First we tried out different typographies trying to find which style fit best

However after trying all these different fonts Chelsea gave us the idea to use a font that mimicked your iphones chat (from a movie called “missing” look at the research above). As we wanted to follow the theme of a more digitised documentary. However this idea of having a more modern/digitised realistic typography was made after we had several drafts of the first few drafts of thumbnails.

3 Finalised typography

We liked how most were easy to read and how it matched up with our iphone chats, but whats bugged us the most was how the ‘&” on the first and second examples were very off and looked too artistic.

Here is the development of the thumbnail written by Audrey.

Here is the first version and first attempt of the thumbnail design. Rara and Kalista had developed this idea which would be the original template of our thumbnail.

Here, we tried to replicate polaroid pictures of the leading characters (Sasha and Clara; Victim and Murderer) which would connote nostalgia and intimacy.

The use of polaroid pictures evokes vintage vibes which is a popular aesthetic, or recurring theme in modern media texts, young adults are fond of. This will allow us to attract the targeted audience which would be young adults starting from the age of 17. The polaroid pictures also symbolises treasured memories from their friendship implying a strong bond between best friends, building an emotional connection between the audiences as it evokes their sympathy. Moreover, audiences would be more intrigued to click on our show as they might wonder what could possibly have gone wrong between the characters. Their curiosity for the juxtaposition between the warmth of friendship for a crime documentary genre as it connects to a darker message, would create a palpable tension as it creates an unsettling atmosphere.

Although, our biggest concern here is that it does not look real which subverts the whole point of the subgenre of true-crime in documentaries inhibiting authenticity implied in our narratives. It is important to show realism as it is impactful to attract an audience, creating an emotional trust which would increase the engagement between them and our documentary.

From this, to further ensure that the thumbnail connects to our documentary and is in one theme with it, we decided to explore and experiment further to create more versions and options for our thumbnail.

Here is another version created by me (Audrey).

Many of us had been drawn into this thumbnail as it was simple but impactful. The use of the filter and layering of vintage photo effects would have a similar effect with polaroid pictures which I had described earlier in the previous design. I had taken inspiration from the polaroid picture and input it here to connote nostalgia.

The layout conforms to the generic thumbnails of a crime documentary as from our research, we had found several documentaries’ thumbnails to be of a simple template, prioritising and focusing on a picture of (important) leads and the title itself. The reason for that is because it draws more attention from the audience to the leads who are keys to the events in the narratives. This simple layout was easy and quick to make.

I had tried to insert a Netflix logo on the top right corner as how crime documentaries are displayed on the official Netflix site.

By doing so, this would make it seem like a real, professionally-made documentary which is why I had decided to include this Netflix logo for the final design later on.

Regardless, I had tried developing a few more variations from this design.

For the variations, I had experimented on a typeface which is discussed in the section above, however throughout the process, we hadn't decided  on a fixed typeface for our title. We had developed this blogpost section beforehand. We all really loved this typeface but however our target audience were young adults and our documentary included clips of screen recordings such as calls and social media pages. This would disrupt the constant theme of digitalised media in our documentary and may also not appeal to our target audience as the typeface looks like a typewriter. It connotes nostalgia but this feeling may be evoked for older audiences as typewriters aren't common in this era. However, we kept it just to experiment before deciding on a fixed typeface.

This first variation would follow the theme of the documentary as it highlights ‘digital prints’ of the two leads. I imputed a glitched effect which connotes uncertainty and unsettling mood as it highlights malfunction and disruption which the audience may decode that there is something going on negatively between the two leads.

For this case, the overall comments on implications within the connotations were the same as the typewriter typeface. Our documentary presented a more modern era (digital) of mass media which means that this ‘ripped paper’ effect isn’t really going to stand out to audiences who are most commonly associated with technologies in this era. This was also a trial which explains why the effects aren’t properly organised to fit into.

This was a more simple approach that I did within the variations. I personally enjoyed this but it seems that something was missing, and I couldn’t identify what. My teammates also weren't interested in this design so we decided to discard the idea.