The Truth Behind Scroll-Stopping Thumbnails w/ Brittney Carlini | Ep 452

0:00Be better than AI because also a lot of people, which is like the emergence of AI in the last few months, everybody is kind of making thumbnails that look the same and there's pushback from creators happening for it. So I think there is still a chance like AI is super daunting, but I think there's still like going to be a need for thumbnail designers for at least a couple more years, I'm hoping. My name is Brittney Carlini and you are listening to The Future.

0:29Chris Do: so for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself say your full name and tell us a little bit about your backstory yeah so i'm britney carlini i've been a thumbnail strategist and designer full-time since 2022 because that's when i went to my first vid summit and so like prior to that i was freelancing graphic design but then i found this like youtube world because my husband started a YouTube channel and I had the graphic design background and we couldn't afford to like outsource that to somebody. So I was like, OK, I'm going to teach myself Photoshop. And then I started doing thumbnails for him and they were quite bad for like a year and a half.

1:10But then they started getting good. And when they did, his friends kind of came out of the woodworks and they're like, yo, like who does your thumbnails? And And if they knew I was doing them, they would ask if I had availability to do them for them as well. And then it kind of just started growing like that. And then that's when I went to the 2022 Vid Summit. Got so inspired because that was my first like real YouTube experience. And also there's just such a market gap for thumbnails. So I was like, I think I'm just going to go all in and like really niche down and do that.

1:43Chris Do: That's amazing. Okay. A lot of different things going on here. So your husband was essentially the guinea pig. In the time in which you worked on his channel, what did you learn from doing that that made the thumbnails start to work? I think really with thumbnails, it's a lot of reps. And like even with the designers I train, there's so much I can teach them and show them. But like at the end of the day, it kind of does become reps. So like for me, it took a year and a half of reps. I had no references, no one to like help guide me. He had like a decent eye for packaging at the time. So he helped me kind of get better with it.

2:20And then he introduced his friend Leon to me, who was one of my first additional thumbnail clients. And he had a really good eye for packaging. And so when we started working together, he was like really, really intense with his feedback to me. and at first I was kind of like put off by it because I thought I was doing things right from like my traditional graphic design background but what I learned is I actually had to like unlearn some stuff that I learned from traditional graphic design to make like a successful thumbnail because like there are a lot of overlapping principles and things but there are things that change like negative space doesn't really exist in thumbnails that's like we want to close up the gaps.

3:02We don't want any breathing room to some extent. Yeah.

3:05Chris Do: I'm curious what Leon said to you. Do you recall any of the specific things he said to you, which was like, yo, bro, step back. But then it would turn out to be true. Probably like increasing the texture on his skin. So like we'll use this video for an example. He was doing a video on like focusing better or something like that or like how to decrease your dopamine, dopamine detox, something along those lines. and the concept was him putting this microscopic pill like up to his eye and then the composition is this really like zoomed in image of his eye and like the the comparison between that and the pill and at first I think what I did was I just edited it edited it in like a clean way where like I probably made his skin look good enhanced the colors the lighting but didn't really like adapt to the details of that concept.

4:00So like after so many revisions and notes from him, we added like a bunch of very red veins to the eye. We added additional redness to the eye just to show like stress or like sleep deprivation, like the before taking the pill for the benefits. So he had to walk me through a lot of like building upon the story because it's like, Maybe I was good at editing certain visual elements, but I obviously had no grasp on like thumbnail concepts and like the psychology behind them and evoking intrigue. There was this other thumbnail where he's like holding a bar of soap, but it's made of steel. and I don't remember like what the point of the video was or like the topic or anything but it's basically just punched in composition of his hand holding this steel bar of soap and then the background is this like pink bath that like tile bathroom environment and again I probably just like edited that to look pretty visually like maybe I color corrected the hand one thing I do remember doing right is I really enhanced the texture on the steel soap to look even more recognizable like steel.

5:18Because I think whatever source image he sent me, I don't think was immediately obvious that it was metal. So that was a plus. But he was like, we should add, again, tension. That's the word we use in the community and like in this world is that. He wanted me to add more tension to it. So that came with like adding a bunch of like scratches on his palms and just like visual damage. And then I do think he even suggested the pink bathroom. I think I probably had like a low contrast wall or background at first. And he was like, well, let's do this. It is bright and it's a little probably too saturated bright pink, but at least it's like a recognizable environment.

