8 Laws of Unperfect Packaging for YouTube

I've worked on 5,000+ thumbnails that have been clicked over 10 billion times.

The one lesson I've learned? There's no such thing as "perfect design".

Every niche has different humans that are interested in different things.

So the only "perfect" design is the one that interests them enough to get a click.

That said, there are a few laws to follow to help you make something humans will click on:

1. NO INTEREST HURDLES

To give your packaging broad appeal, do your best to remove the need for background info. The more you require viewers to know pre-click, the more hurdles to becoming interested. Take this video as an example:

When I was working with Astrum on this video (and on packaging in general), a major focus was making his videos accessible to more people. He had the classic "curse of knowledge". If this video had been titled "Final Update from New Horizons", drastically fewer people would have been interested and this video wouldn't be sitting at the top of his most popular video list.

For the thumbnail: I was watching through the video and came across this image and asked "is this really what Pluto looks like?" It's a unique look that nobody had covered before and the text was as easy as telling people "hey, this is actually what Pluto looks like", which makes them go to the title for more context (Law 3).

I’m not saying to be overly general. (more on this in Law 4) I’m saying to open up the opportunity for interest to as many relevant people as possible.

PS: I worked on this as part of a team at Electrify, so I need to give a special shoutout to those guys + Alex the channel owner! I helped put icing on an already delicious cake with this video. There's a lot more happening beyond the packaging to get this to 18M.

2. USE A FILTER

How you package your video determines who is interested. Meet your audience where they are already watching. Even if you hate the style of thumbnails, start by emulating them with a 20% twist or improvement. Then build/iterate from there.

If you transform the look completely, you may end up targeting a wildly different audience (or not target one at all).

Here's a story from my time helping Bobby Parrish:

BEFORE:

Bobby was using primarily graphic thumbnails, like these:

The issue(s):

➜ Busy beyond belief (more on this in Law 5)

➜ Who is the interest filter set for? It's unclear.

➜ Speaking of interest hurdles: outside of the Costco logo, there's nothing broadly appealing to catch the eye and draw people in.

DURING:

When I set out to help Bobby update his packaging, I took a look at others in the shopping/savings/health niche. A few things stood out:

➜ Nearly everyone had shots inside the stores

➜ Most were holding products of some sort

➜ Nobody had optimized thumbnails

We saw what the niche was doing (even though they weren't fully optimized by any means) and twisted/improved them by 20%. We didn't want to alienate the viewers or attract an audience that wasn't interested in the information.

RESULTS:

We landed here:

This video was the fastest to hit 1M views on Bobby's channel (6 days).

The previous record holder? Took 6 months. (same topic/video style as well)

I also helped with intro and video structure, but I'll save that for another time :)

3. PACKAGING LOOPS

Beyond stopping the scroll, the best thumbnails create a loop. Potential viewers stop and get interested in the thumbnail, then read the title, then come back to the thumbnail with the new information and decide to click (or not).

If you must use text in your thumbnail, make it as interesting as possible. Grab attention in the thumbnail and use your titles to add more context and confirm the click.

Repeating the title can work, but I prefer to use thumbnail real estate as a testing ground for other, punchier phrases.

Here's an example from my client, Ross Cameron:

A bit more utilitarian here, but the text immediately grabs the attention of beginner traders as they need a "101" level and also have small accounts. From there, we explain the video and broaden the scope with "ZERO Experience (Full Training)" in case they didn't pick that up from the 1hr 48m runtime.

Pay attention to the thumbnails that tend to make you click and look for the loop.

4. MAKE A PROMISE

Understand that your thumbnails are making a promise of what’s inside the video.

Show it in the most interesting way possible.

Be prepared to deliver on it.

If a viewer can’t look at your packaging and know what it’s about, there’s a 0% chance for them to become interested.

That also goes for being overly vague and intentionally blurring/silhouetting items.

Nearly every AB test I've run has shown that clarity wins.

One that stands out for me comes from my time running strategy for Preston:

VS

The clearer value prop won. Don't be afraid to show what happens in the video. It's gets people interested in seeing what you actually DO with that thing.

5. LESS IS MORE

I hope most people have heard this, but its consistently the advice I give to creators:

The goal of a thumbnail is to build interest at-a-glance.

The less you have for people to focus on, the faster they will understand your premise, be interested, and click. (scroll back up and compare those Bobby Parrish thumbnails)

6. PEOPLE FIRST

I'll keep this one short.

If you haven't gotten this point yet:

The “best” thumbnail is the one that reaches the right audience for your content.

Unperfect design with views > Perfect design with no audience

7. COLOR FOR CLARITY

Color can be eye-catching, BUT it can also be a distraction.

Use color to pull focus to important areas of your thumbnails instead of looking like my toddler vomited skittles on your PSD. (unless that’s what works for your viewers)

Another quick example from Ross:

All colors in this thumbnail help viewers see and understand what's going on.

8. TEST EVERYTHING

Most YouTube advice you run into online is generalized.

Challenge assumptions and test what works for your audience. Gen Alpha's visual tastes/aesthetic is completely different from Gen X, for example.

I wouldn't have these learnings to share if I hadn't been testing things over the past 10 years. I shared some wins, and that's great. But there are tons of tests/ideas that flopped as well.

Remember: a 10/10 in YouTube Studio is a 1/10 for learning opportunities

Happy trails,

Trent

Trent Haire

Work with me 1-on-1​

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​Reply​ anytime with a question! 📢