How To Make perfect Thumbnails For YouTube videos Or Create Thumbnails on Canva - Humseka

How To Make perfect Thumbnails For YouTube videos Or Create Thumbnails on Canva - Humseka

Hey Guys welcome to Humseka. Hope you're doing well. In this article, you're going to learn How to make YouTube thumbnails, or at least how I've been making them for the past three years.

The Importance Of Thumbnails

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of designing and creating our thumbnails, I wanna explain the importance of thumbnails. The reason why you wanna focus and put a lot of thought into designing your thumbnails is because if people aren't clicking that thumbnail, the first thing that they see on the homepage or wherever it may be, or the subscription feed, then your videos aren't going to be viewed. Take, for example, Netflix. Whenever you're browsing for a new TV show, movie, or title to watch, it's that thumbnail that you first see. So if it doesn't capture your attention, then you're not going to be inclined to watch it.

And in fact, I think what they do is they split test between thumbnail A versus thumbnail B. And sometimes I look at a title and I see that I've already watched that TV show or movie but that thumbnail has changed. That's because they are split testing and they know how crucial it is for people to click on that title. They want people to stay on the Netflix app and their programme so that they can keep watching and stay subscribed. With that said, thumbnails is just one aspect of YouTube. You can get as many people to click on your thumbnails, but if you can't get people to watch, then your video will just be a flop and not get recommended by YouTube.

Psychology Thumbnails

But it's the first step that you should take so that people can arrive to your video. All right, the next thing that I wanna explain to you and one that is, in my opinion, overlooked is thumbnail psychology. So the best way to illustrate this is imagine this as a thumbnail, and this is how we tend to read. We read from left to right and in this zigzag kind of format or pattern more so. So we read from here, then to there. So with that in mind, that's what we need to take into consideration when designing and creating our thumbnails. So whatever you wanna spotlight, you wanna make sure that you have that featured somewhere around here.

The 3-4 Rule.

You only have about three seconds to capture someone's attention before they swipe or scroll somewhere else or click another video. All right, now that you understand thumbnail psychology, the next thing I wanna bring your attention to is a thing called the 3-4 rule. This is something that I made up myself based on experience and experimentation. An example would be this. This is an example thumbnail. We've got no more than three to four words, no more than three to four elements, and what I mean by elements is this is one element, this is a second element. So these three icons is considered one element. And then this is the third element. You can use this 3-4 rule as a basis, as a guideline, so that you're not exceeding or you can follow some sort of structure and layout or format. Now, I don't know about other spaces and industries on YouTube, but in my space as an educator, this works pretty well.

Avoid This Big Thumbnail Mistake

So when in doubt, remember the 3-4 rule. One thing I wanna point out before we start creating our thumbnails is a common mistake and that is using too many words on your thumbnail. Again, you're only given about three seconds to capture someone's attention and they are not going to read this many words. So you gotta capture their attention. Use less words. Sometimes simple is best. Sometimes ugly is better. So avoid this mistake, keep things simple, because if you wanna explain more, you can always use the title and description of your video.

How To Create Thumbnails Steps by Step For Free

Get Canva

Let's go ahead and create a thumbnail. The main tool that you'll be using to design your thumbnails is Canva. I tend to switch between Photoshop and Canva depending on the type of thumbnail I am creating. If I want something more advanced and I wanna manipulate some photos and images, then I go and use Photoshop. Otherwise, if it's something basic and straight to the point, I use Canva. So the first step is to make sure you have a Canva account. If you don't have an account, look down below in the description for a link to that and there's a 30-day trial of Canva Pro.

YouTube Thumbnails Size

To get started, click on Create a design and click on Custom size. You wanna set a width and height of 1280 by 720. It's what's recommended by YouTube However, I like to upsize that and go the next size up, which is a full HD size 1920 by 1080 just because I like to keep things of high quality. You can go with the 1280 if you want, but I'm going to simply go with the 1920. Next up, click on Create a new design.

The Background Of Your Thumbnails

The first thing you can do is change the background colour. You can go with a flat colour by clicking the background, then to the colour palette, and selecting a colour from one of the default colours or selecting a custom colour. So depending on your brand, that's what's going to determine what kind of background you use. Otherwise you can go for something a bit more generic. Doesn't have to go in line with your brand, but if you wanna stay consistent with your brand, then go with those colours. But for the sake of this example, I'm just going to select this colour right here.

Text And Front Styles Of Your Thumbnails

Next, let's go ahead and add our text. Click on Text, and we can very well go with one of these right here, but what I recommend, there's actually a couple of font choices that I recommend on Canva that you can use that's great for YouTube thumbnails. So go to Text and we can start by clicking Add a heading, or you can press the T button on your keyboard, that should insert some text, and add your text. Again, refer back to the 3-4 rule. You don't wanna exceed like four words, try not to. I'm going to add 10 useful websites, all right? So websites will be on another line like so. So if you can kind of keep it in a square like so, then that's great.