6:00And then he had me also add steam like behind the hand, like between the hand and the wall. So that way it kind of looks like, it like paints the picture that he's actually in the shower, like mid using it, like telling that story.

6:14Chris Do: Let me put you to the test, if I may. Asking for a friend. But let's say you had a video that was called, you don't need a lifetime of therapy, do this instead. And it's with a therapist who has some radical approaches to therapy. It could even be something kind of like, something that showcases the aftermath if you were to do the pieces of advice that the therapist is sharing so maybe it is something a little bit more artistic not in like a an unserious way but like maybe there's a person sitting on a beach and the composition is super zoomed out and they're facing away they're just like looking at like looking out at the water as if to just something like kind of conceptual to show peace.

7:03Yeah.

7:04Chris Do: So inner peace. It could be a beach or it could be something a little bit more relatable. Any just sort of beautiful, like beauty shot scenery that feels very meditative and relaxed. Now I'm going to ask you to do something kind of strange, which is unpack your thinking process. Why those words? Why those phrases? Why that scene? So I think about things in sections of like different moments. So it's like one moment we picture is maybe like the pre-advice moment where I'd have to think about this a little bit more, but maybe there's even a concept where the person is in despair. There's some sort of imagery that indicates despair prior to the advice.

7:48Or then the next concept or category would be the actual advice being given. So that's kind of like the first couple examples we talked about was like literally showcasing the advice. And then there's like a subset of that where it's like maybe someone's actually implementing the advice with the journaling or whatever other habit we would brainstorm for them to be actively practicing. And then there's like the aftermath moment, the result, basically, like what could things look like or what could you feel like after implementing that advice? And I do that even with Jake's thumbnails for context.

8:29Jake builds very strange things. He usually builds vehicles, weapons or any sort of gadgets out of trash. And so I'm always trying to brainstorm like what's going to show off his build the best. And then sometimes if I run into kind of like a trickier build, I break it down into like using it, about to use it, and then after using it. So like a weapon, like about to fire it, mid-firing it, or the destruction after firing it.

8:57Chris Do: So you're essentially scrubbing the timeline to find the greatest moment of tension. Yeah. So, okay, for example, I don't know if a visual example would help. but there's this one video where he built a jet powered car and it's basically this little go cart and it has like 10 or 12 of those Ryobi leaf blowers on it and it actually goes insanely fast and so for one of our concepts we did this is like an old video at this point it's like two years old the concept is like a behind three-quarter shot of Jake in the cart in the jet powered car and And he's like looking back at the viewer all like freaked out, concerned because ahead of him is the railroad and the railroad crossing signs are like coming down, like about to close.

9:47So it provides the tension of like, is he going to try to book it through that before they completely close all the way? That's usually how I think of concepts.

9:58Chris Do: Okay. Yeah. So that's your pre-action moment? Pre-action, yeah. it's like you're pulling back this slingshot. Yes. You're holding it there. Yes. Lots of tension because something's going to go forward. Yes. And you construct a scene as which the vehicle is facing away from camera, but he looks back to get a little face value. Yeah. And a probably goofy expression like that. Nothing too over the top. I want it to be subtle and realistic. Really? With him, so stylistically, the way I actually edit it, it can afford to be somewhat stylized. I put together this like style spectrum for my thumbnail course I'm making.

10:34Basically, one end is the super raw, realistic screen grab thumbnail style that you could do. And then in the middle, I call that semi stylized. It's kind of people like like where me and my husband try to be, where I try to be with Hope Scope. Again, just keeping in mind audience because they both have younger viewers and older viewers that enjoy the content. And then there's the other end of the spectrum, which is just I think I just call it stylized. And that's kind of like the content that mostly appeals to kids. So like Matthew Beam, Ben Asler, creators like that. stylistically we try to aim for like that middle area but I always want to keep the body language and the emotional reaction pretty realistic because I think with any audience it just is going to sell it a bit better and I think people will always watch aged up content it's really hard for people to watch aged down content so yeah I try to keep it very like realistic accurate to the story.

