How to make a Youtube thumbnail for beginners.

In this episode, I’m going to write about how to make a simple and cool Youtube thumbnail using the free designing tool “Canva”.

3 min readSep 5, 2022

Photo by Adam Fejes: https://www.pexels.com/photo/water-droplets-on-red-surface-5702341/

Well, quick disclaimer.

I’m not a big Youtuber but I try making Youtube since I was in high school and of course, I love watching Youtube. So maybe this article is not for big Youtuber, but maybe this will work for beginners. So I hope you enjoy this article.

You can change your thumbnail from this

To this

I use this free Design tool called “ Canva”

I make a link for “Canva pro”. You can use this free for 30 days, but you can make this thumbnail for the free version of Canva.

Let’s get started!

1. Don’t make your thumbnail too messy

You don’t need too much information in your thumbnail. Honestly, the best thumbnail is no word and only a picture. Look at the “Ryan Trahan” Youtube channel. It’s very simple but you can actually know what kind of video is!

Check out his video!

Ryan Trahan — YouTube

2. Make your photo a little bit bright

My Bad Sample is a little bit dark. You can change your setting through this.

Edit image and Adjust

Turn up your “Brightness, Contrast, Saturation” through 10~20. This makes your photo a little bit clean.

3. Font Effect

If you want to add your font to your thumbnail, my favorite one is adding a “lift” effect in your thumbnail.

Sometimes your font will not see clearly because of the color problem or something else. But if you use this “LIFT” effect, this will actually help you. Anyway, this is really simple but in my perspective, it’s really powerful.