Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant, and let's make a thumbnail with Canva.
So jumping on into Canva, of course you can go ahead and go to canva.com, set up a free
account.
Everything we're going to be doing in this tutorial, you can do with the free plan.
Now, the easiest way to get started creating your YouTube thumbnail, is just coming up
to design anything and just start typing in YouTube and you'll be able to select YouTube
thumbnail.
So we'll go ahead and select that.
Of course, they're going to have a bunch of templates for you to choose from, but I like
starting from scratch.
So I'll just go ahead and click on blank.
Now you really only need three things, when it comes to making your thumbnail, you need
a feature image, which is normally going to be a picture of you.
Then you're going to have some text and then you're going to have some background for the
text and background for you.
So background, text, and then a picture of you, that's really all you need.
And then after that you get a whole lot more creative.
So first thing we're going to do is, I'm going to come over here to uploads, and I'm going
to scroll down to a bunch of pictures I've taken of myself and we can go ahead and just
choose one of them.
Of course, you can go through and make a bunch of different faces and pointing left, pointing
right, you'll just have to trial and error this particular part of the process, but what's
most important is have some fun and remember to smile.
You're going to use less than half of the photos that you take.
So the cool thing about Canva now is, we can come over here to effects, obviously this
isn't gonna work too well for a actual thumbnail image, and we can click on background remover.
So Canva is going to work it's a little magic here and remove the background.
And after 15 to 30 seconds, it will have removed the background.
So the first thing you want to do after this is, you'll see all of this extra space that's
going to get in the way later.
So we can just double click on it and then we can crop the photo, so it's just around
our outline.
And this is going to help us with resizing and positioning later.
So we can go ahead and click enter, when we are done.
And click and drag it’s probably going to be over here on the side and I'll make myself
a little bigger, right?
And that's all there is to it, to getting a picture of yourself or something else that
you want to remove the background for.
Now, the background remover is specifically designed to find a person.
So, if you're trying to do anything more advanced than that, it might not work out very well.
So obviously I'm pointing to nothing.
So we should go ahead and create some text, which is going to be the next step.
Now, what I like doing is, putting something behind text to help make it pop.
And something I've recently started to use, I'll come in here and I'm going to search
for brush.
And by the way, please feel free to copy this.
You can also find--, you can also just use a plain old, what do you call it?
Rectangle as well, but brush works out pretty well.
So I've gone ahead and clicked on this brush element.
You can see that there are a lot here.
Some of them are pro.
Some of them are free, so you will just have to kind of mouse through.
Something that's cool though, when you're doing your searches is, you can click on the
settings and then click on free and then apply.
So that way you're only looking at the free stuff and you don't have to feel disappointed
or sad when you see something you really want and then find out you actually can't use it.
So we're using our element here, that it is in the free.
And then I'm going to go ahead and change the color to a blue, right?
So we'll go ahead and change this to a blue, of course we could change the color to whenever
we want.
And we're going to go ahead and put our text on top of this.
Now we're going to click and drag a lot here, but just to save some time, I'm going to come
over here to text and they do have some kind of a stylized text, that you can go through.
So, you can always go through this and have some fun with it, play with the colors.
There's a lot of customization you can do.
I'm going to 80/20 this process, because you can go ahead and play with that by yourself.
We'll go ahead and click on this.
Then we'll go ahead and type in our thumbnail text.
So, let's just say this one's about apps for creating YouTube thumbnails.
So, we'll say best apps for creating YouTube thumbnails.
Now, something that will give you a lot more customization and control is, actually splitting
your text into multiple boxes.
So, I'm going to go ahead and cut this and I'm going to add another heading, and then
I'm going to paste that in.
So I'm going to click on one and then click on the other.
And now I'm selecting both elements.
I just held shift to do that and I will pull it up here.
Now I'm going to change the color to white.
So it pops a little more.
And then of course I can click and drag and make it bigger or smaller.
So obviously we want this bigger and we're probably going to want these on two different
lines.
So for creating and we'll go ahead and click and drag it here.
And obviously we've made our text a little too big.
