Transcripts

1. Creating an Amazing Thumbnail Introduction: welcome everyone to my class and creating a perfect custom thumbnail for YouTube. And just as a side note, the skills in this class will be useful and other graphic design applications. My name is Taylor Clark, and let's look at a basic outline of what the class will cover. You'll learn how to add a custom thumbnail to your videos, basic graphic design principles and how they apply to creating a thumb. Now, how and where to find perfect images for your thumb now. And how do you use camera dot com to bring it all together into an amazing thumb? Now that will attract years and represent your content in the next lesson, I'll be covering your class project and how to access a few Resource is that can help you get started. 2. Class Project Explanation: in this lesson, I'm going to cover it. The class project. You will create your own thumb now about creating a thumb. Now you can use whatever colors, images, fonts and text you want. The goal is to take the design principles for the next lesson and combine them with the great free resource is to create a rock and thumbnail. To attract viewers to your video, you should share your design process multiple iterations of your thumbnail If you want to and you're finished thumbnail with the class. You should also write down and save these helpful sites, which you can use to complete your project. There will be covered in more detail in later lessons. Next, I will explain some of the fundamental design principles needed to create a great thumbnail . Also cover the things you need to consider during your design process in order to produce a high quality thumbnail design. 3. Design Process: In this lesson, I will cover the fundamental design principle needed to create an eye catching thumbnail and go over some considerations to help you achieve your desired results. Thumbnail creation is all about balance. Too much is overwhelming and too little will go unnoticed. If you look at these images, you can see that the one on the left is nothing but that an image. It has no description of what the video is about and very limited color variety. The image on the right has a great balance of bright and dark colors as well as text versus image. It tells you exactly what the video is going to be about and even has a brand logo along the bottom. To create a great thumbnail, you have to find the balance between color, images and text. The best way to do this is think about how you will perceive the graphic as an outside observer. Was there too much color? Is your text to small and then make adjustments. If you can't remove yourself from your work, think in ratios. You should have equally powerful images, colors and text that work together too great 100% complete graphic. Another quick tip is to remove anything unnecessary. Clutter is not appealing to most viewers. The whole process can be broken down into four easy steps. Number one. Consider your audience. Children like different things than adults. That's just common knowledge. And you have to adjust your style and your choices based on who will be watching your video to decide on your main colors, fonts and general way out. Some graphics have less color. Some graphics have huge funds. Not every graphic is going to be the same. And at the end of the day is completely up to you. How you find your 100% balance. It can either be through large fonts and little color small phones. Lots of color. Your layout can be mostly taken up. Oven image was very little text or the other way around. That's up to you. As long as you find a good balance, your image will be successful. Step three. Find and use eye catching images These days, stock photos are all the rage, and you pretty much have to use them in order to find the perfect image for a lot of your graphics. However, there are other options for images for your thumbnails that don't come from stock photo websites and are guaranteed to be original to you and number for you to bring it all together with some sort of graphic design software being Photoshopped illustrator or some other free tool like Canada, which will be using in one of the later lessons. And then you have to evaluate your work. You have to look at it and decide if it's exactly where you want it to be and make little changes if it's not, and keep in mind that you may need to take a step back or completely start over, and that is completely okay, it's all just a part of the process. Next, I'm going to cover how and where to find photos for your thumbnails. 4. Finding and Using Photos: this lesson is all about photos, where does source them from and how to manipulate them before adding them to your thumbnail . I just want to add a disclaimer. Every thumb now does not need an image, though it can be a huge help and clarifying your content and creating a connection with potential viewers. The three main sources of photos for your thumbnails will be stock photos, which you confined from sites like stocks snapped out i o thes sites have a huge listing of extremely minimal multipurpose images that basically everyone has access to. If you're going to use a stock photo, consider editing it to have a tent or drastically cropping the image so you don't see your exact photos somewhere else. The second source is personal photos or photos you took yourself. You should take and use your own photos if possible, but I know that isn't always optimal. The best option for any video, including actual footage of you or some other relatable character, is to take a screenshot from within the video and make a transparent image or dot PNG out of it. These images air great, layered over other elements of your design You can use photo shop for complex images, or you can try this free background burner tool at bernard of bonanza dot com. It's very simple to use, and the site offers a detailed tutorial, so I won't waste your time. Explain the tool here. Just try it for yourself. Next. I'm going to show a demonstration of how I would use can be dot com to approach the class project and briefly cover how you can add a custom thumbnail to your YouTube videos. 