Squint: Thumbnail Preview

You design a thumbnail at full size, on a big bright screen. Almost nobody sees it that way. They see it 120 pixels wide, in a grey row, halfway down a phone, next to five other thumbnails competing for the same tap. Squint shows you that view — the one that actually decides — before you publish. DESIGNED FOR THE SIZE THAT MATTERS Drop in a thumbnail and see it inside pixel-accurate mock layouts: a phone feed, a search row, a sidebar suggestion. Not a full-screen preview. The real thing, at the real size, with the real chrome on top of it. COMPARE TWO IDEAS HONESTLY Put version A next to version B, or flicker between them in the same spot with no fade and no delay. Your eye catches the difference instantly — which is exactly the judgement a viewer makes in a quarter of a second. TEST WHAT SURVIVES Blur it until it is a smudge. If the composition still reads, it works. Drain the colour…