So I'm going to bring out this a little more and something that I like doing, this might
just be me.
I always like tilting things a little bit, so we can get a little bit more surface area
to work with.
So best for creating thumbnails.
And actually, now that I've done it in too, I'm actually going to want to put YouTube
over here and then we'll click and drag do a little more adjusting.
So I'll cut ahead to when this is adjusted and that's centered enough for now.
Of course, we can always change it, move it around or change it.
And let's bring the tech stuff.
It's at 52.
So let's try 72.
And of course, everything gets messed up at that point, but that's okay.
Let's go ahead.
And you can always just come in here, bring the text back down.
Let's try 64, or you can go ahead and type something in manually.
So let's just go ahead and type in 60 and move our text a little more to call it good.
Close enough for now.
So obviously this is a little plane, right?
We need a background.
So we can go over here to the left hand side and we'll click on background and then you'll
see all of these different kinds of landscapes or patterns, I like going with gradients or
textures because it gives, it helps put a lot more emphasis on the text and then the
picture of yourself or whoever or whatever images of the thumbnail as opposed making
it too busy or distracting.
So choosing something like this blue, obviously doesn't work cause now everything's blue.
And then we could go with something like gray, but I like using a very sharp contrast color.
So we could do something like this or we'll go with the brick wall.
I think that works out pretty well.
So now we have all of our essential elements here.
So then it just becomes a game of clicking and dragging, making things bigger and smaller,
until you kind of like how it looks.
Now, if I were to redo this, I think my finger is pointing just in the wrong direction, but
that's okay.
That's part of the process.
You'll figure out where to where to point.
So we'll hold shift to select multiple elements at once.
We'll click and drag, make these a little bigger and we really could do it a lot more
playing with the text in the background, but this is good enough for now.
Now my finger is being blocked by the blue brushstroke.
So we can click on this image and click on position and now we can move it forward.
And so now I'll be popping up in front of what's being pointed out, and we'll just bring
it down a little more and we'll call that good.
So something else that you can do, obviously we have pretty much 95% of what we need for
our thumbnail.
We can come back over to elements and I'm going to go ahead and X out and you have a
bunch of different little icons or illustrations, that you can use.
So let's say this is for YouTube.
So we're going to go search for something about YouTube, our filter for only showing
free things is still working.
So we'll go ahead and just select the YouTube logo here and we'll make it a little smaller
and, and we will click and drag it down here.
So for YouTube thumbnails, and let's say Canva is the best app, right?
I don't know what other apps people like using probably Photoshop and Stencil.
So let's just say I typed an app instead of Canva.
So let's type in Canva.
Of course, all of their own logos are going to be free, right?
And let's take this fun, little looking guy, right.
And something that's really cool is when you click on a icon that you've dropped in, you
should be able to change different colors.
So if we come over here and change the gray, let's change it to blue.
And now it actually kind of makes the eyes a little see-through.
So we'll go ahead, click and drag.
And let's say, we just want that fun little furball there.
And of course, we could go ahead and add some more image or add some more icons.
Like, let's say we want to throw in a pencil here.
I do recommend keeping it to less than four, because it is very easy for the thumbnail
to become too cluttered or have too much stuff.
In fact, this is probably a little too much, but Hey, we're just having fun.
So here we go.
And there is our thumbnail.
Now, if this seems oversimplified, that's a good thing because anything after this is
really just a bonus and this is really how easy it is to put together a decent looking
thumbnail in Canva.
I like to say you can get a great or good, good or great looking thumbnail.
You're probably not going to win any design awards, but that's not really what the point
of YouTube is, in the first place, right?
And of course, you can always be OCD, clicking and dragging and trying out different color
variations, tech sizes, and pretty much anything you can think of, you can most likely get
done with Canva.
So go ahead and comment below with your Canva questions and make sure you hit that like
button, subscribe for more Canva tutorials, just like this one, as well as some other
videos to help you with growing your channel.
Because obviously, thumbnails are just one small part of the bigger picture of being
successful with YouTube.
So, thank you so much for watching, hit that like button, subscribe and as always, keep
building the business you love.