YouTube thumbnail design

Thumbnails are the cover images for videos: the picture people see in search results, on a channel page or in a feed before they decide to watch. This category holds covers for YouTube videos and for vertical posts, made for fitness, real estate, gaming, finance, travel and self-improvement channels.

We design each cover to be read at the size of a phone screen. That means a tight crop on the subject, a short headline in type big enough to survive being shrunk, and strong contrast. The cover also has to match its video, because a thumbnail that promises something the video does not deliver loses the viewer anyway.