Why YouTube Thumbnails Matter 

PATREON: bit.ly/3LIDh9C heres the cool creators i shouted out! Ethereal Worlds: youtube.com/@ethereal_worlds CyberExBoyfriend (also great on tiktok): ru-vid.com/show-UCErOBKhcmmtJwGtB906ZQVQ Maria's House: youtube.com/@ilmutus riley: youtube.com/@smudgebapYT Mara: ru-vid.com mae: youtube.com/@maedotvod also heres a fun lil fatal frame vid i did: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bmpZZPM6uQ8.html

As someone who graduated with an ad/graphic design degree and later quit that field entirely because of how soulless of a job it is, I love your messy and unique thumbnails. My boss complaining about things that were perfectly readable not being legible enough really makes me love completely illegible art. Completely eschewing function to turn words into their own art is great. Enough creating for the lowest common denominator, we making for the highest uncommon denominator now.

ha wow I didn't expect me to pop up here thank you thor. my thumbnails are often described as "please stop making those" and "can you quit it with the thumbnails" so it's nice someone appreciates them. another bangin vid as always

Absolutely love how much you find and celebrate artistic expressions other people dismiss as crass. It’s great.

I remember in the old days of early RU-vid, there was a time where one of the most watched videos on the whole site reached that level purely because of the thumbnail -- a random frame, chosen by RU-vid, where a bent arm looked almost exactly like a vageen 😂

For many RU-vidrs the thumbnail is by far the best part of their videos.

Yay a Foreign shout 🤗

this is actually a huge reason as to why i love this channel. just the desire to make weird shit and all the aesthetic choices that go into it. keep doing your thang, thor

I'm flattered to see my video at 0:23 which has been watched all the way to the end, even though the thumbnail is boring! I've envied your thumbnails since I first saw them, and if mine ever get more interesting, it WILL be because I gave in to that envy. Great video!

Todd chilling with the musicians reminds me of Mike Matei's AVGN art with James inserted into the game. Very old school RU-vid stuff.

My favorite RU-vid thumbnail of all time is Nerrel's infamous Majora's Mask moon x Star Wars Special Edition CGI face, for his Majora's Mask 3D comparison video. It's just so hideous. And it got recommended to EVERYONE who ever watched a gaming-related video essay in 2018. I put off watching the video myself for so long because of how disgusting and obviously click bait-y it was. But that was a great video, and it kickstarted one of my favorite game analyze-reviewer-whatever channels with the perfect level of self-aware snark. The thumbnail was so hated that Nerrel just embraced it and made it his profile picture, and even his channel description labels himself as a creator of "some of the worst thumbnails to ever grace your recommended list". I always appreciate when a creator expresses their own voice through the thumbnail, and Nerrel has mastered the craft, with his trademark curt sarcasm bleeding out of every new upload.

Your thumbnails are by far the coolest I have seen on this platform. Them things inspired me to be creative and do better. Shoutout to you, Thor. Thank you.

Hoping this vid allows folks to see just how important that shit be, in a more grander scheme then "oh it's algo stuff". Visual design is such a huge key factor in making p. much any vid.

This gave me memories of old roblox game thumbnails Back in the time I was playing, (Late 2000s to early-mid 10s)at some point you couldn't actually make thumbnails per-say. Roblox would set the thumbnails for their games based of the last thing the devs were looking at when they mere making it. And most people making roblox games weren't really all that conscious about that. It essentially gave off the same energy as when youtube took a random part of the vid for a thumbnail. That being said there were some devs who played into it, and a way they tired to make a thumbnail was by making a block in a part of the game they'd never expect players to go to(or as an alternative it would work as like a greeting poster that ppl will see when they spawn in the game world. ), put a texture( or a decal) on one side of it and then quit the game while looking at it. Often times shit would be slightly misaligned, blurry or too zoomed in. I think after a certain update though, they changed the camera angles of auto-generated thumbnails. So you would immediately be able to tell which thumbnails were from an old ver because they would show that the texture was actually floating in some void under the map. Tonally they give of a similar vibe to early 3D ambient DnB type renders. But it wasn't very sleek because you could easily tell they were just learning Photoshop or made it in ms paint. Also I remember an old player made banner ad, idk if it was for one of those military/WoW clan RP groups or a game. But is was like: NOOB, PRO, BANHAMMER! Years(somewhere between 2010 and 2013) before that would actually be a template for those sorts of content farm vids. Hell Roblox User made banner ads in general were a vibe, You'd see some dude unironically wearing a fedora w shades with some devaint art OC angel wings and swords with a caption like. YOU WANNA BE LIKE HIM? JOIN THE SBCR(Super Blox Counter Rebellion) MILITARY NOW!

