Are Read-Worthy Notes Decided by Thumbnails!? A Record of My Thumbnail Evolution | note | NanoBanana | Generative AI

There are so many articles on note.
Among them, an article that suddenly catches your eye... what kind of articles catch your attention?

The article title is also important!
You are drawn to titles that hit the nail on the head regarding what you are struggling with, right?

And above all, it's the thumbnail!
The effect of the thumbnail, which is visual information, is immense!

If you can create a thumbnail that powerfully attracts attention even when people are scrolling through, it will lead to them stopping to look.

As for such thumbnails, I also struggle quite a bit while creating them for my note articles.

This time, let's think a little about thumbnails while looking at the evolution of my article thumbnails!

Early thumbnails were centered on "images"

The thumbnail images I created for my early articles were...

This was the composition.

For example, in anarticle written about personas, I used an image inspired by a masquerade ball + the article title.

And in anarticle written about wanting to become independent from the company, I used an image inspired by Yutaka Ozaki's song 'Graduation' + the article title.

Like this, I was making thumbnails based on things associated with images, but my reflection is thatthere might have been many thumbnails where the article content couldn't be recalled.

The second phase was illustrations using icons to represent the article

After a while of writing on note, I was worried that the number of 'likes' wasn't increasing.

Thinking that, I looked at many articles.
Then, I had the impression thatarticles with thumbnail images using 'icon illustrations' had more 'likes', so I also changed to illustration-style thumbnails that could convey the content of the article using icons.

For example, for an article like the one I wrote about how my definition of male chauvinism is actually about favoring women, it looks like this.

For the article where I wrote about the insights I gained after reading tons of paid articles, which also helped me earn my first revenue, it looks like this.

Like in my early thumbnails, there were also composite ones featuring an image + icon illustration + text.

The article I wrote about how 'Is being cute not enough?' also applies to sales jobs followed that pattern.

Around this time, I started changing the text I put in the thumbnails a little.

Until then, I had been putting the title directly into the article, but I wondered if the text in the thumbnail should be catchier, so I started using catchphrases instead of the title.

I felt it was a waste to have the same information in the thumbnail as in the title when it appears on the timeline, as it's redundant, so I changed it.

This change produced quite a significant result!
I feel like the number of 'likes' increased significantly.

By using illustrations to create a sense of consistency, perhaps the recognition that 'the person with this icon illustration is interesting' spread?
My follower count also started growing steadily after I switched to thumbnails with icons.

Currently, I am experimenting with a simple approach.

After that, I continued for a while with the second phase's structure of 'article-based image + catchphrase text'.

However, at one point, I suddenly realized something.

I think most people do their writing on a PC when they write notes. It's easier to do writing activities with a keyboard and a large screen.

I was also creating thumbnail images on my PC, using AI to generate the image and Canva to polish it.

One day, when I looked at my dashboard on my smartphone, I realized that the text was clearly hard to see, and detailed illustrations were hard to make out!!

I'm in my late 40s, but fortunately, I don't have presbyopia yet, so I can see small text, but it's not that I can't read it, but rather it's cluttered and hard to look at! is more accurate.

Doesn't this make the catch text I worked so hard on meaningless?

Thinking that, I dared to change it to “catch text only with a white background and black text” instead.

For example, the article where I summarized the reasons why I started writing on note again looked like this. This article received the highest number of likes I've ever had.

Also, the thumbnail for the article I wrote about point-earning activities that I've been focusing on recently looks like this.

The colors around the articles are color-coded according to my personas.

• Green for things about my family life as a man in his 40s and my own life.

• Light blue for things about being a corporate slave manager, sales, and business.

• Orange for articles about my challenge with note side hustles.

Since these are thumbnail images designed to maximize visibility when viewed on a smartphone list screen, they are simple, but I think they have become much easier to see because of that, haven't they?

The effect of changing the thumbnails is still being verified, but if I can create catchy text well, I believe it will lead to the result of “making people stop and look,” which is the basic purpose of a thumbnail.

Thumbnails are deep!

This time, by looking back at my own thumbnail images, it became an opportunity for me to put into words the ingenuity I have used myself.

I can't say that I'm doing well by any means, but I would be happy if seeing these efforts themselves could serve as a reference for everyone's note activities.

By the way, the reason I was able to have this opportunity this time is thanks to Haru-san's “Thumbnail Championship 2026” campaign.
I would like to enter with a feeling of gratitude!

I will also introduce an article I wrote about how campaigns are very useful for continuing to write on note.

I would be happy if you could tell me in the comments what you are careful about or what you are conscious of when creating thumbnail images!

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