Article
Why your project thumbnails deserve more attention
Selected-work grids are full of device mockups, stock images and zoomed-out screens that say nothing. Treat the thumbnail as your first glimpse: show the work, hint at a skill, make people curious.
Scroll through a hundred portfolios and the selected-work section starts to blur. A grid of laptops. A grid of phones. A zoomed-out screen so small it could be anything, or a stock photo of sticky notes. The viewer is left with one question: what did this person actually design?
The thumbnail is usually the first glimpse anyone gets of your work. It has one job: make someone curious enough to click.
Show the work
Use the product itself, not a decorative wrapper. A real screen at a readable size beats the nicest mockup of a screen nobody can read.
Let it say something about you
A thumbnail is a small stage for your skills. If the work is interaction-heavy, show an interaction. If it is a data-dense dashboard, crop in on the part that shows how you tamed the complexity.
A little motion goes a long way: a short loop of a state change tells people more than another static laptop ever will.
Don't explain everything
The thumbnail doesn't have to summarise the case study. It only has to be interesting enough to open. Save the story for the page behind it.
A good test: cover the title. Can someone still guess what kind of product this is and what you did on it?
- UX Design
- Product Design