Gotta say, your and Hazels thumbnails have to be my favorites, yours solely because of vibes and style and Hazels because I always find something to watch/play after watching her videos and I’m able to look back on the thumbnails and spot the things I’ve come to love because of said video. Love the collages and as always love your work

Dear Thor, thanks for this : ) Genuinely. This is the kinda vibe I needed today. I've recently started toying around with thumbnail designs for future art analysis videos on PS1 games, that I one day hope to record and upload, and it's been a fun learning curve. I often look at thumbnails like yours and other folks to see what I like about their presentation, and it's cool to finally hear your take on thumbnail trends and everything. For me it's like the perfect timing. Also thanks for just sending out good vibes in general. Really love your vids, homie

wow. . . you popped off with this one. i'm gonna guess editing took a while but it was worth it. it's always rad to hear the creative process of peeps i like, and i think yours is super interesting. plus, the way u tell it is very entertaining and fun : ) i defo remember the early days of the boob-thumbnail, etc. i think youtube switching priority from "clicks" to "hours watched" had a massive impact on the thumbnail landscape, for example killing the boob-nails. thank you so much for the shoutout! you were defo a big influence on the way i do visuals. i'm excited for the LICENSED GAMES vid!!!

I remember a while back I started telling YT not to recommend me any channels that had the RU-vid Face in the thumbnail. My YT experience improved dramatically overnight.

At the end of this video and a long lost memory of my school years flashed into my brain just now. I used to thoroughly enjoy printing out and collect Deviantart stamps as well, a collection of stamps. It's the same vibe: crusty images mashed with text into a tiny box, to advertise their and thus your interests in one tiny "bite". Joyous, random images, colourful, simple and yet busy, tiny fandom stamps. Something so small and yet honestly, I think impacted young me a lot too. Limitations can really make art feel impactful when care is packed into it, for sure. Now I yearn more than anything to leave work and to be at home next to my printer, printing off youtube thumbnail art and stick them into a tiny book...

It was your CHAOtic thumbnail that got me, it was the stranger of paradise one the thumbnail matched the insane and fun vibes of the game and thus since then I’ve loved your unique and chill content

Hey Thor, lovely vid as always, and thanks for including Hazel (love her). Any chance you would do a video about your favorite music videos? I've always thought of music videos as a perfect outlet for short-form visual content, and the way in which they are built around the music can be so interesting. Or just reply with some of your faves :)

Love the minime shoutout, always thought of him in while watching your content. (in a positive way) Just chill vibes, but well spoken and nice to listen to.

i am so glad you made this vid because i'm a working graphic designer (I make tshirts lol) and unironically think your thumbnails are some of my favorite examples of design. theyre so different and strange (affectionate) and eyecatching, everything i think design should be and what i don't necessarily get to do that often. v cool ty

Thank you for a deep dive (basically a Masterclass)into the world of your aesthetics! I continue being inspired by your creative output. Adore seeing the ebb and flow of your creative process. It's like creation workflow but by the Thor Edition. This video came out at a needed time for me so thank you! I've gotten my family and friends into either your RU-vid videos or your music, next up is my coworkers.

good eye on jeremy parrish’s zine-y aesthetics! i think after he left 1up (or while he was still writing for them?)he started an online “zine” series called gamespite, and i always remember it having absolutely stellar graphic design. I think it was one one of my earlier encounters with game criticism too

Big smile crept across my face when you started showing your influences and process in the photoshop section. You’re one of my favourite internet artists now

this video does so much for my brain when i watch it. it explains things i've thought about the visual designs that I love which I haven't been able to put into words myself. it goes beyond that, it EXPLAINS where they come from and why they exist. the amount of contemporaries you list off here is like a breath of fresh air. never in my life to i hear or see any actual discussion of what goes into making the art that i love. specifically, the ideas behind it. god damn man. additionally, there's so much history here that I've physically lived through but never could pay close enough attention to the detail of. its so rad. this video. in general. this is like, something i'd want to take notes from. i probably will take a lot of notes from it. its something i've gotta get better at. this is a great video, man. i love it. thank you for making it.