11:36Chris Do: What you described makes perfect sense to me and not obvious. But once you say it's like, yeah, duh, I think that's a sign of a good idea. Okay. So you have it going somewhere and you add tension by the railroad crossing. You don't need to show the railroad's too complicated, the train coming. We all know that there's a finite amount of time. So there's this sense of urgency and speed that needs to be conveyed without literally showing that. Yeah. Okay. Did you ever explore an aftermath on that one? Not an aftermath, but the other concept we did was a mid-action shot. So it's like a low angle of him, again, frontal three-quarter view.

12:14And he's got his helmet. In both of these concepts, he's wearing like a motorcycle helmet. But for the pre-action shot, it's up so that you can see his face and like that emotional expression that we've been talking about. But then in the mid-action shot, it's down. He's just looking forward. We've got a lot of like realistic motion blur and like debris being picked up from the pavement and then we also have within like the smoke and the debris that he has like trailing behind him I put a um bright red sports car as if he like this crappy little build he made is beating a sports car which we can get into why like it's okay to add details that didn't necessarily happen yeah what is that clickbait I think of clickbait as a spectrum.

13:04I don't think of it as a negative word. I think like you don't want to be super underwhelming and boring, but you also don't want to be like super misleading. I also think your thumbnail concept should represent the experience of the video rather than the literal outcome of the video. So that's why we feel comfortable putting in like slightly exaggerated details into our thumbnail concepts, because, again, you also have to understand like the contents of your own video. Jake, he's very animated when building these builds. It's very fun. It's not really like there's some like aged up building channels to where it's all about like literal tools and the actual like in-depth processes.

13:47His is more, he does showcase a little bit of that, but it's more fun. He does a lot of clone shots. And then there's also like this secondary lore that he's made or he's put into his videos for years. And it's literally like a made up comic book lore that he also is actually turning into a comic book currently. So that's why we feel comfortable with that level of like exaggeration.

14:14Chris Do: Real value shows up in reliability you don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone all-season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence-inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride, no matter the road. Season after season. Firestone all-season tires. For durability you can count on, just like people count on you. Firestone. Always dependable. Since 1900.

14:44Chris Do: so Drigo is wondering some of the advice you're giving right now your whole process is going against what he believes to be best practices which is something like where you want to pull a moment from the timeline and kind of build upon that so that when they see the video kind of it's not out of sync how would you respond to that I've definitely heard that as well I think of it as like an added bonus like if you're making this video that's super high lift crazy maybe never been done before. It would be great if that type of thing was kind of confirmed early on in the video. Like if you're making a video where you're setting some sort of world record and it's a 20 minute long video and you don't even like get to any sort of action of it until like 15 minutes in like the second half, then I probably wouldn't advise doing that.

15:32I'd say still make the video, but maybe just like try to introduce some like action shots earlier on. but everything else again it's like what I was saying with Jake like the rest of the video the energy is very exciting and the tone of it matches the thumbnail that we decide to go with and I'll use this example too there's this video where he made a mech suit he built a mech suit and so what that is it's kind of like I think it's like a robot suit I think it's a gaming term but he's sitting inside this crazy build and like one arm is like this giant boxing glove fist that you can like punch out and then on the other fist there's like a cannon that like literally launches like potatoes I think and so in the thumbnail it's him inside of it there's something launching out of the cannon there's motion blur on the big fist punching it's almost like he's in this dirt field and there's debris and like bricks and dirt piles all around him as if to insinuate.

