After close to 2 years of making YouTube thumbnails, I'm happy to announce I've collaborated with
@ryasendesign
to develop the best portfolio to date!
· Click on thumbnails to view them in Full HD!
· A/B Testing: Compare up to 3 options!
· Mobile-friendly layout
· And more!
🔗⬇️
🇫🇷 The French YouTube thumbnail meta is fascinating.
Some big creators have taken a strong liking to photomanipulation, contacting artists and Photoshop wizards for their thumbnails rather than the more "typical" graphic designers...
And
@AziaTack
is leading the charge.
Dear YouTubers,
When a good thumbnail is the difference between 10,000 and 1,000,000 views, hiring a designer is no time to get cheap.
Every day, I see job postings in Discord servers that ask for incredible designs for very low prices!
Invest in quality - results will follow.
Not even MrBeast is safe from this common design mistake - and had to swap out his latest upload's thumbnail just minutes after launch.
What happened? It's simple, really. 👇 1/4
Thumbnail Design
Nike: Why They Won (And Will Continue To)
Always a pleasure to bring some new concepts to life for NachoAverageFinds.
Did I cook? 🧑🍳🤌
The difference between an average and a good thumbnail often lies in the typography.
It also affects the tone of the video a lot!
I imagine...
Left: An energetic YouTuber chatting about something the devs tweeted, and...
Right: A soft-spoken video essay on the lore of Diablo 4.
Hear me out:
No weird typography shenanigans. Use it as the headband, remove the super-tiny cut that doesn't work at medium to small scale.
Remove the awkward curves in the logomark that you can barely notice anyways.
Things that influence a video's success:
-Title
-Thumbnail
-Topic relevance
-Audio quality
-Video quality
-Editing
etc.
Things a thumbnail designer controls:
-Thumbnail
So why would you pay for a designer? There are three main reasons that come to mind ⬇️
Quick, MrBeast is about to upload, let's predict the thumbnail!
-B&W stripes, like his other videos with many contestants
-Gold medal 🥇 (the ultimate payoff)
-People wearing white outfits w/ colorful stripes
-The infinite grass field w/ a blue sky where all YouTubers live™
@realMax0r
Today, next week or in 6 months, I'll get excited about a Max0r video all the same because of that quality you put into your work. You said yourself that YouTube does not punish taking breaks or uploading infrequently.
So don't sacrifice your wellbeing to upload sooner. We
To my fellow thumbnail designers wondering how to get clients:
Literally just post on Twitter. It sounds like biased/BS advice, but I swear it's true!
— Here's a detailed guide, from personal experience —
👍 Twitter heavily rewards likes. Your tweets get shown to people who
I've had a ton of fun animating this intro for
@BnanazEsports
- with a magnificent logo designed by
@hssn_dsgn
! 🍌
🔴 HIGH QUALITY:
All feedback and critiques are more than welcome !
Help!
5 months ago, I left my job to become a freelance designer. I've built a website, grown my portfolio, I'm showing myself on social media...
But I haven't a client knock at my door since. Those 5 months of living expenses are starting to make a dent in my savings. 1/2
I'm back with another blueprint thumbnail! 🟦👟
How Nike Made The Perfect Shoe
for NachoAverageFinds
It's always fun playing with textures. What do you think?
Who are your favorite design content creators to watch?
Here are some of mine.
(Half of the design content I watch is in French. Nos chômeurs ont du talent.)
Big up to the clients who respond even when the design rates are above their budget.
It can feel a bit lonely getting ghosted systematically when you state your price, so you guys keep our spirits up! 💛
@chucky
Another instance of someone getting in contact with anything the MrBeast team does and trying to milk that interaction for fame.
It's honestly getting sad at this point.
@HappyChimeNoise
I played one game of Arena with every champion (167) and I feel like Omnivamp is frustratingly strong against everything, so champions like Swain Darius Briar Volibear get to roll over teams until the circle closes and win by default.
16 players means you lose to the same team
- A/B Testing finally being added to YouTube.
- Bigger thumbnail display on the homepage and channel tabs on PC.
- More tools than ever to create wild concepts with AI getting implemented even directly in Photoshop.
In 2023, thumbnail enjoyers are eating good!
It's been funny seeing a thumbnail I made 9 months ago turn into a part of the thumbnail meta for an entire niche.
People have been replicating parts of it, sometimes outright copy-pasting the entire thing and changing three words.
Back when I created this design, it got 200k
THUMBNAIL DESIGNERS,
The Ultimate Stats Photoshop Pack is out!
I thought of making it paid, but fuck it. I'll send it to everyone who Retweets and Comments "STATS" for free.
(Must be following so I can DM)
While they were cooking steaks, I cooked this thumbnail layer breakdown for you guys. 👨🍳🥩
Which side are you devouring first?
Which Country Has The Best Steak? (ft. Guga)
Client: Patrick Zeinali (5.3M subscribers)
I'm freelancing in a competitive niche and managing to make a living, my girlfriend moved in France with me to learn the language, I'm working on fun side projects and have a group of friends I love and who love me back.
