7 min

How to Generate a Viral Thumbnail

Without a YouTube thumbnail specifically generated and designed to go viral, your videos are guaranteed to fall short of their potential.

After creating YouTube content consistently for over four years, there's one thing I can tell you - thumbnails are so, so important. You're never going to have the success which you could have if your thumbnail doesn't follow a few simple design techniques.

Every single one of my friends who have made it big and gone viral (some with over 800k views, and others with over 380,000 subscribers) have told me that thumbnails are easily the most important thing in guaranteeing that your video gets clicks. Whenever I redesign my thumbnails following the methods I'm describing in this article, my views skyrocket. 😎

To generate a viral thumbnail, make sure it's attention-grabbing. Use clear, bold, and shocking fonts. These are displayed at a small size on YouTube, so these designs should grab attention. Use contrasting colors, and simple and as few shapes and focal points as possible to make a viral thumbnail.

If you follow all of the points in this article, I guarantee that you'll be able to increase your views and craft the perfect viral thumbnail for your video.

Bold Fonts

Without a doubt, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when designing thumbnails for their videos is the font.

Don't get me wrong, fancy fonts are nice. But when you're designing a YouTube thumbnail, you have to remember what you're designing for and what your goal is.

Your goal isn't to make some immaculate design that shocks the nation ⚡ it's to grab the viewer's attention at small, thumbnail size, and get them to click your video.

To do this, you have to avoid using fancy and complex fonts at all costs. Instead, you have to use fonts quite literally engineered to stand out and be clear and easily readable at a distance.

I always see people add really complex fonts to their thumbnails and then scale them down so the fonts aren't even easily readable at a large size. If you do that, though, how can you expect your thumbnail to be readable at a small size?

Always remember that your goal isn't to create a large thumbnail, it's to create a small thumbnail. And small thumbnails need big, bold fonts. 🎯

• Always make sure the fonts you use are bold, simple, and extremely clean
• The font you decide to use should remain consistent throughout multiple thumbnails so your viewers easily recognize your videos
• Thumbnail text should be large enough for the viewer to easily recognize and read it, without being so large it takes away from the rest of the thumbnail

There are a lot of “thumbnail generators” on the market which claim to generate YouTube thumbnails - but they don't. They generate things which look good when you're editing them but are unreadable in YouTube thumbnail form.

This is another reason I suggest using a generator like ViralThumbs.com 😂 because you sure can't trust the other generators to use these techniques.

Best Colors

Whenever you design a YouTube thumbnail, your goal is to think simple. Think easy to see, think minimalistic while also shocking, bold and attention grabbing.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to keep your colors bold and consistent throughout the thumbnail. You'll learn this in any logo design course or tutorial (if it's worth the salt) and this is also true with YouTube thumbnails.

Whatever you do, stick to 1-2 main colors on your thumbnail. You don't want your thumbnail to be some abstract art project 🙄 you want it to drive clicks. And to drive clicks, you need the thumbnail to be easily recognizable by the human eye.

And this means you have to use one, or at max two main colors for your thumbnail. One is easily preferable as you'll see in all of our thumbnail templates, but in some cases two colors is acceptable.

You also want to stick with very bold and bright colors like bright yellow, white, or red for the main points you want to grab the attention of the viewer.

For example, your text and that clickbait arrow you added pointing to your sick skillshot 😎 should be the same color, maybe a bright red or pink.

Simplistic Shapes

Here's another super important thing to ensure when you're designing a thumbnail to go viral! Always use simple shapes for everything you design, even beyond your arrows and text and circles.

What I mean by this is whenever you pick, for example, a background image or clickbait “raw camera footage” to slap on your YouTube thumbnail, you have to pick those out with simplicity in mind.

Things which look good big often don't look so big when they're small. 🔍 So keep your pictures and shapes simplistic and easily viewable in thumbnail form. Are you noticing the recurring theme yet?

Far too often I see people not designing a thumbnail with the actual name “thumbnail” in mind. Instead, they focus on fancy graphic design. But we don't want fancy graphic design; we want bold and attention-grabbing.

This leads into my next point, which is that if you're going to be putting your face in a thumbnail (and I mean hey, why wouldn't you 🥰), always make sure your face is the focal point.

This means that you don't want to put more than 1-2 faces in your thumbnail. This is a point I've seen many popular YouTubers fail on as well, so I really want to rehash it.

One, or at max, two faces in your thumbnail will increase your chances of going viral.

Arrows

Whenever you design a thumbnail, it's your job to direct the viewer's attention to the focal point of the image. And what better way to do this than arrows?

Always keep in mind that arrows are one of the most important tools in a thumbnail designer's toolkit. Arrows have been overused, sure, but there's no denying that they work.

