---
title: 'YouTube Thumbnail Workshop: 5-Step System to Get More Views'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=TfeJGaCj3ng'
video_id: 'TfeJGaCj3ng'
date: 2026-07-14
duration_sec: 0
---

# YouTube Thumbnail Workshop: 5-Step System to Get More Views

> Source: [YouTube Thumbnail Workshop: 5-Step System to Get More Views](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TfeJGaCj3ng)

## Summary

Ed from Film Booth hosts a live workshop demonstrating a five-step system to improve YouTube thumbnails and titles for higher click-through rates. He and co-host James critique real viewer submissions, redesign them using research and feedback, and explain the process from idea to final polished thumbnail.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the five-step system** [00:00] — Ed introduces the workshop and the five-step system: idea, inspiration, drafts, feedback, and perfect/launch. The goal is to get more views by improving thumbnails and titles.
- **Contestant 1: Running channel thumbnail critique** [01:30] — First thumbnail is for 'Top 5 Hidden Rules to Balance Strength and Endurance'. James notes it's basic, with a small subject and uninteresting color. Ed suggests reframing the title to show results, e.g., 'Top 5 Rules to Unleash Your Inner Athlete'.
- **Inspiration: Finding patterns in top thumbnails** [04:00] — Ed shows high-performing fitness thumbnails (Jeff Nippard, Athlean X) and identifies patterns: negative framing ('stop doing this'), scientific elements (dashed lines, numbers), simplicity, and before/after shots. He emphasizes researching what works in your niche.
- **Drafts: Creating thumbnail variations** [08:30] — Ed and James present three draft thumbnails for the running video. They use negative titles like 'Breaking These Rules Will Wreck Your Endurance', add scientific blobs, and keep the background contextual (track). They prefer a red-themed draft with a gradient for a premium feel.
- **Social hacking concept** [13:00] — Ed introduces social hacking: using famous people (Usain Bolt) or recognizable brands in thumbnails to attract clicks. He shows drafts with a famous runner and scientific claims like '5 Rules Scientifically Proven to Make You Faster'.
- **Feedback round and winner selection** [17:00] — Viewers vote on nine thumbnails. Winners are #2 and #8 (red-themed). Ed advises asking 'which would you click?' not 'which do you like?' and to consider the target audience. He then perfects the chosen thumbnail before launch.
- **Contestant 2: Scam story thumbnail critique** [22:00] — Rachel's video 'I Fell for a Scam' has a busy thumbnail with a low-quality still, purple skin tone, and unclear focus. Ed suggests using a better photo, adjusting color temperature, and simplifying the design.
- **Inspiration for scam thumbnails** [27:00] — Ed shows scam video thumbnails with millions of views. Patterns include a person on one side, clear text (email/tweet), social hacking (MrBeast logo), and simplicity. He creates drafts with titles like 'I Got Scammed by a Famous YouTuber'.
- **Drafts and feedback for scam thumbnail** [32:00] — Drafts include a clean white version (newspaper style), a tweet screenshot, and a chaotic screen-grab effect with motion blur. Viewers favor #2 (red) and #8 (devil emoji). Ed notes emojis can work if used correctly.
- **Contestant 3: Music album ranking thumbnail** [38:00] — Justin's thumbnail for 'I Ranked Every Volbeat Album' is busy with strokes, multiple colors, and a muted background. James dislikes the stroke and clutter. Ed suggests a simpler S-A-B-C ranking format and social hacking with a famous band member.
- **Drafts for album ranking** [44:00] — James creates clean drafts with a grid of album covers (S to C), a provocative 'This Sucks' version, and a dark tunnel effect. Viewers split between #2 and #5. Ed advises going with gut and adding contrast (e.g., red shirt).
- **Q&A: Thumbnail testing and dark mode** [50:00] — Ed answers: for small channels, wait weeks to see thumbnail changes; use A/B testing cautiously (check traffic source). On dark mode, 60% of viewers use it; bright thumbnails may pop but can blend into light mode. Test both.

### Conclusion

The five-step system—idea, inspiration, drafts, feedback, perfect/launch—helps creators design thumbnails that are statistically more likely to get clicks. By researching patterns, testing multiple concepts, and gathering targeted feedback, you can significantly improve your video's performance.

## Transcript

hello everyone and thank you for coming to this hopefully first of many live film Booth workshops I'm Ed I'll be your host today this is James on the right hand side of me James works at film Booth he helps with editing thumbnails he's got a lot of experience in graphic design he can hear my phone playing in the background shut my phone off there we go smooth my lives are always smooth yeah so hopefully the first of many film move live streams and what we're going to do today is I'm going to show you a system that's going to get you more views it's a five step system and it's all based around getting more clicks so how this worked was like this I asked members of my mailing list to send in their thumbnails and we're going to take those thumbnails and we're going to fix potential problems with them and then show you how to fix them and then hopefully design thumbnails that are going to get better results a much higher quality so this is my cryptic five-step system it would only make sense to start at step one before we move on to step two so let's break this down now and jump straight in to contestant number one so the software I'm using today is called Miller note okay before you guys ask I remind you again later on because I'm sure people will but this is contestant number one and as you can see on screen we have our five step system so the first step of getting more views is your idea so let's reveal our first candidate here we are so this is for a video called top five hidden rules to balance strengths and endurance and the first part of this system is coming up with an idea now the idea is already there so what myself and James are going to do is we're going to throw some objections at this idea as to why it might not work you can see my notes are already there James give me give me some reasons why you think people wouldn't click on this thumbnail uh from a design perspective I think it's a bit it's a bit basic looking um you're quite small in the throat in the frame and it's not a very interesting color to make me want to click there's no gradient there's no interest so that would make me skip personally yeah so yeah it's sometimes clean simple thumbnails are good but for some reason this doesn't quite feel like the cleanness is working right yeah it looks a bit more like a I don't know one of those bad adverts you might see in the corner of YouTube or something because like nah I'm not gonna buy that well don't mince your word James I don't mean like have fun though I mean bad adverts so we don't want any tears today all right so yeah from a design point of view I like where you've gone you've gone for clean uh but I think the blue isn't doing any favors you've also gone for this cryptic hidden rules thing uh which can work sometimes what we're going to do is when we move on to step two we're going to show you how to Workshop this and hopefully fix it um another one I just want to throw at you is this top five hidden rules to balance strength and endurance so this is a running Channel okay and what does balancing strength and endurance mean so I'm not one of your viewers I'm not one of the avatars it doesn't really excite me but one thing I would ask you is there a different way you could position this title so that maybe it would excite other people and that might be by showing the result so you could do that with some new title options which I kind of like drafted here so like top five rules to Unleash Your Inner athlete it doesn't go so specific but it leads with the result five rules that transform strength and balance the smartest way to balance strength and endurance do this to balance strength endurance the Smart Way balance strength and endurance the smart day and we'll go into a minute why I've said the smart way so this is the first part of the system it's your idea and really when you come up with an idea you have to say okay how do I my idea is I want to talk about strength and balance how on Earth do I get people to click on that and that's where we move into the second part of the system