5. Canva Demonstration: this lesson is going to be all about using Canada dot com to create your own YouTube. Some nail. The first step is going to be to scroll down until you find the social media and email header section. You'll see the you tube thumbnail as one of the options. If you click on, the option will open in a brand new window in this one, though you'll see this blank canvas over here. This is your thumbnail on the left. Over here, you see all of these different pre made templates of the site has. Some are free and some you pay a very little amount for. However, I wouldn't recommend necessarily using any of the templates to get started. It's better to start on your own and learn as you go, so the topic of our project is to create a thumbnail about creating a thumbnail. The best places start is a stock image or a solid background color to work with. I have a lot of images saved on my cama profile that I've used in other applications in the past, so there's going to choose one of those and get started. You see if I just click on the image that it doesn't fully fill the background, and you don't want to necessarily stretch the edges because the aspect ratios can get messed up and your image can become very blurry. The best option is to go to elements choose grids, but you can see a lot of options for choosing different layouts of images. If you choose the solid one by itself. When you go in and click on your picture, it will fill the background. Once I filled the background with this image of the next steps and I'm going to choose is to tent over it because I don't want someone else toe have the exact same images. Me to do this, I'm gonna goto elements, go to shapes and choose the shape that I want to use to cover my image for this purpose. I'm going to choose this star, going to stretch the size of the stars that it fills the screen a bit more. Then I'm going to come down here very close to bottom of the screen. Sometimes you'll have to scroll to find it. Click the down arrow. I'm going to move my stars that it's easier to see this little down arrow here, You're gonna click this down arrow, Gonna go to transparency and drag it to the place that you want. I'm also going to change this color to something bright and eye catching so that my viewers will see it before clicking on the video. After choosing with the shape and the color and intending it so that you can still see the image behind it. I'm going to go choose my fault. Canada dot com has some really great pre made fought layouts, as well as the ability to choose just at a heading or subheading and then choosing your font and size and color on your own to make the super simple. I'm going to choose one of the pre made fonts and just edit it to my liking, going to take the title, creating a creating a some now into there, and then I'm also going to go and edit the colors that I'm going to go back in and change the color of my thoughts. Once I changed colors of my fonts to match, I'm basically done. And then from here, all you do is click the download button at the very top of the screen, and you save the image as an image for the Web, and it will save it as a J. Paige to your to your photos on your computer. You can also share their images on Facebook, Twitter or by email with your friends. Once you've completed your image, you can take it to you, too on you soup. You can go to your channels that he is, and you can click edit next video that you want to add the thumbnail to. If your channel, unlike mine, is fully verified next to these some new options, you will also see an option to add your own custom thumbnail. From here, you can just upload your image and and then save changes, and it will appear as your thumbnail for your video. It really is that simple. So to recap, you go to Canada dot com. You click on the YouTube thumbnail section. It will open in a new tab. You go through, follow your own personal design process, decide on your own images, colors, shapes, everything that Canada has to offer, and then you can share and download your image as you please. Once your images downloaded. You can take it over to YouTube. Click edit Next. The video You wish to add your thumbnail to next thing, he's said as thumbnail options. You also see an option to add your custom thumbnails. You upload your image, change your image to whichever one you want and save changes. And from that point on, your video will have an amazing custom thumbnail That's super easy to make. Takes almost no time at all and will definitely increase your viewer numbers. That concludes my class on creating custom thumbnails for your YouTube channel and really, for any videos that you post on the Web. I hope you enjoyed the cloths and have a super fun time completing the class project.