Quickstart Guide To Making Social Media Thumbnails

As a content creator, you spend hours perfecting your content so you can get those likes, shares, and subs. While good content is important, creating a good thumbnail is the most important thing you can do as a content creator. A thumbnail image is the first impression a potential viewer has of your content. A good, well designed thumbnail will grab their attention and convince them to watch your content, but a poorly designed thumbnail might convince them that your content isn’t worth watching – even before they click on it!

In this course, I will show you how to quickly and easily design your own thumbnail images using open source software and creative commons (free) images that you can easily find on the web. This is a practical course intended for beginners. I will NOT make you an image editing expert or a master of digital design. Rather, I will show you how to quickly create good looking thumbnails without getting you lost or confused.

Some of the things you will learn in this class include:

• Finding free images online that you can use in your thumbnails
• How to use SVG images to create a “clip art” effect for your thumbnails
• How to use free and open-source image editing programs like GIMP and Inkscape
• Removing a background from selfies to use in thumbnails
• Combining the best parts of different stock images to create the perfect thumbnails

  Note: In this course, we will use images that are freely available from several online websites. Although I have provided a general overview of the licensing terms of these images, it is your responsibility to make sure you comply with the terms of those sites.