this bit is so important I cannot express this enough so this is the second part let me zoom in because Miller note loves to zoom out every time here in the second part is inspiration so when you're making a thumbnail or title you have to go and find inspiration you have to go and look what worked elsewhere so that you can take elements of other people's thumbnails so what I did is I went and did some research within your niche and these are some of the channels I came across so we have Jeff nippard up here he's like a fitness Legend with athlean x uh this is from another kind of running Channel whose name I forget and then I also went a bit wider I came down here I've taken some inspiration from my channel from hillias and another running Channel and this will make a lot more sense in a minute but James and anyone in the comments watching right now I just want to play a quick game on these thumbnails here these are all really high performing thumbnails some of them have 10 million views Plus what pattern do you notice what sticks out to you from these images is there anything that you can see going on in all of them links them I can't see something in all of them but I can see certain ones that have like a scientific element you've got these dashed lines you've got these numbered points and that instantly makes it have kind of some strength to back up this argument and what it is even though it's just dotted lines um and then some have got a before and after shot as well which definitely show results yeah yeah perfect so what we've got going on here is we have um what I noticed is a pattern anyway was negative got a lot more views so stop doing this not good before and after you know um not before and after sorry not good here and stop doing this and actually as a pattern across all these channels if we go and look at athlean X let's have a quick look in here what we're going to see is if we take his videos to most popular fix this fix this like problem but bad idea what else have we got going on down here let's just hide this stop doing this don't do this so a lot of his kind of like top performing videos are very much negative so there's one thing that we want to um have a think about let me just have a quick check or something on the string someone just wrote a comment saying should this is this unlisted and it shouldn't be so if it is it's gonna quickly fix that let's make it public okay who knew that when you go live it doesn't automatically publish a video so now we're going live to everyone else well done everyone who turned up from the email and the community board all right so we're gonna go back to our board like I can't express how important this is and we're looking for patterns so the next pattern we've got this scientific look but also they're very clean right so there's not actually a huge amount going on for athleans here it's just here Mr photo some text same here not much going on very simple so when you're looking at this you need to be thinking right they're simple I need to make my thumbnail simple as a result which you did but this red thumbnail here is very simple but it's also got quite a lot going on which kind of makes it feel complete and then there's this subtle texture in the background and shadows that kind of give it that more Pro effect that the blue one was missing so the patterns we spotted we want to then bring them to your thumbnail so one of the things you want to be thinking about for your viewers is always once you're looking for patterns and you're making the videos what do the viewers care about in this video so in this example and again I don't know your avatars that well because you're a running Channel I'm thinking they want to run faster they want to run for longer uh you you put stronger Endurance on there I don't know if that's like top to me it's like they probably just want to run faster right and that's why I like this video here because it was titled about running faster and this one here so that's what we're going to lean towards too now I read some of the title options uh that I thought you could play around with too and this is why you do thumbnail and title first because you need to come up with a thumbnail title not a video coming this one on title and then work out to get a video into it and that's why things like five rules Pro runners use to set Record Times might have been a better video to make because then you could go on to talk about how strength and balance and endurance or balancing strength and endurance actually helps them to achieve that so your research to try and find a way to present your idea and then you come up with different thumbnails and titles which brings us on to the next step of the system this is drafts so what we've done is we've actually gone away taken these patterns that we noticed and created some draft thumbnails for you now these are draft thumbnails so you don't want to go away and make the best looking thumbnail you possibly can you just want to throw together a concept quick you can draw it we usually just Chuck it into Photoshop do a quick cut out and throw it in some of these might not look that draft mainly because James has been mucking around with Photoshop for so long his drafts are like everyone else's not the best one that was um but this is really important because what we can now look at is a bird's eye view of how this video could have looked so we've got the this one here the original top five hidden rules to balance Jeff and endurance let's have a look at this Top Line and what we did so when I did the research on this channel one of the things I did was I typed in on all of the biggest Fitness channels I could find rules into their search bar so let me show you if we go to Jeff nippod this is little if you want when you're doing research and you've got a rough title idea let's just type in rules and see what Jeff has done about rules and we can't find anything at all so you might be wanting to ask yourself if you've done this after a few craters should I be talking about rules in the first place but we decided to keep your draft thumbnails about rules so breaking these rules will wreck your endurance I went for a negative in the title because we know that the biggest craters in the fitness Niche we're getting more views of negatives and then what we did was borrow from some of their designs these sort of like scientific blobs and dots I know we made three different options so it's the same cut out with a different background James any of these top ones work best for you I would say number two it's got a nice uh nice bit of color the red stands out really well and number three is missing the Athletics tracks so you wouldn't know it's running as opposed to just general sport training like football or something so having that element definitely has helped um so yeah it looks it looks nice well done I like what you said there about this this one here on the right okay so it is about running but it could be about football it could be about chasing someone down the street you know a Mugger uh it could be about running in strength and endurance so we've got the one on the left gives a bit of context as what's this about creates a bit of intrigue by highlighting certain areas of the body and then it puts a negative in the way and then this one here I think this is my favorite too because like you said it still keeps that background and gives it some context all right so is there anything you just don't like about these that you don't think works I don't think the the the wording you've got in the thumbnail is particularly exciting not good I think that could be something stronger uh it's quite ironic that's it it's not good it's not that good I'm looking for like something uh the third one at least has stopping it which is definitely like it gets your attention more um to like stop doing this and then to improve so not good isn't really showing much to me it's not getting stronger it's not good it's weak okay so if we were going to pick a winner to put into a final uh are we going for the middle one with different text I would yeah okay bottom next look at the next row so we've kept the same Title Here um and what we've done is we've I've taken your thumbnail and just tweaked it slightly so any of those pop out to you more than another James I probably like the red one best um just because the white one hasn't got the the vignette around it at all so it's lacking that um more premium look to it for me so I like I always like having a subtle