YouTube: how a title and thumbnail work together

On YouTube people never see the title or the thumbnail alone. They see both, side by side. Treat them as one message in two parts.

Social · 5 min read

Give each a different job

The title explains. The thumbnail makes you feel something or shows the outcome. If they say the same thing, you waste half the space.

  • Title: “I Redesigned My Studio in One Weekend”
  • Thumbnail text: “ONE WEEKEND” (plus a picture of the finished room)

Keep the title under about 60 characters

Titles longer than that get cut off in search on most devices. Put the important words at the start. In itistitle’s YouTube format, the Create page keeps a separate field for the video title, so you can write the title and thumbnail text separately.

Use curiosity honestly

A gap between the thumbnail and the title is what makes people click, but the video has to deliver. Viewers who feel misled click away, and that hurts you more than a lower click rate.

Keep the corner clear

The video length badge sits in the bottom-right corner. Don’t put text there.

Sizes and file

1280 × 720 px, 16:9, under 2 MB in JPG, PNG or GIF. itistitle’s YouTube thumbnail format exports exactly this as a PNG.

Test and learn

YouTube Studio lets you compare thumbnails for the same video. Try one variant with bigger text and a calmer one, and keep the winner.

Keep reading

Questions, ideas or a design you’d like to see?

Write to us and we’ll reply by email. You can also write directly to hello@itistitle.com.