A simple, brightly-colored arrow pointing to the focal point, the area of interest on your YouTube thumbnail, will always cause the viewer's eyes to be directed there naturally. If you want your viewer to see that super sick dirt biking trail which you rode in today's vlog - show them.

This is an old advertising rule, but it remains true to this day. Don't expect somebody to know what to do. Don't hope they know where you want them to look. Go ahead and point it out to them, and tell them exactly where they should be staring 👇 see what I mean?

This is why ViralThumbs.com offers an inbuilt arrow picker for the thumbnails you design through the site.

Stickers

Another really good technique for designing flawless and viral YouTube thumbnails is to use commonly accepted and viewed stickers as attention-grabbing techniques. These stickers are used so commonly that a viewer's attention will be drawn by them, even if they're not particularly interested in the content.

Think of these stickers as “viral” themselves. Whenever you see one of these, I'd bet good money that your attention is drawn toward it. 🎁

A few common examples of these include things like the “classified” sticker or the very famous “censored” sticker. 😳

That's why you'll always see YouTube thumbnails with a reaction face, directing your attention to some risque picture with the “CENSORED” sticker slapped over it, bolded and with all caps.

Whenever somebody sees that, their mind is wired for the result of the thumbnail to be implicative even if the actual content falls short.

When you see a thumbnail with the word “CLASSIFIED” on it, your mind will instantly recognize that there might be some classified information which you haven't seen before, or some trending new topic released and declassified. Just like when you see the word “CENSORED”, your mind usually says - well, you get the idea. 😤

Outlines

A super easy way to guarantee more clicks is to use bold, colorful, and sharp outlines on any objects in your thumbnails. For example, let's say you make a Fortnite montage.

You want your character to stand out and grab the attention of any people scrolling through their feed. To do this, you can easily add an outline or a bold color surrounding the character to make it “pop” from the rest of the thumbnail.

Contrary to popular graphic design trends, the purpose of a YouTube thumbnail isn't to blend in and be graphically pleasing. It's to shock the viewer and grab their attention.

Your goal is to draw the viewer's eyes to your thumbnail, and to do this, you have to use the boldest methods possible.

Free Thumbnail Generator

By far the easiest method to guarantee that you follow all of these techniques is to use a free thumbnail generator like ViralThumbs.com 🤫 because these methods, although I explained them easily here, do take a while to perfect and understand.

Graphic design, even for something like thumbnails, is extremely hard work. A lot of people I know will spend over 30 minutes of time working to design the same quality of thumbnails we offer here. Trust me, it ain't worth the hassle.

If you can get a high-quality thumbnail generated for free instead of having to handcraft it yourself, that can be a large benefit. Especially if the generator you use follows all the methods and techniques I've described in this article.

I can't stress enough the importance of using all of these techniques in your thumbnail, at least where you can.

If you're not using one of these methods, you could be missing out on a serious lot of potential views, subscribers, and comments. 🥺

And that won't help you become the next YouTube sensation. Over my years as a YouTuber, I discovered the importance of thumbnails, but I also realized the importance of not having to spend hours creating them yourself, hence why I released ViralThumbs.com.

Conclusion

I seriously can't stress enough the importance of all of these methods I've covered in designing a great, viral YouTube thumbnail. If you follow these methods, I guarantee your views are going to increase. One of the major goals of any YouTuber is to increase the click-through rate on their videos, and this is one of the best methods to ensure your content begins to go viral immediately.

You're not looking to get low but “high quality” views, you're looking to sell your video to as many people as possible and get them to click.

This is the formula which all of the most popular YouTubers use, and this is the formula that actually works.

Obviously, you need to pair your thumbnail generator with good SEO. Search engine optimization is so important for gaining views as well, but think of it like this. If you get all of the views in the world but have a really bad YouTube thumbnail, none of those potential views are going to want to actually click your video.

Because of this, you always want to follow my points in the article.

• Remember to design your thumbnail like it's going to be viewed at a small size, because it is.
• Always use bold, clean, and thick fonts in order to catch the attention of the viewer instead of using fancy but complex fonts like you might use in a larger design.
• The best colors to use are usually simple and minimalistic while remaining attention-grabbing.
• Simplistic shapes and faces are easier for the viewer to recognize and much better for catching their attention.
• Arrows are so important and an easy tool to use when trying to direct the viewer's attention to a specific part of your viral thumbnail.
• Common stickers can be used to give the viewer an idea or a suggestion of what type of content you're producing, and information about that content, before they even see your title.
• Using outlines on images or characters (or your face) will grab the viewer's attention and help you stand out.
• The easiest way to make sure you're using all of these techniques is to use a free thumbnail generator like ViralThumbs.com.

If you use all of these techniques and follow the points, I guarantee you'll be able to generate a viral YouTube thumbnail for your channel! 🎉