gradient even if you can't barely see it so just subscribe so people don't know what a gradient is let's just blow this up so a gradient is where you stick us a bit darker here and then it gets a bit lighter you'll see a lot of YouTubers use it on Plain backgrounds just kind of gives it more of a premium feel what's in the center as well if you have it on each corner so it definitely it helps draw the eye to where you want it to as well so there are drafts So the plan would be to pick them and then make the board look more realistic and so on but this is you know the basics we're looking at which one would you pick if you had to put one into our final to battle against the other thumbnails I think I would go myself I would go with the red but there's some things I don't necessarily like about it it's a draft just as a concept it's okay as well as a draft uh in a split second James which one would you click on I'll go for the red myself okay same actually same great minds all right so I want to introduce you guys to the next concept oh but on that on that one though um stop running it didn't look like running to me when I read that word it looked like something else so I was a bit um yeah I would never have known that's about sport okay very good point I'm very glad that you brought this up because I completely forgot to mention this so let's talk about this thumbnail it's a powerful concept if you get it right which we haven't here I'm gonna go back to our inspiration wall so this thumbnail here which I made a long time ago says videos don't go channels it challenged the status quo the idea was stolen from veritasium he held up a thumbnail that said you are not a visual learner and the title was the number one myth in education it challenged what everyone thinks about themselves so that can be an amazing way to get a click so the whole idea behind this board for me at that time was like how do we challenge the status quo and I don't know enough about running so I just wrote stop running ideally you know a little bit more about that and you think okay what is it everyone always does that they shouldn't and gets wrong put it there tell them to stop it it creates Intrigue it gets a click uh but yeah my basic stop running was uh probably a little bit too lame it could even be like the clothes he's wearing as well like if he was wearing a running top it would help just a black T-shirt doesn't doesn't say anything at all or even like sweatband on the head or the wrist just some some little cues to the sport he's talking about would have helped I think hey what about some running shoes tied around his neck I was gonna say that but then of course you were James I was I was my worry would be that are they football boots because I don't know if you can tell from a distance the difference very good point very good point you could put some holes in them like they'd been have some smoke coming out the bottom like they've just been run around all right and then I want to introduce you to another powerful concept so I'm going to go back to this inspiration stage because I forgot to mention this so when I was looking at your ideas I decided in the drafts phage to come up with three different concepts the first was just to change your title and a little bit and experiment with your own concept because I don't think it was the worst concept just needed a bit of tweaking uh the second was just a brand new title and the third is what's known as social hacking now these this video here I don't know who this chap is uh but I'm sure someone does because this video got a lot of views so what we want to be thinking is and again same here Usain Bolt right millions and millions of people know him we want a social hack we want to use celebrities famous people people that are viewers look up to and we'll click on as fast as canacle and power people in our thumbnails unfortunately most of us are not power people so believe it or not if I appear in my thumbnail uh I always get this views and over the long term it can change but usually on release they don't do as well as if I'm not in them and we just show the result so what I did for this concept was I don't know much about running but I went in and I went to try and find um a famous runner this I typed in famous endurance Runner um but you know I I don't know who this guy is hopefully he has some meaning it doesn't matter who is it could be Usain Bolt and then and we took the five rules and tried to point it out to make it look like each world was associated with the body part and then we relent on this whole idea of scientific which we'd noticed was a trend on Jeff nippard's Channel I think athlean maybe there were some other ones we noticed that science was a big part to your Niche so I changed the talk to five rules uh that's scientifically proven to make you faster uh I tried another one that said five rules to make you a faster runner and yeah I decided to actually drop the word Runner out of the title because I thought you know what the image gives it enough context but you could put it in James made these drafts I think they're very slick they're very clean the gradient helps with the problem James spoke about James which one of these three is winning for you I think either the blue or the gray white the white one probably I think the White's clean enough and nice enough to make me want to click it's got nice contrast with the red and the slight gray color um and the vignette's not overpowering if I hadn't arrested you and said James get this done we've got a live later what would you have done to improve the design anything uh a better cut out obviously I was working with a low-res image so um potentially if you've got branding colors I might have colored her shirt to match your brand or something like that um subtle tweaks like that um maybe let's talk about that so to see these background colors I actually changed them by picking the exact same blue and red from his clothing so one of the things that people do with thumbnails is they put far too much color in it sometimes it can work but this red here is actually the same red as his shorts just to try and stop it from getting too overwhelming keeping the same colors it kind of hides the the cool circles then but that was actually something I did I had another one which had the green color from his shirt too but I just thought three was enough yeah yeah I meant I meant the actual Channel brand whether they had a oh I see whether they have a banner color or something that was like throughout all their videos a link um that they could carry on throughout the other videos but and then maybe look at a different font that was just a I think that's just Ariel that I put in just because I knew you'd have it um but you could go for an italic font one that represents speed that sort of thing so um someone just said in the comments uh they said I'd put a track in the background uh I'm glad they mentioned that because I would as well and I think one of the cool things about looking and doing this is okay we've got these bottom ones and then we've got these top ones uh and we've got the sign we can say all right what's working from all of them could we combine them into one and I think actually maybe the combination of that background on here that could have been spot on thoughts yeah it it could be an option but I would do it very graphically or something so it's just the lines that are going around like the The Arc of the 400 meter track and then um kind of blur it to nothingness because you don't want to interfere with anything else so I'd have just a slight Arc a few lines to represent it but I don't want to I don't want to interfere with anything else really I think I think it's clean and there's a risk that you would start introducing an element that your eye will look at more than anything else if it goes wrong okay so that is the uh what section is that that's the third section drafts now we need to move on to the fourth and this is a very important part of your new view system port number four and this is feedback so we need to be very careful with feedback I'm going to teach you some tricks so when you're asking for feedback just a quick win you never ask someone if they like your thumbnail because it's not what about liking an image or thinking it looks cool it's about what works and what would get a click so you might need to give your viewers some context and say my viewers are Runners you know they they're interested in strength and this and that you know which