Legible at 168 pixels wide, because that is the size the decision is made at.
The standard
Reference pieces by other creators, chosen to set the bar for youtube thumbnails. Our own named client work lives on how we work.
The Full Story of MrBeast
Colin and Samir · 22.6M views
A Brutally Honest Conversation with MrBeast
Colin and Samir · 8.6M views
Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now?
Thomas Flight · 5.1M views
Why Do Wes Anderson Movies Look Like That?
Thomas Flight · 4.1M views
why you are so tired
Answer in Progress · 3.8M views
why you stopped reading
Answer in Progress · 2.8M views
Design it at thumbnail size. Judge it at thumbnail size.
- 01Concepts are reviewed shrunk to about 168 pixels wide — the size it is genuinely seen at in a phone home feed — before any of them get finished.
- 02Three elements at most: subject, one piece of text, one piece of context. A fourth is what makes a thumbnail unreadable small.
- 03The text is short enough to read in the time a thumb takes to pass, and never repeats the title sitting next to it.
- 04Delivered at 1280x720 under 2MB, with a safe variant for the placements that crop.
Everything that makes a thumbnail look good in a design tool at full size, fine type, soft gradients, a detailed background, disappears at the size it is actually competing at. Designing small and only then scaling up inverts that: what survives is a shape, a face and a word, which is exactly what the eye picks out of a feed. The title and the thumbnail are read together, so they should carry different halves of the idea rather than the same half twice.
What you get
[ 4 deliverables ]- 1280x720, PNG or JPG under 2MB01
- Three concepts, one finished02
- Face, text and subject all readable at 168px03
- A variant that survives the duration badge and rounded corners04
Also in Graphics
The whole category- 01Posts & carouselsSlides where the first one earns the swipe and the last one earns the save.6 references
- 02Product imageryMarketplace-legal on the main image, art-directed on every one after it.6 references
- 03Photo retouchingFrequency separation, dodge and burn, and skin that still has pores in it.6 references