16:33Chris Do: He's broken all that stuff. Yes. Yeah. So no, that didn't actually happen. If anything, the destruction in the videos is nothing compared to that. It's kind of like usually he'll damage boxes through like things like that. But the video is just so with his lore that he puts into it, there's so much action happening within that. and in the first like minute of the video there's again high action scenes happening with the lore I wish I could remember specifically what was happening but I remember writing it down that there's like with his characters there's like exciting action bits happening so that's again why we feel comfortable doing that so I would say try to confirm the click earlier on but it's not like a deal breaker i'm gonna go and share something that i the reason why i don't like these best practices things because there's industries that are way more established that we can look at and see what they do and i'm talking about movies because movies have existed longer than youtube yeah so there are different jobs that every person needs to do the job the director and the editor is to make an incredible film the job of the marketing team is to get people to go to the theater to buy a ticket and so they will cut a different trailer they'll have different logos they'll have different posters and never once do you watch a poster or look at a poster it's like that's the film and if we think of some of the great movie posters say alien the very first one directed by really scott you see this egg and you see cracks in it and then you see the line in space no one will hear you scream yeah that line is never said ever that egg is never presented that way and doesn't even quite look like that but it's captivating enough that it's like what is coming out of the egg as it's cracking open in jaws one of the big tentpole pictures from steven spielberg there's a tiny woman swimming across horizontally that we can see her then we see this behemoth beast come up that never happens like that and the size of the shark relative to the person but there's so much tension there so the job of the marketing team is to get people to go to the movie to buy a ticket and the job of the director and the editor to get those people to have a great experience.

18:49Chris Do: Spielberg's job is once you're there, to keep you there and get you excited and talking about the film for days, weeks, months afterwards. So we're not in charge of that when we're talking about packaging. So you still have to make a good cookie. So if your cookie sucks, there's nothing I can do. I'm just packaging up crap. So if the editor doesn't do a good job of hooking you at the beginning, then there's new problems. Of course, I see the problem that Drigo's bringing up, which is you make a thumb and a title so good that they get into it. And I was like, it's not living up to that. That's a problem.

19:20So if you over promise something clickbait, then it's a problem. Yeah.

19:26Chris Do: Okay. How would you like to respond to what he just brought up? Yeah. So I think like the best thumbnail and title in the world, even if it's accurate to the video, isn't going to save a bad video. So at that point, I would blame execution. if you know you made a solid video and it is just like not getting views it's probably a packaging or a topic problem but the video execution could be really good but maybe the topic you decided to make the video on just isn't like super like popular or received you know and then you'll see if you have really high click-through rate but then super low avd so like people everyone's clicking on it, but then no one's staying to watch it.

20:11The packaging is probably misleading or the video is falling super flat. Okay.

20:16Chris Do: We're coming towards the end here. I have a couple more questions for you. Talk about AI and how people are using AI to do thumbnails. Yes. So I personally use AI every day to work on my thumbnails. It's super helpful to me. I don't think I could make certain thumbnails without it personally. I hope it doesn't get to the point where it starts understanding psychology of thumbnail concepts and like how to target certain audiences because that might be the day. However, I will say there's people that are getting into thumbnail design like right now. So they have immediate access to AI without any like prior training reps, learning anything.

20:59And I think that's also a problem because it's like they're generating images that like could potentially look good, but they have no idea what they're even looking for when they generate the images. So no matter how far AI goes, I think it's super imperative that you have like the fundamental understandings of like thumbnails, design, everything, because again, you're just like not even going to know what to look for when you're using AI.

21:26Chris Do: Drigo's experience with thumbnail designers have been, say, not so great, that they charge what they charge and they show these examples. But when it actually comes to proving themselves in the work, they fall apart. They're good at copying and emulating, but not actually coming with real ideas. So what is your take on this? How did you learn this? So I will say there are a lot of people in the thumbnail design world that execute the design. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't like the concepts part of it. So they usually only offer the design execution. But I think for me, like it just bled over from the graphic design learning because like obviously we learn how to tell a story within a single image whether it's like a poster or even like a logo you know like you can kind of like tell a story within a logo or like a book cover so I think there's a lot of research to be done in that realm and usually how I tell people to like try to do that is I usually tell them to take their minds out of like being a YouTube either creator or designer and just put your mind in that of like a consumer and so you should scroll YouTube and analyze three things and one is like what's catching your eye why or why not why do you find it interesting or not interesting and then explain why or why not and then why did you ultimately end up clicking on the video or not.

22:49And just kind of like analyzing your own habits as a consumer. I think that helps a lot. And then while you're doing that, you write down the questions that are being evoked in your mind. Like, what are you curious about? And then that's, I think, going to inadvertently help you with like storytelling and putting intrigue in a thumbnail concept.

