Top 8 Tips to Make a Great Thumbnail

Ready to make impactful thumbnails? Learn tips on how to make a great first impression with your video content.

If you are looking to understand the key elements of a good thumbnail, check out my video where I show examples and explain just what makes thumbnails so important. Check it out!

The Importance of Thumbnails

Yes, the content of our video is vital, but that single click people make when they choose to view our video is of the utmost importance. We can put a great deal of thought and work into a video, producing the most spectacular final result, and that effort lay dormant if no one is compelled to click.

This is why if we have an interesting thumbnail, our chances of attracting more views are much higher, ultimately gaining more exposure and clients.

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Whether we list our videos on a large platform or onto a professional website, thumbnails are crucial

If we have your videos listed on a large platform such as YouTube, we will need to strive to overcoming being a speck in the search results. If someone searches a keyword or tag that places our video in the upper regions of a search result, we will be among the other video makers who share these keywords and tags. The thumbnail we choose then becomes critical, and the searcher now chooses between the first 5 or 6 videos they see.

Conversely, if we have a professional website where we vlog, or show our business' assets, we want that website to look as organized and coherent as possible. Thumbnails not only show that we are polished but also act as a catalog. By stylizing our thumbnails as if our videos are in different categories of a library, our audience and those that browse our website will find the experience to be user-friendly, creating visual ease.

If you are a content marketer, video editor, graphic designer, social media manager or web designer, be sure to check out the tips below!

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What are 3 things Thumbnails can do for us?

1) Generate Curiosity: An image alone compels a viewer to click, building up anticipation of what the video contains.

2) Advertise: Thumbnails act very similar to billboards, posters and flyers, where we potently offer the viewer a snapshot of what is inside. The place of the thumbnail is prime real-estate and a great place to advertise the content of the video we wish to share.

3) Build Branding: When we start to build a video library for ourselves, if we use a branding style with our thumbnails, people will come to recognize us. They will appreciate seeing the icon, brand color and style of our thumbnails, noticing our consistency and dependability.

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Tips for Making a Great Thumbnails

CHOOSE A STYLE - There are a number of approaches to making a great thumbnail. No matter what type of video creator you are, sticking to a consistent style of thumbnails is beneficial. Before even heading over to Adobe Photoshop, choose what your style is by browsing some of your favorite YouTubers. Get inspiration from their thumbnails. There are many styles that do well including trendy, professional and creative looks. I will describe these 3 styles, although they are certainly not the only looks there are.

With a trendy style, often we see a person who's facial expression is enticing, leading you to want to click on the video to find out what they are "reacting" to. Often the person will be highlighted with a white outline or glow, standing out from their background, and they will be accompanied by text which adds to this enticement, only offering a vague question. This style offers fun and curiosity.

For a professional style, simplicity is usually the best bet. To create this style, make a clean thumbnail using one image that highlights the topic of the video. Accompany this with part of the thumbnail being covered with a bold geometric shape that is colored to match the logo or brand of the site or business. Typically with this style bold text, of only a few words, is used to highlight something offered in the video. This style offers a potent and reputable look.

And to achieve a creative style, I like to think of making a 'highlight collage', where I pull together key elements of the video in the form of images. This could be a still shot from within the video itself, or a subject matter that was referred to by the person in the video. Along with a couple images that are overlapped, abstract shapes, large splotches, or big swooshes of color make for a great place to add text. This style offers eye-catching images and an expressive look.

A style can be a mixture of these looks. Once you gauge where you are at, stick with it.

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PICK RELEVANT COLORS

Use the colors of your brand or logo. And if that is not applicable to your video content, choose colors in your thumbnail that reflect the subject matter properly. Red signifies power, sex, energy, vitality and is sometimes even a warning. It gets the blood pumping. Orange is playful, childlike, warm and can create hunger. Yellow is bright, light, fun and bringing about a sense of joy and happiness as well as alertness. Green is healthy, nature-oriented and cultivates a sense of growth. Blue indicates communication, calmness, relaxation and cool. It often is used to note practicality. Purple is used to convey creativity, ideology, cerebral theory and can also be used when highlighting beliefs.

CHOOSE YOUR TEXT

Typically when you post or show your video on a platform, even a website, there is a place for the title of the video to be displayed. The text in a thumbnail is an opportunity to write/highlight something OTHER than the title, rather than redundantly offering the title in two places, pick a subtitle or fun highlight to enter as the text of your thumbnail.

PICK CORRECT DIMENSIONS

Regardless of where you post your video, you will be able to find the dimensions needed for a thumbnail for that specific site or platform. Here is a website I use for Thumbnail Dimensions.

MAKE IT INTERESTING

Give viewers something to look at. Make a thumbnail that is enticing, clickable and also relevant to the actual video they will be watching. Have fun with creating it and make your thumbnail something that you yourself like and would click on!

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- Courtney @ Obsidian Door

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