thumbnail knowing that sticks out to you fastest if they turn around and go I like the top one looks cool that's not helpful we don't want to like we want it works so I'm going to ask you guys in the chat right now you guys are going to give us our feedback because then we are going to move on to the next section um but what would happen here is so there's a slight delay on this so guys in in the comments right now there's nine thumbnails here this will be number one this will be number nine you know one two three four five six you get the idea just write the number that you would have clicked on if you're an avatar the one that works and we're going to take that and then we'll take it to the next system so the feedback round is all about trying to get multiple opinions from different people who ideally know the game and understand your avatars and then running with that thumbnail but before you release it you go and tweak it so if you guys had picked this one we would have gone and designed it just to Look a Lot Slicker all right so the thing the the um the numbers are coming in we've got a few people have voted for two one and two no that's cheating it's got to be one uh two one one two three eight all right interesting so for me as I would I would have led with the number this one but I'm so glad I asked for feedback because what I'm seeing here is actually eight and two seem to be the clear winners so I would then go all right what I've got I'm going to roll with two the the majority of people said this one I'm gonna launch I'm gonna perfect this which is the next step of our system after we've had the feedback we then go and perfect it and we launch it and this is the system you want to use every time if you do this every time before uh sorry when I say perfect in launch I mean you need to go make the video uh but if you do this every time before you make videos I I you will get more views I promise because you'll be making thumbnails that are statistically more likely to get clicked you'll be using patterns you'd be you know getting feedback from people who are going to help you decide what to launch with and then you write your intro which means you might end up making a slightly different video to what you thought you were going to do but you were making it Based on data and that is going to get you more views so yeah I think number two one there James how you feeling about that uh yeah I think it's a fair point my my only concern with it is the clothing that Runner is wearing but that this is the concept that could work so yeah going forward okay I like your objection so we find another man who's or a woman who's wearing clearly kind of track stuff yeah yeah because this could this could be like a channel like F2 freestylers or something the football yeah yeah you're right they are on a track I mean it helps but yeah yeah but your truck is a bit hidden yeah that's true all right so this is the first person we have put through the system I think everyone who took a part in this um what we're gonna do now is just to break things up we're going to take one question from the audience and by the way if you want to learn this system Master it get amazing at Photoshop photography lighting check out the link in the description thumbnail University was born a few weeks ago this is the only place on the planet that teaches people this sort of stuff it's going to help you level up your thumbnails and your views a ton I'm very excited about it so questions flying in let me uh James and I produced it took months didn't it James it's good fun though it's it was okay here's the question we're gonna run with uh oops I pressed ban by mistake hang on add to broadcast should test be branded colors or more towards a topic and color theory great question James thoughts uh color theory I mean yeah it all depends on what's already present in the thumbnail to me you can't you can't always shoehorning your brand color if it's not going to work just a bit of a Shameless plug there because Sean joined thumbnail University and he's saying it's unbelievable um I'm totally down with what you just said I think it's very tempting to want to create a brand style and I think it is very powerful over time to have that consistent look but at the same time if it means an item is going to stick out less in your thumbnail kind of need to go for the thing that's going to help it work and then also we're struggling with a brand look aren't we we've been trying to work on one for a while and just a graph basically is what we're landing on but don't don't let your brand guide get in the way of a click unless you do have a style like Corridor or digital or something like that where it's got a framework that you can follow and it's the black and yellow uh but then that's them yeah you know can't copy that we've got a Max piping the Max has 900 000 subscribers well on the way to a million he says I always like to ask what do you think this video is about when showing thumbnails to people as well that's a good question sometimes a concept is clickable but the interpretation isn't correct is coming from Max a top YouTuber thanks to that Max all right let's go back to the start of the system and move on to the next one is there anything you'd like to say James do you want to say hello to your mum well I'm on TV is she watching you I don't think so no I think Liv might be watching me uh but hello Liv if you are she's probably not she doesn't she's well she's well over that stage of our relationship all right next up we have Rachel I flipping love this video we're about to look at uh it's about thumbnails against the same system we're going to redesign the thumbnails completely different concept this is the this is the video let me just tell you about this video okay so this is Rachel Rachel uh I'll have to try and link to this afterwards because it's fun it was a great story with a Twist that made me go uh I'm probably gonna give it away now but so Rachel got scammed by someone and it was actually a YouTuber with a lot of subscribers and they they asked her to apply for a job and she did and they were like oh um they asked for some personal data like passport stuff you know things that you need to be sensitive with and she gave it and then they came back and said I'm a scammer um I've just taken all your data uh which I was like oh man this sucks uh but then they revealed they were actually a YouTuber making a YouTube video about not handing over your data and Rachel was quite upset because she was like I was really excited about this job so she called them and they had a chat and it's really interesting video because she spoke to the person and it ended up somehow I ended up enjoying a cyber security video which if you were in the cyber security Niche you will know is tough so well not Rachel it was I really enjoyed this I watched the whole thing I forgot I was supposed to be doing thumbnails so you made me procrastinate a ton too which wasn't as helpful so now you know the history to this let's run it through the system first things first James what we got going for objections here I mean yeah when I when I first saw it I thought it was quite busy I didn't think your image was the best quality it looks like it was still from the video rather than a shot taken with a camera James why should you not take stills from a video I mean so a video works around 25 frames a second depending on settings and every slight movement you do is gonna have motion blur and that's what gives that nice that nice look we call it the Cinematic look so trying to grab a freeze frame unless you're filming in like 60 frames which is ridiculous you're not going to get a sharp image and so I I always hate it when previous clients would say oh we'll just film it in 4k and then we'll take a still it's like it doesn't work that way that was me before I met you I just 4K it would be fine [Laughter] resolution but it's still gonna have motion blur so right in either world we want to set up our cameras to take a photo yeah and every I hate to say it it does make a big difference it does make a big difference so that's the first thing it feels like a still and you know what you know you can get around that James can we just talk about the color so Rachel's skin Tone's gone a little bit purple a bit red here why might that have happened well we don't know the context of the image like if this is a cutout from the video the rest of the shot would be color matched to that as well so it wouldn't even look odd but