Photoshop. You have a layer of just black, and then you turn the opacity way down, so it becomes really transparent, but slightly transparent so that you see this darkening effect. This effect is enough to make my text really pop out and make it easy to really read. A trick I always like to do when I'm doing my thumbnails, because when you're editing your thumbnails in the computer, you have such a big screen, and you're so used to the big screen that's when you work on. Sometimes from time to time, it's very useful to zoom your picture all the way out to make it as big as you would see the thumbnail. And that's how you really determine the size of the font you want to use. Sometimes you have the text that's it seems way too big when you're working on it, but then when you reduce in size, it feels just right. And that's what you have to work on. Most people watch videos on phones or on laptops. They don't really see these pictures big up close and personal. So you really have to reduce it from time to time to give yourself that information and see if it works well at that image size. So when you reduce it, you see if the font is too small or too big. You see also clear as day if the font is easy to read or not, if it has enough contrast or not. And there's one last trick I'd like to share with you. So the previous trick was to darken the places you want it to be dark and make stuff pop out, like the text and me in this case. But sometimes you don't want to do that. And in that case, the other way I would use is a drop shadow. A drop shadow is something that's really common and it's literally just the shadow of the text. This shadow is enough to give a clean look while also making it clear to read. So I could use a white text in a white background with a drop shadow. It's clean. It looks nice, and you can still read it. That's in the case, if you don't want to manipulate the picture that much, you just have to change the text so that it becomes a little bit more readable. And to really review, the text has to be easy to read. The information has to be minimal, the things you need. Not too much, I would say five words max and it has to be clear in size. Make sure you reduce the image from time to time to see how it looks, actually, how the viewer will actually locate your thumbnail and see if it's readable the size and make sure the contrast between the text and the background is enough to make it really pop out and really easy to read. Again, everything we're trying to do, the quality, the color, the composition, the text, everything we're trying to manipulate it as much as possible to make the photo and the thumbnail as clear as possible. When we really just look at for a millisecond, we understand what it means. That's what's really all about. Text is just one of the things. And with that said, we'll go on to the next lesson where we'll cover the importance of consistency and a bit of branding. I'll see you there. 9. Consistency, Style & Branding: If you broadly follow these rules, I feel like you can do a pretty good thumbnail. So in this lesson, we'll focus on the consistency part, the part that's actually very underrated, because the goal in the long term isn't just clicks. It's also a bit of recognition. The best channels don't win the algorithm, they win the audience trust. And consistency is how you get to that trust. So what I mean by consistency is not only consistent uploads, but the consistency of your thumbnails. Do they have the same style, the same style of photography, the same font? Do they have usually the same colors? That's how you sometimes, when you look at certain creators and they upload a video, you immediately know, Oh, it's a video from X Y and Z. In the beginning, this is less important because you're still trying to figure out what your style is. As later as you progress, you really start to grab onto stuff that you feel familiar with. And this consistency creates recognition, trust, and also a bit of identity. Now, how do you create this recognition? There's a few ways to do the first and most easy one is to use your face. Your face is undeniably the most unique thing about you. Humans are so good at recognizing faces that it creates an identity in itself. If you put your face, people know it's you. Obvious. Now, there are other ways to create this consistency without putting your face. It could be through the style of photography. If your photography is really unique, very aesthetic, you already create this brand that you have on your YouTube channel. A great example I would like to show is Life of Risa. She barely uses any text is very minimalistic, but very, very aesthetic. That's how it works. You see the way she edits her pictures have about a cohesive color grading, and they blend in very much well with each other. If you do not want to use your face, there's another channel I would like to show. And you can really see here the channel byte, not just bikes, that the color orange is very present. The same orange is always present in all the thumbnails. And you can immediately see when there is a new upload and a spontaneous upload appears on my phone, I immediately know that this font and this orange I know it's from not just spikes. Without really thinking about it, I know it's him, and it creates this trust, and I'll click on the video. So again, if you're a beginner, experiment with all these things. You don't really have to worry about the recognition or consistency. This comes naturally with time as you do more videos, as you do more thumbnails. It really comes with practice. Maybe you'll take a bit of inspiration from this creator, an element from this creator, an element from this one, and at the end, you combine it all together, and it creates something unique that's only to you. That's only by experimenting. Yes, there are several things you can experiment with the font if you use text or not, the color grading, the style of photography, the colors you use, all of that can create the consistency you're looking for throughout your channel. With that said, we'll go to the next lesson, which is really important because I combined all the common mistakes from every single component in one lesson. I'll see you there. 