Stick around guys, it's worth it.
I've never had a year this bad in my life. By far. I don't even have good news to share at this point. I can't tell if I'm getting close to my objectives or if I'm barely halfway there. Motivation is dwindling.
We'll happily welcome your customers in our DMs when their third consecutive upload is ranking 9/10 again.
Keep training that AI all you want, it'll never understand *why* people click. Content is about making a human connection, and your little robot friend knows nothing of it.
Announcing the culmination of my life's work: CTRHero, an AI to replace Thumbnail Artists.
We trained a custom model on millions of high CTR thumbnails across platforms.
Launching today, but you'll need an invite to join. For a free invite, just RT this, and I will DM you one.
Before // After — Thumbnail Design
Another week, another Hardcore thumbnail for
@DOWSEYtv
!
This time, things are looking grim for the Survivors right as they prepare to escape!
⚠️📣 DESIGNERS 📣⚠️
If your Twitter DMs are a big source of income for your business, double check that this new feature is TURNED OFF.
Unverified users cannot message you anymore if you leave this enabled.
Starting as soon as July 14th, we’re adding a new messages setting that should help reduce the number of spam messages in DMs. With the new setting enabled, messages from users who you follow will arrive in your primary inbox, and messages from verified users who you don’t follow
MrBeast has the ability to upload custom thumbnails for YouTube Shorts without selecting an existing frame.
This image, or the golden cup, isn't in any part of the video!
I wonder if in a near future, thumbnail designers like me will also work for the vertical format. Exciting!
Hey, did you notice the YouTube Thumbnail meta shifted this year? 🧵
— 3 elements.
— Bold text.
— Non-distracting background.
It's the return of minimalist thumbnails in the gaming side of YouTube, to stand out against the noisy crowd of reaction faces and oversaturated images!
→ I register over 5000€ of thumbnail design revenue in one month for the first time 🎉🥳
→ Over 1100€ instantly go to taxes. 😐
(Charge more for your thumbnails, this could be you.)
❌ The best thumbnail in the world won't make a mediocre video go viral.
✅ The best video ideas on YouTube will go viral regardless of how fancy the thumbnail is.
A designer's job is to make the viewer pay attention to the video — a creator's job is to convince them to click.
Uploading on YouTube and getting no views is always disappointing.
Post a thumbnail you were really happy with that FLOPPED - and I'll tell you why it didn't perform well (and how to fix it)!
@HuntShowdown
SO THE SCRAPBEAK'S THE LOUDEST BOSS IN THE GAME WHICH MAKES IT REALLY DIFFICULT TO HEAR OTHER HUNTERS SO WE HAVE TO BE VIGILANT AND LOOK AT OUR MAP REGULARLY FOR ANGRY WHISPERS AND A RED FLASH WHICH MEANS AN ENEMY IS NEARBY AND THEN
@JunyIsHere
It's pretty crazy to see "that kid from Hyun's Dojo" pop up on my timeline as "that incredible animator who worked on a very popular anime".
You've come really far Juny. I might not have stuck around in the community long enough to have known you well but I'm still proud of you.
If you're looking for some crisp assets to add to your thumbnails, try the Shopping tab in Google.
When trying to sell an item, companies like to take really high quality pictures, in all kinds of angles.
This big French YouTuber (
@MonsieurDream
) recently updated the thumbnail of his video skit from 10 years ago.
Guess who's showing up in Homepage recommendations today?
A lot of designers do a ton of editing on faces, as promoted by MrBeast's cartoony thumbnails.
⚠️ That doesn't mean it's always necessary! ⚠️
I've been doing very minimal face editing for all my clients for years. Not everyone needs to look like plastic :)
Zero Dodge/Burn ⤵️
YouTube thumbnails don't have to be sensational.
Authenticity is very valuable on the platform! When possible, focus on packaging your videos in a way that grounds them in reality, rather than fantasy.
Graphic designers will not be "replaced" by AI like DALL-E/Midjourney.
They'll harness its power. Ride that sucka into the sunset. 🌄
The hour of unlimited custom assets is upon us.
Last month, I designed this batch of thumbnails for Home Renovision DIY.
Some of these never saw the light of day, so I'm posting them here instead — Which one is your favorite? 🔨👷♂️
I redesigned this thumbnail for A Life Engineered !
How To Overcome Crippling Impostor Syndrome
I wanted to try something unique with a mirror - representing the inner struggle people go through when facing impostor syndrome.
Thoughts?
Thumbnail designers, rejoice, YouTube is testing the removal of the video duration that was blocking the bottom right corner of your canvas!
Regular YouTube users, despair, YouTube is testing the removal of the video duration for no apparent reason!
To clarify — this is a large scale design project carried by Discord's entire inhouse design team and I am just sharing the news to gather some thoughts and give my own.
I DID NOT CREATE DISCORD'S REBRAND I'M A 21 YEAR OLD FRENCH DUDE IN PYJAMAS
I published a Behance project for the first time in... forever! It features most of my recent thumbnail designs and will act as a portfolio for the remainder of the year.
Twitter hates links so I'm putting it below.