Love what you are seeing?
We have created several courses where we dive more into the technical aspects. So, if you like what you read here, you'll love our courses!!
By:
Greg Jenkins
|
February 9, 2026
|
Technology
YouTube Thumbnail Design may feel like a superficial topic - but there's more to it than meets the eye.
The thumbnails you use for your videos have one job - to grab someone's attention.
There are lots of tactics for this, but one tip that I've seen widely recommended is to use a human face in your thumbnail.
Like this:



Here's the dealio - a few years ago I read this post from Matt over at MoneyLab - it has a handful of suggestions for improving your YouTube reach.
I was able to follow along with most of them - and actually wrote up my own blog post as I implemented his recommendations.
But the thumbnail one eluded me - because I didn't have an easy way to remove the background from images.
Until now.
Lemme show you how:
Pretty useful, eh?
Here's the link to the site I use to remove the backgrounds >>
And here's Pixlr, the free site I use for photo editing >>
Listen, I'll be the first to admit that I'm no designer.
So the magical ability to add my mug into images I create isn't going to fix that overnight - but, in the right hands this tactic can be really useful.
Hope you found it valuable - take care.
We have created several courses where we dive more into the technical aspects. So, if you like what you read here, you'll love our courses!!