Every Viral Thumbnails Has These 3 Elements

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I've made concepts for 500+ thumbnails and analyzed over 1000s of others. To create a viral thumbnail, you have to master these 3 elements 1. Grab viewer's attention 2 Make the message clear and simple 3. Create a Curiosity Gap Here's how

First and foremost, the idea is the bedrock and foundation of your entire video, including the thumbnail. If out of the entire thread you walk away with this.. it will save you DAYS worth of work and COUNTLESS lost views due to bad thumbnails:

1. By thinking of better ideas you will make better thumbnails by default 2. As soon as you think of the idea, imagine a thumbnail for it. If you're struggling to think of something simple and interesting, you should probably scrap the idea (you can try later though)

1. ATTENTION ⚠️ There are aspects you can utilize to grab a viewer's attention, but for each of the steps I first want to give you the principles So that you can understand the thoughts behind the things you change and improve.

What Getting attention really means, is being different. And more specifically among your competition of thumbnails that might be surrounding your content. So the variables that I'll mention are relative to what is happening right now, on YouTube and your niche.

While some things are relative, others are more constant. The same principle applies to idea generation. Here are some variables that can make you stand out: - Faces: faces stand out to the human eye, but don't add it blindly as a face without value can be detrimental.

- Colors: higher contrast colors usually make a thumbnail stand out, but there is also a caveat to this. If every thumbnail is high contrast, having a low contrast will counterintuitively make it stand out. For example, which thumbnail's colors stand out to you here the most?

- Objects/Images: an interesting object or image (which is easily recognizable) can also make the thumbnail stand apart from the rest. If you consider what the potential viewer is/could be interested in, it can add extra appeal Let me give you an example:

You could either use something the audience is already familiar with, or manipulate something that would make it look new and interesting.

- Text: Simple words can be quickly understood by your brain even in peripheral vision, especially if these are common/known words to the viewer. for example using big bold "BROKEN" would be clear and simple to the viewer to see without directly looking at the thumbnail.

2. SIMPLICITY ⬛ Everyone's heard about the Rule of 3 by now, but there are a lot more things you can simplify. Let's take this video as an example: Great thumbnail, pretty simple to understand, but there are still a bunch of improvements that we can do

I changed only a few simple things here, and yet the difference is quite big. 1. Blurred the background 2. Changed line color 3. Adjusted contrast Green might not fit in this concept due to other colors and the theme of the thumb/video, but it demonstrates how much can change.

Let's take another example. This thumbnail is already VERY simple, and easy to understand, but even here, there are things we can improve. (p.s I don't have the original files for these thumbs)

If you zoom out and slightly unfocus your eyes, you'll be able to see where your eyes are drawn to. Any unnecessary focus that is not on the main elements of the thumb, add to the "processing time" to understand the thumbnail. This is the key concept I want you to understand:

Here, although the background is blurred, the tree on the left still takes a lot of attention, we could either: 1. Blur it more 2. Add a shadow 3. Reduce saturation Now if we look at the grass and the rest of the bg, we can see that everything is saturated & bright, which means

That nothing stands out in the thumb, the #1 focus is the text. Everything else ends up blending together more than it should be. So while this thumbnail might GRAB YOUR ATTENTION.. You will spend more time on processing what it means. Here's how this thumb could look like:

The differences may be minor (because it was an already great thumb) But this saves microseconds in the processing time, and when you have only around ~3000ms or even less to process the thumbnail, every ms counts.

So now that I showed it visually, let's break it down into some more specifics Things you can change to simplify a thumbnail 1. No of Elements (rule of 3) 2. Complexity of elements (i.e blurring simplifies a complex tree) 3. Colors (Saturation, brightness, hue difference)

You might also notice that improving simplicity, might take away some from grabbing someone's attention. It's always a balance of the 3 steps, so keep that in mind as you edit your thumbnail. (p.s It might take time getting used to it)

3. INTEREST 👀 No matter what way you grab attention and curiosity, every thumbnail concept has a "curiosity gap" The curiosity gap is the space between the information the viewers know and information they would want to know Here's why that matters

The bigger the curiosity gap, the more the viewer will want to find out what the video is about. When I think of a curiosity gap, I usually visualize it as a sticky link of information between two end points. The distance of the info end points is determined by..

How much space you're creating with each element in your thumbnail, including the title (which can be huge) Each element can stretch that curiosity gap further. So perfect packaging would utilize each element to it's limit Here's some examples:

There's interest in the early gameplay of an upcoming game. But the thumbnail itself is not adding any curiosity gap here A better image could be a clear and simple screenshot of a new ability/cool feature mid-action

Although this thumbnail could be a bit simpler (as there are 4.5 elements) Each element is adding something to the thumbnail concept. His face is smug, showing confidence in the product. The question mark on the item makes us wonder what it is. meanwhile..

The title is not repeating the information, further adding space to the curiosity gap. I would personally consider removing the arrow, but that might be an important separation from questioning the product vs questioning if it's easy to sell. On the other hand..

This should be a pretty clear clickbait for everyone I hope. If you don't know Andrew Huberman, he never made a face like this, never said anything like this and clearly the face was also overexaggerated. Is there a curiosity gap? Yes. But it went too far and snapped 👇

Now seeing all of these changes yourself is not always easy.. One the best ways to notice these is have someone else reviewing your thumbnails and writing potential thumbnail changes.

There are already a bunch of existing formats to create curiosity gaps, some that Jay Alto mentions are: - Mid-Action/Cliffhanger - The Question - wow Factor However I wanted to go more into the logic and thinking behind I look at these formats, to give you even more freedom.

Whew, that took a while. If you got value from this thread, I need a small favor from you.. A while back I've started this challenge (👇) for which I only have a few days left 😫 And I still need 143 followers to keep my hair like and a follow would be very appreciated twitter.com/Ryker_Strategy/status/1631293343614357509?s=20