and today let's talk about titles and thumbnails.

Titles and thumbnails are not even a new thing.

This has been around ever since there was stuff that you could put stuff on.

A magazine needs to have a good head line or else people won't buy it; right?

A title and thumbnail are your chance to tell everybody

this is what you're about to get into and why you should get into it.

In fact, your title and thumbnail do an enormous amount of work.

They allow your audience to know what's about to happen.

And the number of times I've seen the actual video content

repeat what their packaging already did for them is insane.

A video will be titled What Causes a Hangover?

and then the video begins with "Hey, we've all been there before.

You had a few too many drinks and then what happens?"

And it's like, "No, I get it, I clicked on the video because I already knew what a hang over was"; right?

So the point here is not to make fun of hangover videos.

The point is to say that your title and thumbnail not only advertise why people should watch,

but it also does an enormous amount of work introducing people

so that you can get right into having a conversation with them like they're your friend.

More than half of the time the title comes first,

but especially lately the titles have been something that comes up later.

And I won't even start shooting until I know what the title is going to be.

But sometimes that's only a day before; right?

So I might decide I'm going to do an episode on a disease.

And then I say, "Wait a second, I think the title should be Why Do We Die?"

Then I'm like, "That's a little—"

really I focus more on the disease

and I go back and forth and back and forth

and then even before I begin filming, before I begin production,

I ask myself "What's the thumbnail?"

because the thumbnail image needs to be in the video, and it needs to represent the video,

and I need to work it in especially earlier on in the video

so when people click thinking they're going to see people making out in my video about why do we kiss,

people should be making out pretty soon.

Hey Vsauce, Michael here.

Attachment of 2 peoples' lips kissing.

The average person will spend about 20,160 minutes

of his or her life kissing.

So it's all part of the script-writing process.

It doesn't come later. It comes before.

When I create a thumbnail in Photoshop,

I always shrink it down until it's just a tiny little square on my screen,

and then I look at it and I go, "Can I still tell what that is?"

The thumbnails that you want to click on aren't tricking you because that doesn't pay off.

Who cares if someone clicks on it and then hates you? You want to build fans.

You want people to see that thumbnail, know exactly what it is,

and make that thumbnail a filter for the right people to find you

because those people will subscribe, watch what you do in the future

and even follow you to other platforms and formats.

Well, I really liked my episode on moving illusions

because the thumbnail is a special type of illusion which is a still image.

The illusion allows the still image to move so you look at that thumbnail and it's, like, jiggling.

So you're like, "How is that happening? I have to click."

So, I hope you guys have learned a couple of things from this video.

To learn more, click here or go watch some more Vsauce.

That's always really fun, I've heard.

And as always thanks for watching.