If it counts for anything i would probably watch your videos even if i was blind your voice and music choices are very pleasant

Just gonna take a moment to say that I love your thumbnails and aesthetic vibe more than anyone else on the platform.

You and NakeyJakey are currently the best thing on youtube frfr keep the good work man

I've always enjoyed your design style since finding your channel. This was a fun watch.

When you started talking about spending most of your time on youtube as entertianment i finally felt that i could relate to someone. Like holy shit i dont know how much time i spent on this platform but i think it might be like 2% or even more of my lifetime even tho i love games and cinema, i feel like i know aall about that stuff from watching youtube videos of them, like your channel! Its insane

I've always love your thumbnails as a fuck you to the way the algorithm works, and so I'm glad you've made a whole video about your thought process regarding that. Thank your for the good food as always.

Very cool vid. I was vaguely aware of the changing trends of YT thumbnails, but I haven't really given them much thought. The changing style of your thumbnails built on iteration was fascinating to watch. Speaking of music-influenced thumbnails, I've realized that the HHC Bonkers album covers are absolutely fantastic at catching my attention. Something about the goofy caricatures of DJs smacked front and center of a colored background fires up my neurons.

Hearing you talk about thumbnails is even more interesting than I thought. I'd love to see more behind-the-thumbnails stuff, and/or knowing even more thumbnails you like which were made by other people

Evangelion title-card generator thumbnail supremacy. And your thumbnail game is on af.

Oh hi Thor! Always a great joy to see new video. These are so fun to watch.

wow i loved every bit of this. as someone who is very into youtube, and getting into design, you hit the nail on the head for what i've been feeling with this platform.

genuinely amazing video, top 5 from your channel for me. great job mr. high heels!

Watching a video about thumbnails that I haven't seen the thumbnail of because I have the bell rung.

I adored your artwork and design in this video and it was wonderful hearing about your process. Something about your rebellious style really scratches an itch for some reason... Can't wait for the gollum video :D

Love your stuff as always. This video in particular really makes me want to try harder with my own creative works.

An Infinite Review thumbnail? With the video fully watched? I knew you were person of culture, but this just solidifies it.

man. i think i could go stupid insane in regards to the thumbnails i've seen just on vocaloid and related stuff, let alone decade and almost half of being into it (haha voice synths go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)

As the person who I think makes the best thumbnails on RU-vid, I'm glad you made a video on your thumbnail philosophy. The PS2 thumbnail is my all time favorite. And I also appreciate showing your contemporaries that you like

YOU HAVE THE BEST THUMBNAILS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love your thumbnail style. I also love thumbnails that are just a landscape shot from a game with a clean semi-transparent title on them centered. I love drawn thumbnails. Many styles appeal to me.

I WANT YOUR THUMBNAILS AS WALLPAPERS PLEASE T-T they look so good

As a south korean man, i was wondering what is up with the sudden korean in your thumbnail. Now i know. Thank thor!

There's always at least one part of each of your videos that make me lol. Keep up the great work Thor ❤

Someday i'll make my crap to youtube and you are one of my main inspirations. Thanks for your entertaining videos and your work. I like how u don't give a crap about "trends" and just do whatever you enjoy to talking about. You are part of "the good" retro gaming youtube.

Great video as always. Your RU-vid thumbnails inspired me to hand make a shit ton of disgusting ps2 custom covers for fun. So thank you. And also thanks for the Jeremy Parish recommendation. Surprised he dosent have many viewers, he's very good.

god this video is so dense. enough small details that u could comb over it for an hour. i love the work put into the city settings

I only found your channel a couple days ago, but the fuckin idk fuck yeah looking thumbnails hooked me in instantly

yooo that LGR plug tho. you, Hazel, LGR and Sean Seanson are my favorite! im always looking forward to your content~

Very nice visuals in the video. Interesting topic. Good job!

This was really interesting! Thank you for making this.

I must admit that I never thought too deeply about thumbnail art before beyond some instinctual sense of appeal or rejection, but it really is a very unique medium with its own well defined stylistic eras and movements. It'd be such a shame if we lost all of this due to some yt censoring shenanigans. BTW I'm not dyslexic or anything but I do have some mild astigmatism that makes certain fonts a pain to read so if the text gets too small or confusing I have a tendency to just see it as more of a solid block of visual noise rather than actual text so I never truly bothered to attempt reading your thumbnails when they're extra busy, I just saw them as another visual element to the piece. Kinda like how some artists use a layer of text as part of the background that isn't really meant to be read and is there just for the sake of creating a recognizable texture.

