You might have seen this on your homepage. It's going viral.
And what's amazing is before this video, Liam had less than 1k subscribers and was averaging ~1k views per video.
This one has 3.2M after two weeks.
What changed? Well, the thumbnail.
Let me explain...
Visually Remarkable
For this video, what is ‘visually remarkable’ does depend on the idea itself. It’s a great one.
It’s a unique dry ski slope that looks like something from another planet.
But, Liam still had to get the thumbnail right.
Just capturing the ski slope wouldn’t have worked, most wouldn’t know what it was.
Adding the person snowboarding in the shot gives context to what’s going on, and creates this conflict that you need to resolve.
’Wait, someone’s snowboarding on that? What is it? What’s going on?’
You need answers and how do you get them? You’ve got to click.
Identify how to visually represent what’s remarkable about your idea in a way potential viewers will be able to understand.
Simplicity
The thing I love most about this thumbnail is the simplicity.
It identifies what’s remarkable about the idea and makes it the focus of the thumbnail.
No additional elements or visual noise to take away from it.
A lot of people would have been tempted to include text (’FAKE SNOW’ etc).
But it doesn’t need it - the image does everything it needs to do and the lack of an explanation almost creates more curiosity.
Get across what you need to get across in the most simplistic way possible.
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Image
This thumbnail is a great example of not needing to pump up the saturation or make thumbnails overly cartoony to get the viewer's attention.
The key is making sure you get a good shot that clearly captures what it is that’s going to get the click.
From a ‘design-perspective’, there are really only 3 main colours in this thumbnail (blue, dark red and white) but they all work together perfectly.
They contrast nicely, and when combined with the simplicity of the image, creates some nice separation that makes it really easy to understand exactly what is going on in a split second.
Theory > Design
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Want more?
These techniques (along with plenty more) are all explained in the Digital Bundle.
The Bundle is everything you need to make effective thumbnails and includes:
1. Digital Book
82 pages explaining exactly how to make effective thumbnails.
2. Thumbnail Worksheet
Outlines how to turn your ideas into clickable concepts.
3. Thumbnail Checklist
Check every title and thumbnail do what they need to do.
Interested? Check it out.