23:11Chris Do: So you say use AI all the time. What's your AI tech stack? Yeah. So I love the literal firefly within Photoshop beta. I use that for a lot of little things. Like I use it for like removing, it can't really generate, like if you were to like highlight or select half the image, it can't really generate that much information. It does kind of a terrible job, but they introduced Gemini and like flux within that same thing. So instead of just using Firefly, you can use those in Photoshop beta. And those obviously do a really good job at generating images. But what I mostly do is I go to the Magnific website.

23:48And that's where I'll do like image upscaling or like image generation. And I believe that's it.

23:57Chris Do: Oh, pretty thin tech stack there. Yeah. Fascinating. We got to get around copyright issues a lot. So if you use a image from a famous person, either the famous person come after you or the photographer. And that's been the case. So I often will use Midjourney to generate a version of it. So it's referencing that, but it's not those literal pixels and from that i can use hicksfield or or leonardo to upres things using either topaz or the leonardo thing to upres and you can use some of these ai engines to add more realistic pores of skin because sometimes it looks too airbrushed it looks too fake and you can do that and you can also use a combination of firefly and illustrator where you draw a vector drawing of the shape in the general direction that you want and it works really well when you do that you actually give it a starter shape and you give it a style reference and you say bang this out firefly's weakness is in just raw image generation this is not what it's good at i think they are acknowledging that by allowing third-party ai generative engines in there yeah so we love hicksfield we love mid-journey all of a sudden open ai has come out with image 2.0 and it's freaking rock solid i was ready to give up on them but my god is it good it's especially good with realism and typography.

25:14Okay.

25:15Chris Do: It is nuts. It's super sticky. Like if you give it a block of text, it won't do that garbled text that Mid Journey and all the other AIs will do. So every day there's a new tool, something out there. Don't get obsessed with the tools. Learn the tool that you have, that you have access to. Yeah. And just learn how to compose, to light and to tell a story. And you're going to have skills that are what is referred to as a durable skill. So there's a lot of people who are out there concerned that it's harder and harder to get a job doing this because AI is producing everything and it's kind of cutting out the bottom end.

25:46Chris Do: What do you recommend for someone to do today to get started so they can get their first client? I would just say be better than AI because also a lot of people, which is like the emergence of AI in the last few months, everybody is kind of making thumbnails that look the same and there's pushback from creators happening for it. And they really just want things to look even more raw and realistic. Or if they want it to look edited, they'd almost prefer for it to look. kind of like not perfectly edited in Photoshop. So I think there is still a chance like AI is super daunting, but I think there's still like going to be a need for thumbnail designers for at least a couple more years, I'm hoping.

26:24But yeah, again, just to get started, like just make sure to build up your portfolio. Even if you don't DM these thumbnail drafts to creators, just make them on your own just to like train your eye, look at your like study what you're even looking at, train your observation skills, get your Photoshop skills enhanced, because I didn't even know Photoshop before I went into all of this. And then, yeah, if you ever feel like you made a concept better than what a creator currently has posted with, then feel free to send it to them.

26:53Chris Do: I found our conversation to be very stimulating. You got me thinking about how to look at thumbnails in a different way. So I'm grateful for that. And I just like your general demeanor about how you talk about things. If people are excited about this, Brittany, what can they do? How can they find you or work with you or enroll in a program? Yeah. So I am on Twitter. Pretty sure my username is Britt Carlini with two T's. Follow me on there. DM me on there. I am working on this thumbnail course. I have had it in my mind for like two years, but for some reason could not bring myself to start working on it until January.

27:30But I think I should be almost done with it in like the next few weeks, which is really exciting because I just want to get it out there. Now, with that said, I have to figure out where I'm going to host it. I'm thinking just some sort of education platform like Thinkific, Kajabi, one of those. I will post updates about that on my Twitter when I figure that out.

27:52Chris Do: So course launch to be determined sometime in the very near future, probably by the time you see this, it'll be available because who knows when we'll get this out thanks for coming on the show appreciate it yeah thank you for having me this is so full circle so it's so fun