Lesson 4 of 4 · 4 min
Thumbnails and carousels
You can make an image that survives being small, and a set that reads in order.
Two formats have rules the rest do not, and both fail in ways you cannot see at full size.
Thumbnails
A thumbnail is judged at about the size of a stamp. That means one subject, high contrast, and text that is either very large or absent.
- Design it at the size it will be shown.
- Use at most four words.
- Check it in greyscale. If it dies, the contrast was doing nothing.
Carousels
A carousel is a sequence, so each card has to earn the swipe to the next one.
- Decide the argument first, then split it across cards.
- Card one states the problem. The last card asks for something.
- Keep one visual constant across every card so it reads as one set.
What to watch for
The most common carousel failure is cards that could be shuffled without changing anything. If order does not matter, you made a grid, not a carousel.