Taz is a 16-year-old thumbnail designer from India. He started making thumbnails in 2024, after years of being obsessed with movies and TV shows, and studying posters more than trailers.
Before that, in 2022, he spent time creating superhero mashup concepts for YouTube Shorts, coming close to 1k subscribers before stepping away to focus on his studies. But thumbnails are what really stuck with him. Taz is available for hire.
Twitter (X) → x.com/MohdTazeem_
Instagram → instagram.com/tazeemcreates_
Featured design
Theme & Brief
Thumbnails 101 challenge #44's theme was Virtual Reality, shot first-person POV. No pre-made assets allowed, which honestly was terrifying and freeing at the same time — full creative control, zero safety net. The brief basically said: drop the viewer into a realistic world, VR-headset style, hands visible, no face. So I had to build an entire environment from scratch in my head first.
Challenge brief
Inspiration
Two things hit me immediately: Vision Pro's immersive environment feature (that "you're inside the memory" feeling), and Doctor Strange's butterfly — because nothing says "this reality is bending" like a butterfly casually existing where it shouldn't.
Design inspiration
Editing
First I sketched a rough composition in my head, just to have something to react to.
Concept sketch
Then I fed that into Claude to generate prompts, splitting it into separate prompts for separate assets (hands, background, etc.) — divide and conquer.
Didn't love the outcome. It felt too dramatic and the background was way too busy. So I went back and got more specific in the prompt: exact lighting, exact colors, exact level of realism.
AI generated assets
And... chef's kiss. Exactly what I wanted. I just needed to extract the hands and background separately.
This next part took some patience… recreating that UI look using shapes, on mobile, with all the limitations that come with it. It was tricky, but I worked through it.
Before/after adding UI elements
Last stretch: highlights, shadows, and text to tie it all together and make the message land instantly.
Unlayered
Workstation
Samsung S21 FE
Software & Tools
Editing: ibis Paint X
AI: Nano Banana, Claude
Inspiration: Pinterest
Where do you usually get your inspiration (on or off YouTube)?
Mostly Pinterest and movies. I'll be watching something and randomly go "ooh, that'd make a sick thumbnail."
What's on your wishlist to learn or get better at?
Honestly, brand designing is the big one for me right now. I'm slowly getting into it and making decent progress, but there's still a lot to figure out.
Best thumbnail you've ever made?
It's pretty hard to tell what's the best thumbnail I've made, but I chose this one because it has less than 10% AI used in it — apart from the guy's dress and the time machine, everything else is raw.
Best thumbnail you've ever seen?
If you found this edition of Unlayered helpful, please consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from this workflow too! 💙