How To Make Your YouTube Thumbnails Stand Out
As a graphic designer I was asked to design a few Youtube thumbnails designs for a Skincare company. They were looking to get more attention and more clicks on Youtube and of course get more business. The client provided with text an a brief idea of what he wanted to see on the thumbnail, the rest was on me. He wanted to move away from just using a still frame photo from the videos and the make his YouTube thumbails stand out. Creativity here we go!
Thumbnail Inspiration
Before starting with the hardcore design I did a little bit of research on the internet about what elements should be included on the thumbnails to optimise them to get attention. After reading a few articles about it and looking at thumbnails on YouTube and seeing what caught my eye I concluded that the following are 4 important elements that I think should be considered when designing a Youtube thumbnail that will stand out:
1 – Thumbnail Colours: bright, contrasting (something like neon pink and yellow works very well) and don’t forget to use white to make it “pop”.
2 – Thumbnail Patterns: they don’t need to be over complicated, just basic patterns combined with bright colours is the way to go, and of course a little bit of gradation to avoid very static thumbnails.
3 – Images: don’t add too many images, one image, bright and in focus is enough. Focus all the attention on this image and if you can use a recognizable figure, that will give you extra points.
4 – Text: this is a very important part of the design, remember that the thumbnail is small and the text needs to be large enough to read, but not only that, it needs to be interesting. Keep it short and sweet and if you can try to use the word “YOU”, to catch the attention of browsers even.
My client doesn’t have the new thumbnails on his Youtube channel yet, but once they are upload I’ll share them with you but for now I’ve just designed a mock-up of what they would look like.
Before
After
How to Make Your Youtube Thumbnails Stand Out
Why should you make your YouTube Thumbnails stand out?
All too often once people have the video created they YouTube video they never give a moments thought to making their YouTube thumbails stand out and this is a big mistake. If you’ve spent time and energy on creating a YouTube video should should follow through and give it the best thumbnail possible to increase the click through rate and views.
Get a Thumbnail Design for Your Youtube Channel
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world and if you have a strong thumbnail image in place for your video then there is a much higher chance of you receiving the click – especially if your video is of the “how to” or information variety as opposed to entertainment. The reason for this is that the entertainment videos are usually a bit more eye catching but there is a huge opportunity to make your YouTube thumbnails stand out for information and how to type content. Furthermore, the likelihood of a conversion from a how to or info type video is a lot higher than the probability of conversion from an entertainment video and so the efforts really should be doubled down on making your YouTube thumbnails stand out.
If you need any help with your YouTube thumbnails then get in touch.
