Creating an Instagram Aesthetic

When creating and managing a presence on social media, establishing a look and feel that is on-brand is part of projecting the right image to attract your target market. Having a strong visual identity that includes a well-designed logo with a strategically chosen color palette helps to make your online presence appealing and recognizable.

Most social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn and X, do not need the same attention to visual detail as Instagram. What you post to most social networks quickly disappears down the feed and when someone visits your Facebook, LinkedIn, or X account pages, they typically see one post at a time as they scroll.

On Instagram, however, visitors to your account page will see a grid of images - a combination of photographs, graphics, and video thumbnails, depending on what you post. On a mobile device, between nine and twelve images can appear on screen at the same time, creating a visual checkerboard.

Planning out your posts can help you produce an aesthetically pleasing Instagram grid. Not paying attention to the visual aspects of your Instagram posts can result in a sloppy or chaotic grid. Creating an aesthetic on Instagram involves a number of considerations, steps, and tools. Here are some ways you can optimize your Instagram grid.

Establish a color pattern. Working with your brand’s color palette and sticking with it can help produce a more harmonious grid. That means using key brand colors not only in your graphics but in your photographs as well. For videos, adhering to a strict color palette is far more challenging and expensive. But you can upload your own video thumbnail to appear on the grid before the video starts to play.

Establish a visual pattern. While using a set color palette can create a sense of order, you could choose to go a step further and create a more prominent visual pattern. This can be accomplished by alternating types of visuals used in each post. For example, you could post a quote image - a graphic with text overlaying a colored background - or an illustration. You can alternate the color of your graphics based on your brand’s color palette.

In between the graphics, you could then post photographs or videos with or without thumbnails to break up the color blocks. How often you alternate depends on the pattern you’d like to create on your grid. Keep in mind that the images shift as you add a new post which can disrupt the pattern. One way to keep the pattern consistent is to publish multiple posts to maintain the aesthetic.

Use a visual app or tool to create your aesthetic. Being able to see your grid layout before publishing it is helpful. There are apps that let you plan out your grid from a visual standpoint such as Planoly and Sprout Social’s Grid Planner. A key feature on these apps that makes grid planning easier is the ability to drag and drop drafted posts into any order until the visual pattern you are trying to maintain emerges. Then you can schedule the posts to appear in the correct order.

Even though you don’t need to pay the same kind of attention to visual patterns for Facebook, LinkedIn, or X, creating a consistent look and feel and strategically placing your logo or other branding elements can help tie your entire social media presence together.

Remember that even though you are concentrating on creating a specific visual aesthetic, paying attention to your text content is as, or even more, important. Unless you are a purely visual brand, make sure you craft compelling captions for your Instagram posts with the appropriate hashtags.