10. Common Thumbnail Mistakes to Avoid: Lesson, I combine all the common mistakes from all the single categories, everything that we focused on all in this lesson so that you don't have to do them as I did in the past. So the first common one I really see, and I have to repeat it again is just too much text. If it becomes a PowerPoint slide, it's not clear and people are not going to read it. They're just going to go away. It's too much information. It hurts the video because some nails need to be scannable for a brief second. And if they're not, people are just going to ignore it. If it creates uncertainty with too much text, they just ignore it. So the fix is to really narrow it down, use three to five words max, just the essential information that you need to add on the text. Again, how we set it, make sure that the picture itself is clear, and if it's not clear enough, then adding the text is essential. If the picture itself is clear, then maybe consider not adding text at all. The second one is not thinking about colors. Over use of colors or no color harmony, that becomes really confusing when you look at a picture in an instant. Remember when we saw the camera, it was bright blue. That's the thing that really should be on focus. Remember also when we had the bright red text, and we had to remove it to make it black and white so that it wouldn't clash with what you really wanted to focus on. That's all tricks of manipulation and thinking about the colors, also the colors of your clothes, make sure there's enough contrast on the thing you want to focus on. Third one combines everything we talked about, and there's no visual hierarchy. If you look at a picture and you don't know where you should focus on, it's usually not a good photo, even for photography, but also for thumbnails. That's why you really have to take care of the color, text, and also the positioning, how we talked about composition, being in the middle. Imagine if I was teaching the whole class sitting here, it would feel very unbalanced and create this unbalanced feeling a bit of uncertainty, and it just doesn't feel right. So rule of thumb, again, just centering it makes it a bit easier on the eyes because that's the first place you really go on focus. Make sure the thing in focus has enough contrast, and the text is easy to read. With all of these tricks that we learn from the course, I think that's enough to make this visual hierarchy stand out much more. The thing you want to be in focus will definitely just pop out. Another mistake I really see is just the quality of the photos are not great, maybe it's a bit blurry or sometimes people do these collages of their face with an object and it just doesn't look that good. You have to really take into account the quality because a good thumbnail really expresses this feeling that, oh, the video is going to be high quality. You can tell when the thumbnail isn't as high quality, and you immediately assume that the video itself isn't worth watching. So make sure the quality is good. And the font is professional, the colors are easy to read. The other mistake I really see is people that go for too much consistency, and all of a sudden, their thumbnails look all the same. They all have the same photo of the person smiling, and you cannot really tell apart which video does what? Maybe the text, but then it's too much text, and it just doesn't become pretty. You know it's from them. Yes, they have consistency, but you don't know what the video is about because they all look the same. They all look copies of each other. They copy too much things because they don't focus too much on the thumbnail. Yes, use consistency, consistency through color, fonts, styles, but don't use it too much because you need also variation. You need to know what the video is about. If you go through your channel and they all look basically the same, then then it's really not a good look for you. So yeah, keep consistent styles, layout colors, don't copy everything always the same. I think I see now, I think, less and less. It used to be more in 2012, 2015 was the use of clickbait. People used to clickbait people, make them think and mislead them that a video was to do with something, but in actuality was not about that. This YouTube has been evolving. This has been something I see less and less, which is a good thing. But don't mislead people because when you do that, people that click on your videos and are expecting something, they realize that that's not true and they click away, and your watch time dramatically decreases, which is not very good for your video. Thankfully, people have been realizing that if you have a Lamborghini in your thumbnail, you better make sure you have a Lamborghini in your video. And the last common mistake I see is that when you're editing the photo, it looks great. It looks great on the computer screen, but it's in full screen. It looks great big. But when you reduce it, all of a sudden, you see some flaws. Maybe the text is really unreadable. It's too small, or maybe you need to make stuff pop out more through color. That's when you really see because when people scroll through your videos or they scroll through their feed, it's all very tiny. On your computer, it's all a rectangle this size, on the phone, basically the same thing. So make sure from time to time you reduce your work and see how it looks at a tiny size from just a part of your screen, and then make adjustments towards it. That is something I have to remind myself even today. Even after doing hundreds of thumbnails, I have to remind myself how it looked like. Sometimes I even forget about it, and I have to go back and re edit. So I think all of these are the most common mistakes I really have been seeing throughout the years, and I hope you don't make them. As long as the thumbnail is clear and you know immediately what it's about or the video what's going to be about, then you're all good. With that said, I'll see you in the next one. 11. Thanks for Watching!: Thank you so much for reaching the end of this course. By now, you should already know how important clarity and understandability is for your thumbnail and how to make it clear, how to make it easy to read, how to make it really easy to understand at a glance. I personally on YouTube create cinematic storytelling videos. I put a lot of effort into them. So feel free to check those out. But more importantly, if you're interested in doing better videos, I have a course called Level Up Your video that goes step by step how to make your best video possible from scripting all the way to the editing. If you're interested in composition for photography and video, there's a complete course about it, too. Feel free to leave a review. It really helps a lot. And don't forget to upload your thumbnail in the class project. If you have any questions, you can always ask them in the discussion tab. I check them. And with that said, thank you so much again, and best of luck in your future project.