How to Create Professional Course Thumbnails in Canva (10 Tips and Step-by-Step Guide)

Hey everyone, this is Rami Radin, and in this video I'm sharing with you the 10 tips for perfect course thumbnails. So why thumbnails matter? Thumbnails enhance your brand credibility, this make your course content easily navigable increase learner engagement and motivation. Also, thumbnails contribute to a professional and cohesive course structure. And when I say course thumbnails, it's not just about the main, uh, course cover. It's— it also includes the modules and lessons. So what do I mean by that? I'll show you an example today. I'm going to share with you how to create course thumbnails for this new course I have in Business Hub, Mastermind Business Hub. And I need the COVID the, the main course cover here, like the other ones. And inside the course, we have the module. Module 1, it needs also a cover, and Module 2, and the lessons in each module. So for example, Module 1 here, it needs this thumbnail. And here, Mastermind Business Hub use 1280 x 720 for thumbnail, same like a YouTube thumbnail. So it would be very easy to have a template in Canva for this. I will show you how to do that. So we're going to create— I'm going to create for Module 1, Module 2, and the lessons. And show you how, uh, what are the 10 tips to follow in order to create the perfect thumbnail for the course. So let's get back here, and here are the tips. All right, so the 10 tips for the perfect course thumbnail. First tip is to keep it simple and clear. You want to try to keep it simple as much as you can and clear, because it's a thumbnail. Anyone scrolling through your course or the web, they want to see— they want to be able to see the text in a clear way. So try to make it simple as much as you can and clear with the background. The second one, use high-quality images. You don't want to use blurry images. You want to make sure the the images you're using are high quality. Choose bold, readable font. This is also very important. Like, if you see this font, bold and readable, especially for the titles. Incorporate the brand colors. So if you have your brand colors ready, try to use them with your thumbnail. Or if you're, if you're talking about any specific brand, you can use the brand color for that specific, specific event. So make sure to, to have your brand color, which is like I have my brand color is this, that olive color. I have it here, the elements. Include a compelling visual element. Also, this is very important to have visual element in the thumbnail. Highlight the course title, and if you see here, the course title is highlighted with a yellow background. And add a personal touch. I have this Toon character for me that I, I like it, and I like to use it with my thumbnail as a personal touch. Use contrast to stand out, and when we say that, it's always when you have a light background, you want to use a dark font, a dark colors, dark font colors, and vice versa. If you have a dark background, you want to use light colors for the fonts. Also, test different design. You can play around with 2, 3 different design and decide on one. Ensure consistency across modules, and this is important to have the consistency, consistency across modules. So let's get started and let's create thumbnails that make your course shine, right? And I will show you how to do that in details. So for my course, um, I need the main thumbnail, right, for the course cover. Then I need for Module 1, then the lesson inside the module. So I have this ready already. I did this, but I will start from scratch in order to show you how to do it. So in Canva, you can always press Start here if you want to start from here, or if you're on the home page, you can always press here and type YouTube and thumb. This is to get the perfect size, 1820 by 720. Okay, if you go to a Business Hub, you can see here 1820 by 720, which is the right size for the thumbnail. If you're using other platform also, most of the platform use the same size. So always I suggest you use this, uh, size all the time in Canva YouTube thumbnail, unless, uh, if your application, if your platform requires different size. So I'm going to use this one here, choose this. And when you choose YouTube thumbnail, a lot of templates will show up, okay, that you can use and just edit the, the text and use it for your course or, uh, for the modules too. Okay, uh, like, let's see if I want to choose like this one. This is the course, like, uh, I want to use something like this for my course. I can edit here the main title of the course and here the highlight or step by step. I can edit everything in here, okay? And edit the background by going to Elements and search for different backgrounds For example, let's see, minimalist, step by step, uh, let's see, something about nature or health or wellness. It depends based on the, uh, what you have your course about. But if you find the photo you want, you can always right-click here and replace background, right? And if you want to make it lighter, you can You can do something like this. But now, more important to show you the structure of the thumbnail that I did here, okay? And the tips, following these tips for the perfect course thumbnail. So I want to make sure that here, keep it simple and be clear. And as you see, it's, it's simple, it's not It has more text here. I put this because I want to highlight what's, what