because it's been cut out with a yellow bit of text next to it and a white background it instantly looks purple beetroot because it it's sticking out like a sore thumb compared to everything else because it's it's isolated from everything else now so I'd be interested to see what her real color was from the video but um it could be because it's from like a low-res camera it looks like it could be from a webcam but um there we are we can see the the natural sort of color there it all started when I saw this community there's a big difference uh just you know respond to a few comments no this is not pre-recorded this uh this is live hello um yeah so look I think this is the sort of color temperature we want to get back into the image right because it it feels kind of like a higher quality let me just refresh so I can get that thumbnail back so that's just another objection the reason why this is important is uh as Educators as YouTubers people are looking for every reason not to trust us not to care and it's about credibility so when you put a lower quality image it tells people but potentially this is going to be a lower quality video they might not want to click they want to hear what you have to say now sometimes it works in the exact opposite it's almost ironic but in this case I think what we wanted to do to get this video in the story out that I thought was brilliant we want to fix that uh anything else James I thought it's quite busy um in terms of I'm not sure where my eyes are supposed to look because I thought when I first saw it I thought the desperate text was part of the like the Tweet or email behind her well I couldn't make that link so I wasn't sure what to look at at first so that was a bit of a struggle on that instance yeah I agree um so yeah from the image itself if we go by what Max who came into the chat earlier said which was you know ask people what you think this video might be about without the title it's hard to tell there right it's like desperate what what does the text mean so that's phase one with the idea now one thing I would say is scam videos can do amazing on YouTube so I like the idea I really enjoyed the story I thought it thinks it has potential so we move in once the idea we move into the inspiration board oh one of the videos has vanished from my inspiration never mind so what I went and did here was I went and researched um I went and researched different scam videos that got millions of views that have done well that performed above average for the channels just to see what we could find inspiration from and James what sticks out to you are there any patterns here that you think okay this is clearly something we need to get into our own thumbnail wow I can see three of them at least are having a person to one side so you've got clear space for having the email part of text there's that there's that and then there's also just focusing on the hero element of the email so um I'll text the tweet and uh it's very clear what to look at obviously hmm um yeah so I like you know um oh I left these ones in from the previous it's just like that so Graham Stefan does this a lot he shows a tweet you know some and and they are kind of intriguing right you see this message uh I think Jack Norton did a jack did a flipping brilliant one here with you he social hacked he used the Mr Beast you probably logo uh which I think the hacker was using so it's not out on that clickbait but to me that was a very smart thumbnail he's used scam he looks shocked and he's got the Mr B's logo which is that brand again and the same look Marcus has used himself here uh Graham Stefan's actually social hacked with email Elon because he knows Edom gets the clicks so potentially there's an element of social hacking we can get in there this one's pretty cool again social hack in the he's used Mr Beast PewDiePie I think Logan Paul little instantly recognizable people so there's that element um and yeah Simplicity really and just showing the text so that's what I took from this and then what I decided was I was like right we need to make three thumbnails here and we're going to use your title are we going to come up with a new title a slightly different one um and I think that was about it so here's the drafts we came up with for this if they want to load all right so we've got this top line here so I went and took a different um I went and took a different photo from Rachel's Channel because I felt like this expression told a better story than the one up here although your expression here is nice and subtle which I think works I'm over fish face like I think everyone hates that so out of these top ones James I changed the title too I got scammed by a famous YouTuber now I put that because I thought that was more intriguing than I felt for a scam because famous YouTubers shouldn't be scamming people and by the way I just have to make this Crystal Clear Taio is not a scammer I've put him in the thumbnail and said I I you know I made him out to be one he's not he's anything but but I just want to use it for this example so which of these ones would you have picked James and why like I quite like the white one myself uh because it's got that was clean it almost looks like it's I know it's not but it almost looks like it's a newspaper article and uh the black text is definitely screaming good for me um standing out well and then secondly I'll go for the red out of those top lines this one yeah so you can you see I've adjusted Rachel's color temperature of the skin there so this one is a bit more I don't know a bit a bit redder and I think it actually helps a lot right just removing some of that warmth makes it look more natural totally Okay so next one we went by the really simple designs that were just to tweet and I changed the title here to what happens when a YouTuber scams you and then again this is where you need to make the title and thumbnail first because this introduction would have to then lead into Rachel's story in the same here I got scammed by a famous YouTuber you'd need to set that up straight away and then tell your story but you need to put the title that is the most intriguing and then work out the intro so any of those work better than others subtle hmm I guess I would want to have the uh replies in because I'll probably go for the probably the first one no second one it's got the vignette yeah so I think you know the text on here you usually when you see these type of thumbnails they're very playful uh it's very humorous or something right you know I didn't couldn't really think of anything that funny to write but you know I will pay you honest you know call me and get rich and once again just in case you've just tuned in this guy is not actually a scammer he's a legit guy just for the purpose of this thumbnail we're using him because he was part of racial story so I I for me I'm attracted to this one that's just really really basic um yeah I feel I mean I feel like the having the thumbs up and the the replies blue it makes it look genuine even if it's faked um it just it just sells it a bit more for me but yeah it's clean it could look like a bit like a an apple advert but uh maybe you could play into that and be like I won't scam you honest maybe that should have been the thing uh all right and then down the bottom here [Music] um in the draft system these are our final teas which we took from another design uh from this one you know I think what I liked about this was it was chaotic uh it stood out it was like that blur kind of makes it feel a bit more Sinister you think yeah and it has that it's like you've taken a picture of your computer monitor so it's got the it's like you've got the camera really close so it's got the depth of field and stuff and I've obviously put some motion blur on there so it looks like you're scrolling but then you've stopped but it's still catching up the pixels and stuff so it's like it feels like a real a real event happening yes and I think that again I changed the title here to I fell for a YouTube scam I think that actually the realism on like you said the screen effect you created helps um get my attention so the question is the little the little Emoji person the little devil and if you're in thumbnail University you'll know that I've always said don't ever use emojis in your thumbnails but I've done it twice here but I've used them in the correct way uh before anyone says even so here what do you prefer the devil or the man personally I prefer the devil because it's just because it's cute