Add a Headshot on Thumbnails

Now, the next thing, don't worry about the colours yet. We're gonna change that right now. So we'll select it, or you can just select that text box. Go to Text Colour. Let's choose a contrasting colour. So if you've got a darker background. then I recommend going for a lighter text colour, right? So we've got this white right here. And now let's change the font style. The one I recommend is either League Spartan or you've got Bebas Neue, okay? Not sure how to pronounce that properly, but let's go with that. So we go League Spartan, this is how it looks like. Nice and bold, nice and attention-grabbing, I would say.

Add icons and element on Thumbnails

Depending on the type of video, sorry, the text that I add, that will determine the actual font style that I use, end up using. So we've got League Spartan here. That works pretty well, but also depends on the other elements that you'll be adding to your thumbnail. The Bebas is more narrow. So you can click that and you're given more space, as you can see, and this way you can expand it. And from here, you can see that there's quite a bit of space in between the lines. So what I will do is select the text, or I'll click it once, and then you'll see the Spacing option.

And then where it says Line spacing, you wanna reduce that so that it's not too close, not too far apart as well. Keep it together. You can alternatively also put some letter spacing or widen it, but I like to keep it kind of together. So zero was pretty good. So I'll leave that as is. Now, the next part you can do is to add a photo. So you can add a photo of yourself, or if you do not wanna add yourself to the thumbnail, to your thumbnail, then you don't have to. You can replace it with like, let's say, a logo or an icon, whatever it is that you're trying to explain on your thumbnail. But let's say you want to add your photo, you wanna add yourself to it. I would go and go to Uploads, upload a photo of yourself, and what I'm going to do is add a page. And from here, I'm going to add a photo of mine. So this is, you know, I could cover a separate topic just on taking photos of yourself, right? For your thumbnails. So what I usually do is take a set of photos whenever I have, whenever I wanna create a new thumbnail. Not all the time, but if I ever want to have some fresh thumbnails to use, then I go and take some photos, something like this, right? Folding arms, or you can do the point, which is very common as well. So, you know, you're pointing at a certain direction, and making sure that you're actually pointing at the right direction, right?

So what's great about Canva and having a Canva Pro account is that you can remove the background. So no matter how distracting your background is, as you can see with this particular photo, we've got many things behind me, but if you go and click on Edit image, click BG Remover, or Background Remover, once, in just a few seconds, it has removed the background and now this is ready for me to use. So what I would do with this is to firstly crop it so that I'm not left with any of the excess. And from here, I can simply copy and paste it right here where it should go. And I'll expand it so that showing most of myself. I can show my arms as well. Sometimes I just show most of my face depending on the type of thumbnail. And from here, we can add some logos. As you saw from my example right here, had some icons.

So what I'm gonna do is just copy those, and I'm explaining 10 useful websites, so you could very well put 10 icons and not have the text, which is sometimes what I do. But otherwise you can put some of them just to tease them in a way, and this is what it looks like, all right? Now, you can go fancy and add like a gradient background by going to Background and then there's gradients right here to select from. So go to Gradients and selecting from any of these gradients. And that's a very basic thumbnail that I created in just a few minutes. Now, if I wanna spice things up, of course, I would add a bit more effects, maybe a spotlight maybe some flares going on in the background. But simple is best because, again, you don't want many of those distractions whenever someone scrolls on YouTube on their phone or on desktop. You wanna get straight to the point. Make sure it's benefit-driven. So 10 useful websites. The title and the thumbnail should kind of tell a story in a way and match up. And that's another thing I wanna point out.

Save your Thumbnails

So with that, let's say you are done with your thumbnail. I would go and click on Share and then click on Download, and from here, we click on PNG. That's fine. Otherwise we go and make sure we select the right pages. So this is the one I want. Click on Done. Click on Download.

Preview and tweak your Thumbnails

The next tool that I recommend you use before you actually use your thumbnail is a site called thumbsup.tv. What you do is you drag your thumbnail that you designed over and then what you do is you enter the title of your YouTube video to see what it looks like, you know, combined. I've gone ahead and typed 10 Useful Productivity Websites To Help You Get More Done to see what it looks like, and here's what it looks like on your web browser, home large and we've got home small. Here's what it looks like on the sidebar, on the channel page, history page. So it's a really useful website to see and preview what it looks like. So you might look at it and say, "Uh, this thumbnail's text could be a little bigger." So you go back to Canva, expand that text so that it fills more of the space, which is what I would do. Another thing with ThumbsUp is the title, right? You see where it cuts off. It says 10 Useful Productivity Websites To Help You and it just cuts off. So if you can get it down and reduce the amount of words in your title so that it fits in kind of all devices, that's ideal.

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