The voice track being distorted by the fan is a moment of brilliance

Seeing that you dropped a thumbnail video (a month ago now) was both odd, since I associate these types of videos with bad advice clickbait channels, and understandable, since you're the primary youtuber I think of when it comes to style. I actually needed this video from you specifically without knowing it beforehand, so thank you.

Bless you THH, loved this whole experience - uniquely produced, uniquely insightful, uniquely you

Sick topic from you. I love how you wore it all on your sleeve. From inspiration from mind and friend. Sometimes even foe? Either way. Really enjoyed watching this as I also rewatch you entire channel... again... for the 3rd time.

this whole video is incredible, i love the contextualization of the ideas through this weird collage world. you clearly did a lot of work to make it feel like a real place and i'm stunned at how you pulled it off...

Somewhat unrelated to the video but I was reminded of it when you started talking about music. I've been playing Lunacid recently and I was super surprised to see your online name appear in the music credits going through the forbidden library. I didn't know you were involved in that game so I was super excited. I really enjoy the music you've made for it and just wanted to let you know. I love the work you do. I'm not finished with lunacid yet but I can't wait to hear more tracks

this was such a fun video! i've always loved your graphic style

Sad fat Jack Harlow is the best roast I've heard in ages 😂

Acidgrafix definitely gets close to your style, but it's definitely not entirely that. Very unique. Keeps me coming back for sure

I used to go to a lot of analogue game jams and in one of those I made a game called mixtape of the beast. sadly the game itself is trash but the art I made for it is like the kind of thumbnails I would make as a youtuber if I were one. I had to go very fast so I grabbed a bunch of stock photos from adobe's canva rip off and tore them to shreads with effects and colors until they were unrcognizable. my goal was to make these images unrecognizable but still make the game look as a e s t h e t i c as I possibly could. the result was a horrendous but beautiful mess that I love to this day. I feel like your thumbnails are really well thought out but despite caring alot abou them to you dont seem to get too precious with them and you arent afriad to toss them in the blender until they come out just right which i respect.

Love this video, super interesting! Tbh you're the one who inspired me to be more creative and think a lot more about my interest, no matter how niche. I don't even remember how I fell on your channel, but for sure your thumbnail and your video style (which they both reflect the same unique cool vibe) is what made me attracted to your stuff. Tbh I should encourage myself to ooze my style onto my thumbnails too, especially considering that I love to draw. Also insane to me that as soon as I heard that iconic "hey" I knew it was the shopkeep in sonic 06 lmfao. Oh and one more thing as a fellow ffx nerd, love that picture of tittus open firefight at point black on Seymour. I wish it was real. Like in og ffx because that's how I felt lol. I have never heard of that ff spinoff game though that is insane (Yes I'm insane and read everything in those post notes)

I've loved how different your thumbnails are compared to other youtubers and I was wondering how you made them. This was awesome.

My favorite of your thumbnails is still the PC-98 one. It has actually nothing to do with its looks, but its my favorite video. So everytime my YT goes "Hey, look!" I go "Well, time to watch it again, I guess." Love the style of your other thumbnails, too.

I think the first video I saw by you was the fashion in final fantasy one, I remember liking the yellow in that background. also really like how the way you use text in a kazari-eigo way kind of emphasises the idea of letters as signifiers of something, and more like, cool symbols that signify something dunno if it's understandable the way I said it, but ye big inspo momento

I think your style is some kind of authentic internet aesthetics. Always loved it.

I really respect your insistence on positivity with all your videos, there's so much negativity online as is, I too wouldn't want to contribute to that if i created stuff for it

That licensed game thumbnail is gonna make that video pop off lmao it’s so good

God this was such a visual treat, yum yum yum

One of the main reasons I started watching your videos was precisely your thumbnails, which are my favorite of all over RU-vid, i'm glad this video is here to highlight the importance they have ! 4:33 Your cat sounds like that one Resident Evil 1 sound effect 😂

Honestly a youtuber of which I really like his thumbnails myself is Sean Seanson due to encapsulating the whole urban/retrofuturistic PS1 aesthetics vibe pretty well. Hell his Psygnosis' video thumbnail is probably my favorite one that I've seen and I hope I manage to do something as good as that someday