and colorful um but cute devil yeah the cute one yeah but it could just because he's got a dark profile picture if that was like uh a different a different image it might have helped anyway I think I think I'm with you on that one all right in the comments people uh we have one two three four five six seven eight uh we have nine thumbnails again from left to right that's one that's four that's nine which one pops the most view which one would you click on if you saw it and I will await because we've got this sort of 45 second delay on live streams I kind of wish we didn't have that I guess I know what that is um so we've had people saying what you just said a minute ago uh Sam oh hello Sam Sam water has come in and said I like the devil but he wished the man was brighter which is what you said and I'm still waiting some votes oh here we are they're coming in so two three nine eight two three two's doing winning so far I guess the red does stand out yeah I think I think some honest I think the red and again if we look at this an eight has got quite a few clicks I think two two and eight is common so two um oh all right so we could look at these and say all right maybe there is what the red that works you know do we need to take elements of red and put into this one um but I think I think I'd go with this one to start if it was me in terms of an image all right well because you can have you can have more fun with that one I think yeah and uh yeah be cheeky now the benefit of this is for a cold audience you're not going to be put off by the person you've never heard of um I think I'd run with that one so that's the fourth round of the system the all-important feedback round and then we would go and make that thumbnail pick a winner and launch it now it's the end of the second contestant which means only one thing let's ask a question round I need a jingle hang on when you say um on when you get to the fifth round pick a winner is that because you're referring to do variations of that one like different color options and stuff no so that's a good question James so what I'm saying is once you've got the feedback on so we've gone with this one we've um the the audience has spoken now this is supposed to be a draft but actually I don't think there's much I'd change if it was a lot more draft I'd go and do the final finessing the fiddly bits that often take a while on Photoshop and then I'd go and make the video um and launch make sense you'd polish it that's it yeah now some of these are a lot more polished than I was hoping just because you're so good at Photoshop but these ones I've done you can see that I've not cut Rachel out very well at all uh and yeah I would have tinkered with lots of different things to I actually changed the color of a shirt you see that from yeah um so I would have played around with that and just had a final little tweak just to level up the quality of Tad and then we'd be off so what we're going to do now is we're going to take a question before we move on to the third candidate in our system so I'm just gonna wait for something to come in probably need some like lift music to play in the background you had a song lined up remember I did but I think we'll get a copyright strike if I pay that and every time I live stream especially when I re-edit people's videos epidemic sound slaps a warning on me thanks epidemic so the next one of these live streams we're going to be I'm going to be re-editing viewers videos live so if you want to get in on that there's a link below to the mailing lists free and I will email the list when the time comes to submit your content so right let's go back to the next question how long should you let's uh add the broadcast right this is from Peter Peter says how long should you give a thumbnail a chance to see if it helps a dead video all right so how you know if you don't have a very big Channel if you don't have many views and don't get many impressions it changing thumbnails is tough channels like my size it's much easier because we are getting Impressions on videos a lot so even a video on my Channel That's not doing very well still could get like 10 000 impressions in a week say which means I can change a thumbnail and an hour or so later I could see a difference if you're a small Channel and your video is only getting a handful of Impressions you know you're not going to see an instant uplift so all I would say is it's different for every channel but you be patient you know if you're changing old videos thumbnails you don't want to rush this you don't want to change them every day you don't want to trust 20 you don't change 20 different thumbnails on your Channel at all what you want to be doing is picking a couple play around with your old videos that you think deserved better and let them sit for a few weeks so sometimes on my channel I see a spike straight away that Spike dies off doesn't take sometimes it waits takes weeks and then it goes but we're just looking at Impressions so forget the click-through rate it's too it's not the best metric to measure this on it's one of the metrics but you want to be looking at click free rate and Impressions and then obviously if you use spiking so if you've got a very small Channel you might have to wait a lot longer well I don't think you want to be doing is spending forever changing old video thumbnails and changing them all the time take it slow you you mentioned in um the Discord in the week about um the problem with a B testing as well which might be quite valuable information for people because well I guess you'll have to be in the Discord to find out that's all right go from what was it um it was about like people that were asking about if I A B test this but the one that isn't the one's getting a good result in uh the click-through rate but you were saying that the that metric is not reliable source for sure so if you're using tubebuddy to split test your thumbnails what it does is it tells you if I'm delay you've got a higher click-through rate but what it does is it gives you the average click-through rate over all of the traffic sources not the one that you might want to work for so for example if it's suddenly spiked in search it might say yeah use this thumbnail but you wanted views on the home page so it's not relevant so when you when when it picks a winner for you just go in to your body and just check that it's actually picked it based on the traffic Source you were hoping to do well in um which it a couple of times it's picked one that did better in the traffic Source I wasn't interested in and I was like hmm let's not use that and then I picked the other one which has actually done really well in the traffic Source I was interested in so good question James you've been paying attention this week thank you all right let's move on to our next contestant uh of a Cheesy radio voice appeared there contest number three uh this is Justin so starting off our system first thing first is the idea we don't get to decide the idea because it's already been decided for us so we're going in this is Justin so this is his video which was called I ranked every volt B album to find out this are you a vault beat fan James hmm Can't Get Enough yeah I know yeah yeah oh good I don't know what style of music This is it's going to be Rock isn't it it's gonna be um all right what I want you to do I mean to throw some objections at me why would you not click on this thumbnail uh okay it's busy um it's Vault beat it's it's about B I don't know them I don't know the artist obviously so it's not it's not it's not an album I would I love rock so I'd probably really enjoy this I don't know why I'm doing it like that yeah I'm not I'm not ah whenever I see a stroke I get I get put off by I think to me a stroke around someone quite often means it's I don't know I don't want to say that actually no forget what I was going to say I was just going to say it might come across as low quality videos so I don't want to say that I just did but um uh yeah so that's fair enough yeah if I see too many effects on a thumbnail at once I think I probably think that the actual video is not going to be great quality either so I I would skip unfortunately um yeah so there's lots of colors going on as well as blues yellows blacks yeah it's uh let's change this color-wise it's not too bad I think I think not too bad go on the back the background's a muted album cover isn't it I think it looks like it's one of the album covers scaled up large bike it's you couldn't tell that obviously