Unmistakably Google on YouTube
Google needed help creating a cohesive design system to engage with their audience on the world’s largest video platform: YouTube. Google Brand Studio asked Selman to apply our decades of Google branding experience to the humble yet powerful video thumbnail. A thumbnail does some pretty heavy lifting: it invites you to click and watch, convinces you to spend your time on a particular piece of content, and conveys that it comes from a trusted source. But a successful thumbnail doesn’t need to be complicated. In this case, it comes down to three simple requirements: clear, compelling, and from Google.
All together now
Google’s YouTube hub offers a bounty of compelling documentaries, campaigns, helpful tutorials, product release recaps, events, and more. Many of the original thumbnails were energetic, some more technical, but it was hard to tell that the media was from Google, especially when viewed on mobile or the YouTube TV app. To turn this chaos into cohesion, we selected colors from the brand palette for controlled versatility and created consistent type styles and hierarchy, resulting in a system that gives teams variety while still sitting firmly within the Google brand world.
Eye-Catching 101
We created a set of simple guidelines to help the video teams make the best use of the assets they have at hand. How to select tones from a smartly curated color palette to complement or contrast elements. How to use the dual-aligning, 4-tiered type size library to set a considered and concise thumbnail title. How to create layouts informed by what a specific video audience wants to see. Finally, before publishing a thumbnail image and title, we asked the teams to consider three simple queries: Is it clear? Is it compelling? Is it from Google?
Multi-platform optimization
A main consideration in designing the system was brand presence. The Super G is in the profile avatar and “Google” is in the username, but these two UI elements showed up inconsistently across different platforms. Desktop had both, mobile had one, YouTube TV had two or none depending on your operating system. A preview image in a text link to a friend had neither. Solving for brand recognition across all of these touch points led to the decision of including the full Google wordmark in all thumbnails. Whether a user is looking for the brand’s trusted expertise or experimental projects, they can now easily spot Google in the endless sea of videos available.
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Selman Team
Anita Sheih
Anne Di Lillo
Chris Schroeder
Johnny Selman
Client Team
Tony Lee
Kirsten Harkonen
Sammie Sachs
Erin Steuer
Drew Preiner