11 Graphic Design Tips For Better Instagram Posts

Where can we find a cool hub to showcase aesthetic images in this media-centric world? If you want the best place, it’s got to be Instagram.

Instagram’s primarily visual experience created a global impact. Its simple interface and curated content captured over 1 billion active users around the globe, with users posting billions of content into the site every day. It is a hub where everyone can express their personalities, share everyday experiences, and celebrate victories.

Creating a nice aesthetic for your Instagram account is one of the rite-of-passage sequences that every aspiring Instagram user must go through in creating their accounts. When your Instagram feed looks visually stunning, many will be inclined to push the coveted “follow” and “like” buttons in your profile. Not only can it boost your self-confidence, but it also pushes you to explore your visual personality as both a person and an artist. You can also gain enough stature to be a social media influencer of your own, gaining enough popularity for many to take notice of your content and create impact. 

Here are 11 graphic design tips to ensure better Instagram posts for a cleaner and more aesthetically-pleasing feed.

1.Decide on what topic/story you will tell on your feed.

Before establishing the visual aspect of your Instagram feed, it is essential to select a particular topic or story you want to tell in your profile. May it be the ramblings of everyday life or the majesty of nature, the majority of famous Instagram users usually have a specific story to tell in their posts. This helps them connect more with their profile by sharing topics that pique their interest and nurture their passion. This also contributes to the coherency of the entire feed, as it maintains a certain imagery throughout even with different visual motifs.

2.Choose a visual theme.

This is the soul of your Instagram account: the primary essence as to why you chose to create a profile and maintain it for the time being. Selecting a visual identity that spans the entirety of your Instagram life is important in making better posts on the site. It helps spark creativity as you journey through what the visual theme offers, injecting a creative visual twist to your photos. May it be colorful, tropical, minimal, grungy, or vintage; your Instagram identity is what you choose it to be. 

3.Maintain a consistent filter.

Filters are the foundation of any chosen visual theme. They transform your photos into the theme that you have chosen, and at the same time, remain constant throughout any image you choose. Filters are setting presets that manipulate your post’s brightness levels, contrast, temperature, highlights/shadows, and many more. They are consistent throughout as many applications as you may like. Maintaining a regular filter also means sustaining your visual theme.

4.Muted color palettes are encouraged.

The time of bright and bold color palettes has gone: muted colors dominate the world of graphic design and illustrations nowadays. Their relaxing and natural aura dramatically helps maintain a visual theme while visually pleasing to look at for more significant periods. They can also help focus on the subject of your photo by providing a non-distracting visual motif. Pixelied’s background changer tool has a variety of muted color backdrops for you to choose if ever the need arises. 

5.Decide on what grid layout you will use. 

A grid layout dictates how you display your posts on your profile feed. Deciding on a constant grid layout will greatly complement the visual theme you have chosen for your Instagram feed. Grids also give a sense of symmetry and space, maximizing the most out of both your photos and theme. 

6.Utilize complementary colors to your advantage.

Sticking to a particular visual theme and color palette doesn’t mean that you should be limited to only one color in the entire spectrum. Choosing different complementary colors in your chosen palette will make your feed more natural, imitating that to what we typically see in our surroundings. Successful brands such as McDonald’s, Amazon, Coca-Cola, H&M, and many others have utilized complementary colors to establish a distinct branding embedded in people’s minds. 

7.Cleaner backgrounds are preferred.

If you want your photos to pop out without brash and bold colors naturally, make the background of the subject of your photo clean. Unless the background is the star of the picture (beautiful landscapes/structures), a cleaner background emphasizes a photo’s focus and presents it properly. It can also help maintain visual consistency in your Instagram feed, minimizing clutter that can ruin the motif. Software applications such as Pixelied’s background changer tool can be a great help if you have a nice photo with a distracting background. You can remove any background and replace it with another fitting for your Instagram feed with one click.

8.Using natural light is encouraged.

Lighting is one of the critical aspects that either make or break a photo. Taking photos with natural lighting brings out the best in your image, as adequate attention to a photo’s highlights and shadows are always ensured. Pictures with poor lighting can lose detail, colors, and resolution. This creates a photo bland to look at, with no particular artistic direction that drives it forwards. Artificial lighting sources can also work for indoor work and achieving a specific mood. Still, with proper utilization and angling, nothing can go wrong with choosing the sun as the source of lighting for your Instagram posts.

9.High-resolution photos are a must.

A blurry photo will always look bad, no matter how beautiful the base picture is. You will waste all your effort to establish a proper Instagram feed if you put out pictures with low resolution. Photos with high resolution naturally invite viewers to look at the photo. Using professional-grade cameras such as DSLRs or back cameras of your smartphone will ensure that the raw image you take for editing will be at the best possible resolution. If you don’t have a DSLR, another option is you can use online editing too to unblur your blurred photos for free.

10.Always plan on the chronological posting of every photo.

Plan for a proper arrangement schedule for your photos to be consistent with your team. Nicely curated Instagram photos do not put all their focus and attention on a single image only; how photos look next to each other and as a collective whole are what makes these feeds work. There are a lot of preview apps available on the internet that will help you plan out the look of your entire feed, allowing you to have a first-hand glimpse of your Instagram profile feed before any post. 

11.Enjoy what you are doing.

It is tough to produce quality content if you are uninspired in creating and curating them. A good Instagram feed is fun and varied; viewers will immediately notice if it looks overly manufactured and soulless, resulting in you not having fun. Creativity is boundless and eternal, so do not be afraid to explore different styles and techniques that will fulfill YOUR vision and not the wants of others. 

Takeaway

Instagram is one of the biggest and most powerful platforms out there to express your personality and establish an identity, both of which have a chance to impact others substantially.

Graphic design is at the heart of this site as it functions to serve its billions of users, becoming one of the engines of every visual and creative movement that the world has chosen to participate in. Honing your graphic design skills is a great way to gain followers, engagement, and influence that everybody aspires for in their journey on this social media site. Your creative vision, complemented with the proper graphic design techniques, will indeed become a reality as there is essentially no right or wrong in curating your own personal Instagram profile.

Don’t be afraid to experiment, and most of all, have fun expressing your creativity.