and I don't think it needed it it could probably not have the texture background yeah I agree so to me the stroke is one thing you mentioned so James stays up at night 3 A.M in the morning sweating because these white lines exist around people that white line is saying this is the most important thing in the image look at me as far as I'm concerned now you're pointing at this thing over to the edge here so it can't be so Strokes you know just be careful with them okay because every time you put a stroke James cries I've only got so many tears left yeah it's running dry uh the next thing that's kind of like for me is uh someone says how is that too busy well I'll tell you what how this is too busy so we've got the I think it's more because the album cover is quite busy in the background and then what's happened is he's put an effect on the blue Square on here which is showing some of the background which makes it even busier and then you've got stroke around the text stroke around here it's a busy thumbnail we'll show you what I think we made them less busy in a sec anyway in a different way anyway so yeah I don't like the position of this text because it's down the bottom here what's that telling the viewer it's not telling us is that important so you know we're pointing at volt beat I think every ever album rank rake ranked I don't think it's the worst film now but I think we can do better one question I'm going to put you Daddy serious why Vault beat because I went on Google Trends and had a look and they are on a big decline in uh interest now they could be a classic band um but one of the things I would put forward to is maybe do this again but I ranked every best ever Rock album you know something like that so that's the idea but you know um we're going to move past that and we're going to move on to the inspiration round round two this is very important so round two funny inspiration there is this sort of trend on YouTube which you can see is this sabc kind of ranking system the idea being s is like god tier f is useless and these videos can do well in every Niche I've seen do well in crypto uh I've seen them do well in uh film I've seen them do well I'm sure somewhere else but they're everywhere right so I've taken a few examples so this is the latest one from the Premier League transfer deadline day uh this is one on Oreos this got millions of views so these videos have all performed above the channel and I think we want to be thinking about why would your viewers care about clicking on this so to me when I see an every video ranked the thing that fires up is usually an internal thing where I'm like is mine is my favorite the top and then I also want to know what's their favorite and if it's not mine they need to justify it so you can find this passionate people who will fight in the comments about your uh ranking but that's all part of the fun so new title options I changed it slightly to ranking every Volbeat album just made it shorter yours was I ranked every Volbeat album to find this out when I watched your video I wasn't quite sure what you found out so I think it was revealing the the best one I also changed the title to is this the worst Rock album ever and just to be a bit more challenging and then another one is just the best rock album ever again what it would mean is you don't make that video you make a different video but we're making videos based on what gets clicked and that's kind of how you do it so James any of these work better for you I've I've got a problem with them but that's just from a design perspective like when I when I see those color blocks my reaction is number six this one reaction it looks like it is xylophone I totally agree and from a design point of view they're not great but they do bring in millions of views so we have to ignore that because It's Tricky but yeah and if you did them in a tasteful way then they yeah they're not gonna who cares about a nice pretty grid they want instant impact results so this is the best this is the best one for a number of reasons but it's mainly because it's social hacking we've got the famous person and actually it's very symmetrical very simple and they've kept it quite clean even though it's breaking a ton of rules for thumbnails in there it is technically very busy I think it works do you agree it's hard not to do a busy one when you're talking about covers of albums or videos and stuff because and you can't be uh you can't limit your palette because of it's all down to the the album cover artwork or the DVD cover yeah so yeah It Breaks the Rules um but yeah that one's the best because it's got a hero element it's not going all the way to F it's just focusing on the important ABC and S so you know we'll go to the F that's like it's got those colors that are not needed properly because no one cares about d e and f and you want to see the best yeah good good good good uh good point that right so that's section three of our system we want to move on to section no that was section two sorry section three moving on to the inspiration wall before I reveal these I asked James to make me some draft thumbnails don't don't make they don't need to look very good James and he came out with these which look awesome let's look at this one I was like wow I mean I don't know if it works as a thumbnail but in terms of an image good work man no I'm glad you're on my team [Laughter] um all right so let's have a look at these so a couple of things I mentioned I changed the title um but I'm going to stick with his original title here on the top one you've kept it nice and simple you kept to the four that you said uh it why show too far down the line uh you've managed to make an album wall cover not look that busy and I think that helped because they're all the same sort of color palette their brand which one of these would you click on James if you're a big volt beat fan I I'll go for the middle one because of the the clear space that you've got I think um I think anyway I think so just because the the white helps separate the album covers even more let me ask you a question though beat fans like Angel white black rock yeah we should probably go we should probably go monotone on the sabc as well I think this is a nice mixture it's got a tint yeah and then it's got a bit of Darkness for the Rock Fans uh but yeah I think these are strong I think this is how you should have made your thumbnail um if you if you want any of these by the way just email me and uh we'll send them to you I think we kept him right we've got Photoshop files as well um James you took his face didn't you from oh did you remove the stroke yeah look at that how long did that take you I I use subject selection and it was pretty quick and then I just refined The Mask that's why you that's why you get Photoshop isn't it canva yeah so you'll notice the bottom ones I've removed his hand not this one what he's had is this the same photo yeah and I've cloned his shirt so he's got a full t-shirt I just thought you found other photos of him I was like where did you find all these high quality photos good work man good work all right next one uh I'm not as keen on this concept but I do like this sucks because it's uh you know provocative thoughts yeah I like this one because yeah it's it's going against the grain it's like we both just made a mistake we both said I like that's a that's a fine go for both of us okay this one works I think this one works because it goes against the grain it will agitate a lot of people and that will get you some clicks yeah as long as you're all right selling your soul to agitating people that's the name of the game right so this one here I put discovered this at the end I changed the title slightly um which one are you clicking on James hmm I like the white myself but again for the for the genre you could go the black yeah I think this one sticks out to me the most as well how disguising the image is another sort of tactic I quite like I've seen it work and sometimes and I've seen it not work so well before so uh scale that one up just so they can see because I can't quite see at this scale sure one sec oink yeah where'd it go there we are Minecraft it I don't know what that means you know make it squares pixels right I've played Minecraft a couple of times I'm not I I know Sims I have not played I have not played I'm not a Minecraft player oh you seem to know a lot about it all right um yes what were you saying before you went off the tangent uh yeah it's just just so that people could