YouTube Thumbnail Reflection- Maggie Caudle

For my YouTube thumbnail, I chose to style it based on a lot of vlog-style channels I like, such as Hannah Meloche. I wanted it to be eye-catching but also have the same aesthetic that many travel and lifestyle vlogs do. I chose to use a collage of photos from this trip as the background, but muted the colors a little to make the foreground pop, and I wanted to make sure the font, especially the “New York City” part, stood out. The audience I’m trying to reach is mainly teens and twenty-somethings who may be interested in traveling. I love watching these types of videos, and I know my friends do as well, so I’d think my target audience should be people similar to myself, although I’d aim for it to catch everyone’s attention. I definitely could have gone a different direction by styling this more like the funny reaction videos I also see often on YouTube. These videos often have more of a clickbait aspect with a phrase that may want the viewer want to know more. While this could have been a good idea, I think my YouTube would be aimed more at people into photography and videography with minimal editing and talking, so I chose to aestheticize the thumbnail.