I’ve been getting inspired to make my own thumbnails look more interesting or dynamic because of your thumbnails, as before I would just add text with any asset that fit the mood I or the comic/work I was dubbing over was going for Watching this has gotten me even more inspired to get a little more weird with it idk, like one thing I do now is sneak the name of the main ship that’s in the dub(if it involves it) somewhere in the thumbnail, just to give it some texture or whatever idk

a bit late on the comment but i want to say that i think it's really swag to see a topic video like this. really neato : ) also just getting to hear ur thot process on graphic design and showing other examples has gotten me hella inspo. so thanky for that. a very pikaswag video thor. love ur face love ur show.

Another amazing vid on the cataloge

i like the recurring train visuals in your videos

the visuals in this video are immaculate. these fake 3d-2d looking environments, the lighting, its idk its just vibes as hell. also your thumbnails are soooooooooooooo cool. very excited for the next video in that little preview also hey we like some of the same youtubers i see and now from here i have a few more to check out so thats neat

damn you are pretty good at making areas i feel like i can click on any object in the video and get a blurb of text like a point and click adventure game

I always strive to divert from the classic thumbnail traditions, it's an underrated art form!

yeah, your thumbnails always caught my way and in a way inspired me to not be as afraid of going experimental ive been messin with my thumbnails for years now, and ill probably keep doin it - but I'd like to think some of the thumbnails are good (edit: definitely relate to finding A New Technique and immediately going "holy shit i need to use this everywhere" - my current phase is the dither arc, dunno what the next one will be) also hope you make a 3 hour video on the penis man i need to understand his lore

Just got into Viper, glad i found a socially responsible rapper that satirically roasts the - wait what happened?

I'm an animator and illustrator and yeah your thumbnails have been a massive artistic influence for me over the past few years

I always loved your aesthetic focused videos.

A rare glimpse into the mind of a genius. Been subbed since 700 subscribers and I've seen your art grow and evolve. Some of your thumbnails are utterly inspired, trend-setting masterpieces. Others make my eyes bleed, but in a good way. I'm here for all of it. Keep it up!

I think it’s dumb when I see thumbnails change after being uploaded , I get why creators do it but they usually get worse. I wish RU-vid would relax and let creators be creative

Love your videos, man. Especially your way of speaking.

I dont know if im even supposed to be watching this now. Its been like 20s 💀

Being one of those Anime Image jpg with some jank edits ripped Trance & EDM (calling it Electronica at peak cringe times) music uploaders with a rather large channel pre content ID in the 00's, hearing about that bootleg scene on youtube really brought me back. What is your opinion on extensions like DeArrow & SponsorBlock that allow users to submit & vote to change Thumbnails & titles as well as edit out parts of content creators original uploads? I've found with DeArrow, it really changes the whole red arrows and faces and the user submissions do a better job at getting my attention & intrigue than red circles.

I hope the next trend in thumbnails look like the over the top late 90s early 2000s southern hip hop album covers

I love how that Buck-Tick reference made my day lol

ohhhh my god i. i dont even know where to BEGIN man every new video i watch from u, my perspective on how to make, perceive, and determine what i find to be art that resonates with me is expended in ways i couldnt even have realized on my own. i'd be here typing out a HUGE paragraph, i jus wanna say thank you for being unapologetically you, doing shit just bc u can, constantly experimenting with new things artisically, and in doing all of the above, inspiring others to do the same : > it feels so... im not sure if validating or humanizing is the word? seeing where u got ur inspiration from some thumbnails tickled me, bc i finally got to see into the eye of a creator i highly respect and whadda ya know, they TOO pull gradients and compositions and other elements that they Just Like into their art ^ w ^ i... suppose it's cool to say then, that for a solid year i used the Walbaum font for everything in my vids bc of u, and i stg damn near every frame of your vids are paintings and there are SO many split second INSANE high effort moments that i couldnt help pulling from. tysm for shouting out other cool ppl that i will now check out, ty for everything u do, keep doing u, i hope to be half as creative as everyone mentioned here someday 🫡

A peek into the mind of an artist. Really enjoyed it and looking forward to yor next pieces. Have a happy day

I love how RU-vid is visualized as a post-apocalyptic dystopia town in this video

If you told me Thor would ever talk about Jaystation in a video I wouldn’t have believed you