Do time-saving apps like Canva help or hinder the careers of freelancers and digital creatives?  Tell us what you think! At Hacker Noon, we are all about collaboration and open sharing of ideas, and love to share this process with you via our Slogging (blogging for Slack) app that lets anyone turn a Slack thread into a beautiful Hacker Noon article. This Slogging thread by Linh, Amy, Kien, Natasha, Akasha Rose and Shaina occurred in Hacker Noon's official #podcast channel and has been edited for readability. Linh Jun 25, 2021, 4:03 PM Kien this is your turf but I think it’s time we update the default thumbnails for YouTube (again) I feel like our current one looks, for lack of a better word, too visually boring with all similar design. Here’s side by side comparison of ours and another tech channel. How do we engineer this kind of exciting, useful, user-friendly thumbnail and not have you necessarily needing to design it every time? Is it as simple as taking a better zoom screenshot where everybody smiles or shows some kind of emotion with a big text bubble a la Hacker Noon? I’d also encourage you to look through some other successful YouTube tech channels to see what they did well. Amy Jun 25, 2021, 4:47 PM Yeah, I love those thumbnails. Maybe we need to take screenshots from the video. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 4:58 PM Unfortunately, that kind of thumbnail you’re referencing takes more time than you think, with the cutting people out of the background and everything. what do we think of that? Kien Jun 25, 2021, 4:59 PM Since each thumbnail is kind of different, there will be no such thing as templates and every time I (or whoever in charge of this) will have to jump in and use a bit of creativity to design the thumbs 😂 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:00 PM I don’t think it needs to look exactly like that! Lemme find some other screenshots I like. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:00 PM Closest we did was these thumbnails. Amy Jun 25, 2021, 5:01 PM Oh, I like that better. Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Yeah, this one looks better! A little too green maybe but can mix and match with brand colors guideline? How long do those take to create? Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Can always bring that back, we lil twist 😂 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Um i remembered Natasha did most of the cropping people out? so maybe not that… long? 😂 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM How long does it take though? Ideally I want something replicable..ish Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM Look how simple this one is Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM (She does have good stills from an expensive camera though 😂) Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM LOL but we don't have the aesthetics to follow that kind of simple 😂 😂 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM YES Natasha Jun 25, 2021, 5:04 PM Hey team Canva has a background remover :brain: 2 Natasha Jun 25, 2021, 5:06 PM It's a premium feature 🤗 Just click on "effects"  while your uploaded image is selected - it's the first option: 🔥 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:06 PM Cool! problem solved Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Genius!!!! We do that on top of 5 custom colors and BOOM 💯 2 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Hmm  hope they have that outline feature, too! Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Let me go see Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:13 PM OHHHH SHEEET, THEY DO! we can play with shadow effects and make it the outline effect (which will come in handy for whoever is designing these!) 💚 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:16 PM People say Canva are stealing jobs from graphic designers I'm saying IT SAVES US SO MUCH TIME lol 😂 😂 2 :fireball: 2 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:17 PM Yup!!! Time to actually design lolllll! Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:20 PM Hang and I just had a similar convo convincing a dev (who shall not be named) that he should just pay for a tool instead of spending time coding. The long view is it saves you time! Use tools to our advantage so we can use our brains for actually demanding high skilled tasks! Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:25 PM Btw Kien what if you hit "slog" on this thread and title it “Does Canva hurt of help graphic designers? A designer’s take” or something like that. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:27 PM I was thinking of that, but I'm also scratching my head with the startups video 😭 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:30 PM Slogging is so simple though just hit create draft!!! Linh Jun 28, 2021, 8:31 PM Akasha Rose what if you add your 2 cents here (or not) about other types of freelancing work vs. tools? Akasha Rose Jun 28, 2021, 11:52 PM When I do Youtube strategy for startups I always recommend Canva. I've used the remove background feature since it launched and it is great. I didn't know about the outline feature though, that's cool! Akasha Rose Jun 28, 2021, 11:58 PM In the future, most creative jobs will be done via AI. A lot of people in digital lost their jobs in the early 2000s when these jobs went offshore. And then came the rise of Fiverr etc that means that even providing services as a freelancer was undercut. So tools like Canva are just a progression of this, and then there will be AI. We will put our video through an AI interface and say what mood we want and it will suggest an SEO and clickbait optimised title and even produce the thumbnail. So even Canva will be disrupted in about 5 years, no more. The system is veering towards ultimate efficiency. This isn't a bad thing, as long as we implement a global UBI. Universal Basic Income. The issue at the moment is that all the wealth we generate (via mining, energy, resources, banks) goes to big companies and the wealth of 50% of the world is concentrated in the hands of 1%. Redistribute that 50% of wealth (e.g. via DeFi) and have AI do the work, and  human culture will experience a golden age of creativity and prosperity that isn't tied to physical labour or the time dollar. Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 9:26 AM Yaayy! hello everyone, Linh as Kien is busy with startup.so, for the time being, I just took Hackernoon latest podcast thumbnail and did something in different style like you said about zoom screenshot, big bubble text and all💕. But the thing is there's no permanent template for this, we have to design it every time, but the plus point here is by using Canva "background remover" feature it can be done in less than 15 minutes, all we need to do is take screenshot of zoom, remove bg, add some elements (like bubble text), put hackernoon logo and taaa daaa its ready...:carlton: Here's something I created from latest Hackernoon podcast thumbnail, just a rough idea😄 Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 10:19 AM Kien you can take a look and I think I should have added "white outline" (or green maybe) in that also👀 Linh Jul 3, 2021, 1:01 PM Awwww that’s so cute!!!! 💕 1 Linh Jul 3, 2021, 1:01 PM Let’s not do green on white though haha Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 2:24 PM Yeah sure!😄 Kien Jul 5, 2021, 2:28 PM Thanks Shaina, i’ll get to this tonight! 💕 1 Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:26 PM What do we think about this one? def will take more time than the current template ✅ 5 😍 6 Amy Jul 5, 2021, 3:28 PM OMG KIEN I LOVE IT Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 3:28 PM YAY LOVE Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 3:29 PM Also double YAY Alex Cobb and Amy the intro snippet ft. richard-kubina sounds great!!! Linh your intro... OMG everybody great job :star-struck: 💚 1 Linh Jul 5, 2021, 3:34 PM Kien looks awesome 😎 is this something Shaina perhaps can do in like less than 24 hours 3 times a week? Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:39 PM def doable in less than 24 hours, but i will need to give her (or anyone in the future in charge of that) a tutorial vid - which wont happen until after wednesday Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:40 PM So for this week’s Topic, I can do it Amy yall can just send me the thumbnail image! Tomorrow’s when we’re posting right? Amy Jul 5, 2021, 3:40 PM SWEEEEETTTTT Amy Jul 5, 2021, 5:59 PM More thumbnail inspo that might be less design heavy? Linh Jul 5, 2021, 6:15 PM Looks like they have clean background that’s why it works Amy Jul 5, 2021, 6:16 PM TRUE no one needs nic cage 😂 1 Linh Jul 5, 2021, 6:16 PM Haha also my background is always chaotic =))) Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 8:40 PM I feel like Nic Cage might one day come on the podcast if you keep that up for long enough Amy Jul 5, 2021, 8:52 PM OMG stop LOL can you IMAGINE

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