see kind of what the effect is at scale so yeah that's just the Mosaic effect in Photoshop if you want to do that um what's good about this one it's like is he dissing my favorite Volpe album is you know is it there and that's going to inspire a click but again that stroke gone so much cleaner James this bottom one now this screw looks great but in terms of strategy it's the worst isn't it yeah yeah for sure it was just because you gave me the task of making an album wall and yeah background and there's such dark album covers it was hard to make it look pleasing so I tried warping them to make a tunnel that he's in to represent those like loads of Volbeat albums and stuff but um it looks the best in terms of design you know I mean I'd look at that and be like that's a cool picture but I was tempted to maybe have the text because if we're gonna go this sucks again you could have wrapped some text around his ears as well either side so it it could have had a bit of copy as well to back it up but um yeah I'm not sure I think Mo you could have made the pictures in the background a bit bigger so it was more vaulty the problem with this image is he is the hero he is the main pull and actually Volpe is do you know what we should have done uh is we should have removed him from this and maybe put in the main frontman volpeat here got got you out the way put on this clickable front man of volt beef and that's what I would have gone with yeah sure um all right James we're gonna put it to the the group The viewers the the live uh Posse sounds weird me saying that um which one I'm going to delete this one just because it makes confusing out of these nine one to nine which one are you clicking on let's hear your thoughts in the comments someone said uh worst Rock album ever it could be another way presenting it and I I'd probably want to click on that just to find out what the video is about uh just waiting for some more comments to fire up if you are watching as a not live at home feel free to just shout out if you want to feel like you're watching live the number uh really loud we've had our first come in here we are they're a little bit delayed oh wow loads fired in so five to me two five five six so two and five there's one two three four three that's five okay these two in the middle six it's got a few fans so the red six oh it's a bit of a split all right James so what did you do in a situation like this where are you getting a split I guess you just pick you go with your gut didn't you I guess so I guess she yeah I mean the average you could also if you wanted to do you could color the T-shirt red in the Black Version or something like that so yeah um a five I think is sticking out but I agree so I'd probably one of the problems when you get a lot of feedback and it's all slightly different you got to make a decision so go with the one that feels best but I think James is hitting there on the head there get a red get a red t-shirt on and uh get that photo so it's got a bit of contrast it sticks out and yeah you would then move on to the final part of the system which is finessing that I know a lot of the thumbnails that we showed you today are kind of looks quite slick anyway but you don't have to make them that slick when you go and go for feedback so just to sum this whole system up because it does work it's number one is your idea number two is getting inspiration for your idea and how you would dress that idea up number three is then making three different drafts and then making slightly different colors and then number four is getting feedback from people to see which one they click on make sure you screenshot it with the title and you can use a tool like thumbs up.tv to do that and number five it's just picking your winner having some conviction now there are many more steps after that in terms of measurement and so on which we're not going to get to today but what we are going to get to is a question and whilst I wait for those questions to come in just want to remind you guys a few different things first thing says if you would like to have your channel featured online like this because I would like to do a lot more we are going to be doing editing next there's a link in the description where you can sign up it's free and I send a weekly email with YouTube tips and tricks stuff I don't talk about on the channel goes quite deep it's getting bigger every week There's case studies there's analytic Dives and in that I offer people the mainness a chance to be able to join in on these live streams there's also a link down below to thumbnail University this is the first place of its kind it teaches Photoshop photography lighting strategy there's a community there so you can get feedback from other people who speak the same language they shouldn't be saying things like I like this they'll be saying that works and here's why and I think that's uh yeah hit like And subscribe the usual stuff but let's go and get one of these guys questions on here um I want to make let me see what we got here got quite a few questions but they are not why do you keep calling Ed Sheeran James [Laughter] that's a great question oh he's had 40 years of this don't tell me my age no one knows that I'm 40. they wouldn't believe me anyway James because you don't look are they older than 12. um right so we have Steve McDonald should you consider that people watching Dartmouth and create a thumbnail as it looks very different against a dark background yes Steve that is the right question to be asking so uh I've let me this is an interesting one because we've suddenly started testing light thumbnails for you now and you have been a big fan of dark mode and I've always been a bit like they're getting lost in dark mode but you have liked that aspect yeah so so basically the majority of people are now watching in Dart mode which brings on a dilemma so if you use a very bright white uh thumbnail it should stick out more in Dart mode right but what I noticed was actually if you kept it dark and then used light text or other light features those features popped out rather than the image as a whole so we ended up getting darker and darker and darker um and I was someone said to me won't you try lighter and I thought yeah let's let's try it so the only thing with light is you know it's white it kind of Blends into the background of YouTube so what you want to be thinking about is your viewers so if they are young hip happening people they're probably on Dart mode if they are uh slightly older if they're my parents age my mum doesn't know that dartmode is a thing she wouldn't know to change and that might be the case just because if I'm honest I didn't know dark mode was the thing until I did a live stream and someone swore at me for using light mode it's like what what does he mean dark mode so yeah I think that's the the to me that's the I don't know well to me that's the thing is like I find it claustrophobic when it's in dark mode yeah light mode light mode is kind of default so you do want to be considering it but 60 of people are using Dart mode and that's what I've been told so you can design for them but I don't necessarily think that means making a bright white thumbnail will work better it's an option unfortunately it's one of those things so I've just gave you an answer quick tip for you though if any of you are using Photoshop when you zoom out and you can see your canvas uh black and carrier right click on that area and then you can change what that displays as so you can set some custom colors so you can set a dark mode you could set a light mode and then you can cycle between them with the F key lace Layla is uh Leela sorry sorry I better get all the time Leela um don't estimate your Mermaid Under a straight your mermaid I would never understood it's good advice all right so on that note thank you very much guys for turning up everyone who turns up live really appreciate your time anyone who watches as a video I did appreciate your time too so like I said we're gonna hope to be doing the next one of these on Ella's Hing which I'm very excited for but we're gonna sign off James any final words you're gonna do the editing in Premiere yeah no well we're not going to be teaching editing tricks of the platform we'll be teaching editing in general and inspiring rather than giving people silly little Premiere I know I would never use Premiere because it's awful [Laughter] yeah all right guys oh yeah I won't be getting sponsored by Adobe anytime soon thank you very much take care