Today, we will redesign a YouTube thumbnail for Kene Digital.
As a new YouTube creator, his thumbnails is a photo of himself with some text.
Sometimes, it's good to have a photo of yourself pointing at something
or a facial expression given,
depending on the type of video.
And it can help build your brand.
When I first started, I was in my thumbnails too.
Honestly, once I removed myself from the thumbnails, my subscribers, watch time, and views went up.
Every channel will always be different.
You can decide what works for you.
We will be using Adobe Spark because it's simple yet easy to get great results quickly.
And the free version helps, too, for those who are on a budget!
Let's head over to Adobe Spark and log-in.
If you don't have an Adobe account,
go ahead and create an account.
Adobe Spark has many YouTube thumbnail
templates, as you can see.
Google recommends a custom thumbnail size
at 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall.
Either click 'Back Home'
or click on the Spark icon to get back to the main screen.
Click on Custom Size, and enter 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall
and click next when ready.
In the top-left hand corner,
the file name is called 'My Post.'
Click on the pencil beside it to rename your working file.
I am going to click on the photos icon and find free photos for a phone.
The cool thing about Adobe Spark is the images are free.
Some of the pictures are from royalty-free resources such as Pixabay, Unsplash and Pexels.
You could go more in-depth
and go directly to those websites
and other resources if you wanted to,
and upload them as a photo.
Or, we can stay within Adobe Spark.
I am looking for an image that shows only a phone with a non-busy background.
Once you have found a photo, click on the image, and it automatically gets placed on your post.
*Please Note: It may seem we are
picking a photo and adding some text to it.
And we are.
Choosing that good graphic could mean more views or passing it.
I am going to close the sidebar at the
top-left corner, as shown here.
To zoom out,
click on the magnify tool
or use the keyboard shortcuts, Command Minus (for the Mac)
or Control Minus for a PC.
Resize the image to the full width
and height as possible.
I will extend the image a tad
over the size, making sure no slight
gaps are showing.
Click on the text icon.
And you will see different
templates for the text styling.
Anything with a yellow banner means premium users;
so, a free account won't have access to this.
This is fine because
the premium text templates are way too busy for our needs.
Try to keep it simple;
Click on 'Add Your Text,'
Remember, we only have 2-3 seconds to grab a viewer's attention.
To move the text box, place your cursor or mouse on top of the text.
The cursor will change to a bi-directional arrow.
From here, you can move the text anywhere you want.
On the right-hand side,
you can change the font, size, colour.
You can also grab it by the
corner of the text box
to resize it as well.
I want to emphasize the 'New' and 'Smartphone' words.
To do this, I need to hit return to add a new line.
The word 'new' and 'smartphone' will now stand out.
Besides the alignments,
I am going to click on the Circle, Grid and Magic alignments.
I like the Magic one.
As the text fits the spacing
evenly from left to right,
and then adjust the line spacing (leading, the space between two sentences)
We don't have a logo for this YouTube channel.
To learn how to place a logo, watch this clip on doing so.
In Adobe Spark, one can go through the different enhancements,
blurs, and filters to change an image is shown.
This is a powerful action as some people would use Photoshop or LightRoom.
Select the image by clicking on the image
or do a marquee selection.
Play with the effects of brightness, shadow, lighting, multiply and contrast.
To apply the result, click off the effect.
Let's remove the Adobe Spark logo
so it won't show in your thumbnail.
Click on the Spark logo.
It will ask again if you want to remove this logo.
If you have a premium account,
you remove the watermark forever
or else you have to do it each time you create a project.
It's time to download the
thumbnail to your computer.
You have the option to download this as a PDF, PNG or JPG.
I am going to download this as a solid colour PNG.
The image will download into my folder.
Now you can use this customized thumbnail for a channel.
Here everyone, if you like a YouTube thumbnail review, re-design
and tutorial, let me know by adding your comment below with the name of your channel
and what video, and I be happy do it!
Thanks, everyone, for watching.
If you enjoy the video, like it, share it, and subscribe to the channel. And I will see you next time!