How I Make Thumbnails for YouTube 📼

Get your blue card ready...

I have a pretty specific style when it comes to thumbnails so you all know it’s me when my video comes up on YouTube, so let’s talk about how I create them. 

The main thing I like to do is to isolate the product from any outside distractions using a large piece of card, this lets me build any scene I like without having to worry about external factors. This thumbnail is a classic top down, which shows the iPad surrounded by objects that add to the story of the video, here’s the breakdown of how I shoot it :

This is the setup shot, with the camera facing downwards on a C stand.

This is the outcome. It will need a decent amount of editing to get it where it needs to and a lot of this involves colour correction. I make use of my Lightroom presets to get that classic 'Byte Review’ look to it.

Here’s the edited photo, which is looking a lot closer to the final thing. I’ll sharpen some areas in photoshop too to make them standout, like the text on the notebook and the keys on the keyboard.

Finally, I replace the ‘green screen’ with whatever suits the thumbnail. Sometimes that’s a simple screenshot of the home screen or an app, and sometimes it’s a written statement like in this one.

Somethings I keep in mind while taking the photo are shooting :

• Keep colours consistent

• Make sure everything is straight

• Ensure the gaps between items are even

• Find props which add to the story of the video (it’s a notebook here)

• Adding in hand movement makes it feel more relatable

So there’s a brief overview of how I make this style of thumbnail. I could go into way more detail so feel free to comment any questions you have and I’ll get back to you.

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What’s new with Kiroku?

I’m going to guess most of you have already seen this, but we made a new wallpaper pack with our good friend Canoopsy, the Elemental pack! The theme of this set is pretty obvious but it was a fun one to work on. Notice the Pokemon energy cards in the photo, this was my little nod to the theme - I always like to get something personal to me in there, and these were my old cards! It makes the photoshoot more fun too.

Interestingly, we did have plans to release this pack with someone else, but it wasn’t meant to be so it was great to have the chance to work with Canoopsy again.

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Creator Spotlight

📸 Joe Allam - Joe’s YouTube channel has been one of my favourites for such a long time. If you like Fujifilm, Japan, and incredible photography then you’ll enjoy what Joe does. His cinematic night & street photography video is a great place to start, and the opening train shot is stunning. Joe’s channel is one of the reasons I visited Japan back in 2019.

🍔 Deathburger - Incredible Cyberpunk styled artist. I love their use of colour and visual storytelling. In fact, I ended up buying a huge art book from the store, which you’ve likely seen in loads of my videos and photography (it makes for a great prop!) Death Burger also did the steelbook artwork for the Cyberpunk 2077 game, which is also stunning!

🧅 Instant Onion - Nelson Wu is a pixel artist and makes simply beautiful artwork. I’ve bought a fair few of his prints and art books in the past and his Instagram account just is wonderful to scroll. Love the colours, vibes, character designs, and the healthy dose of fan art that’s on show. (I didn’t mean to feature two food named artists btw, but here we are 😅)

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🙋‍♂️ Question : Would you like to see more than one newsletter every two weeks? I actually do have enough to say to make it a weekly thing (and I quite enjoy writing these) so let me know in the comments below!

- Tom