is, what's this course about. But it's simple, it can be more, less crowded. Also, I can delete some of the stuff. Use highlight quality, high quality images. I have this image, high quality, from Canva. Choose bold, readable font. It's here. Brand colors are here. Compelling visual elements— this, this is about video editing, so I put elements about video editing to show that this is this course about video editing. And what else? Course title— highlight course title. Personal touch— this is, as I told you, my photo, my image. Contrast to stand out. I'm doing the contrast. I have light background with the dark font color and different design. We can— you can always in Canva do duplicate here, okay, and change the design. You can move these like I have this. I can, uh, move this like to here. I wanna put— this is, uh elements for video editing. A frame, video frame, I can delete it to see how it's gonna look. If this is crowded, I can like delete one of them, keep just two, right? So play with the design, make like 2-3 different designs. If like I see this is too much here, I'll take it and just do this one. Maybe rotate it a little to match the, the title. It'll make it a little bit big, bigger. So play with the design, make 2 to 3 different ones, and then decide on which one to use. Then after the main title, main course thumb, you want to do one for the modules. So Module 1 and the title of it. And how to get this after you upload your course, right? You go to Module 1 and you get the, the title from here, copy and paste it. And for me, I like this design to have this, uh, the name, the main name of the course to be faded here, and Module 1 and the title of the module. And for the lessons, I like to have also like Module 1, Lesson 1, and the name of the, the lesson, and also the name of the course, plus the name of my product, or the— if I'm doing a workshop or whatever my brand is, I always— this is one of my brands that I, I do workshop and master classes, so I like to have it here. So I'm done with, I'm done with the this one. So the main Module 1 and Lesson 1. Now I want to create for this Lesson 2 a thumbnail also. You see here in, in Business Hub, its recommended dimension is 1280x720 for the lessons as well. So I want to create a thumbnail for this lesson. So Same thing, copy. And this one, I come here to duplicate the page. Now I have this one, Lesson 2. I rename it and change the text here. Maybe I need to get up like that and duplicate it and do it for Lesson 3. Copy the title of the lesson, paste, and change the number here. So I have Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, and for Module 1 I have one more lesson, which is this one. Copy, and I come here 4. Paste. Okay, so now I have— I can see here I have the main, uh, for example, I want to use just this one. So let me delete this page. So I have main course cover thumbnail, module 1 thumbnail, lesson 1, lesson 2, lesson 3, lesson 4. So now I want to do for— I have 2 modules in this course, so I want to do for Module 2. So I'll duplicate this one and move it here, and also duplicate Lesson 1 and move it here. Then come to this one, double-click to edit this. I'll go to Module 2, the title of Module 2. First rename this one, and this is the name of Module 2. Let's do it like that. And now for Lesson 1, or Lesson 5 in Module 2, so 5, Module 2. Actually, I like to have Start Lesson 1 in Module 2, so I'll rename it here too. Okay, and duplicate this. Let's go now to the second lesson in Module 2. Name this— save— same thing here. So Module 2 Lesson 1, Module 2 Lesson 2. I still have 2 more to go. 3. Module 2, Lesson 3. Copy paste. And the last one. This is going to be Lesson 4, Module 2. Save. And here, Lesson 4. Paste. If you see this is big, you can make it smaller like that. So let me double-check what do I have so far. So I can double-check from here. I have Module 1 with Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, Lesson 4. And Module 2 with Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson— oh, here, 1, 2. This one should be duplicated, and this is for Module Lesson 3. Finalize. So you want to make sure everything is correct before you export and double-check all the information for each course, uh, for each module. So let me go back again. Module 1 is the foundation of video editing in CapCut, then 2, creating short videos. It's correct, the features. Then Lesson 2, navigate, correct. 3, enhancing. 4, adding. And same thing, Module 2, Advanced Technique. Lesson 1, streamline, enhancing, finalizing, or Project, and then Optimizing. So these are ready now, okay? And I want to use this one, okay? And I want to delete this one. And now it's time to export. So I have the design ready for the modules, and I need to export them to upload them to Mastermind Business Hub to the course, okay? So one more thing you can also do is rename each page with the name of its content. For example, the first page here, name it as the same name of the course because this will be good for the SEO. And as well for, uh, the page 2 for Module 1, for example, name it Module 1 and the title of the module. And for Module 1 Lesson 1, same thing I do M1, L1, and here M1, L2, and so on with the name of each lesson. This will be good for organizing your course thumbnails and good for SEO. In another video, I will cover how to upload them to the platform, to Mastermind Business Hub platform.