How are digital tools changing vlogging?
How are digital tools changing vlogging?
YouTube
Youtube is a video sharing website where anyone can create an account and post videos to the community. It has established a broad community of viewers who subscribe, comment, and consistently watch their favorite ‘YouTubers’. Since anyone can post videos on any topic, it creates such a broad variety of communities that can connect with each other. This allows such a varied viewer-base all coming together in niche communities. I have been using YouTube for at least 15 years and I have been a part of so many different groups and genres in the app. I have a strong connection with YouTube culture and definitely think that it has shaped a part of my personality, and I can confirm that I am not the only person that has grown up watching YouTube. Pretty much all of my friends have history either currently watching YouTube, or growing up watching YouTube.
For this walkthrough analysis, I wanted to narrow down the focus on just one YouTuber in specific. This gives me the ability to really go into detail about the ins and outs of how vloggers have changed throughout the evolution of YouTube. The creator I selected is kg. He has a very unique style of recording with a great eye for cinematic shots. His content is usually based around travelling the world while playing soccer, but he also dabbles in other sport content. The way that his channel originated was with soccer montages and skill compilations. My favorite content of his is when he records his training sessions. The way he compiles his different angles and emphasizes the use of incredibly aesthetic backgrounds makes it very satisfying to watch.
The first interesting thing I wanted to touch on was thumbnails. Looking at the thumbnails from 2016, they are very characteristic of that era. The design choice of big, bold letters with red text and emojis plastered on the screen were an attempt to grasp your attention, popularized by the most famous vloggers around that time. As shown in the photo, the attention-grabbing style of the design is very intentional, and reminds me of ‘clickbait culture’. Incorporating current trends and the famous red arrow is very common in this period of time. Contrastively, the newer thumbnails are less ‘in your face’. He uses simple but attention grabbing colors, along with subtle nuances in the thumbnail that have a connection to the main idea of the video. It is more visually appealing to the audience that has an eye for aesthetically pleasing thumbnails.
KG thumbnail from 2018
KG thumbnail from 2025
Secondly, I want to hit on the transitions and type of clips that kg uses in his videos. In the newer vlogs, he has very clean cuts with nice smooth transitions that go into the next shot framed with composition in mind. Comparing this to his older videos where the cuts are very abrupt and the transitions are full of crazy video effects, he has definitely taken on a more filmmaker aesthetic to his transitions. I personally find this very interesting because even though this is just one person and YouTube can be a very different platform for different creators even in the same niche, it’s very cool to see how his editing style has evolved over time to compensate for his audience.
Lastly, background music is heavily underrated in the genre of vlogging. He actually goes into depth about how he creates his videos and touches on how important the music can be for people. It emphasizes the ‘vibe’ that you want your audience to be experiencing in coordination with the visuals you are displaying to them. In his most recent video, he is training to sprint faster in the 100 meter dash. The introduction starts with a Travis Scott song, as he gets ready to line up and race against a racecar. This creates a very dramatic effect, even without much visual the music really creates that atmosphere.
In conclusion, kg has utilized the evolution of YouTube to his advantage but not in the way you would think. He has changed the style of his videos to fit a more niche audience, while utilizing the algorithm to push more aesthetic-type vlogs and content. In his older content, he used popular trends and techniques to manipulate the algorithm and viewers to click on his videos. Comparing that to his newer videos, he has more of a cinematic feel and so his viewers usually come from more artistic communities in the platform such as photography, cinematography, and more.