6 unique ways to organise & upgrade your Instagram feed
Roughly a 5 minute read by Moona Paldanius
With Instagram’s role in digital marketing showing no signs of slowing down, individuals as well as companies are becoming increasingly aware of the value of investing time in perfecting the look of their ‘gram. Below are some of our top tips on how you can curate your own beautiful Instagram feed.
By colour
An easy way to create a beautiful grid is to stick to a chosen colour palette. Our tip here is to try and design at least six posts in advance to make sure that they look good sat next to each other. If you struggle to pick a specific palette then simply try to keep to a similar hue, such as bright colours or pastels.
You can also experiment with a “rainbow feed” which fades colours from one to another. To achieve this seamless transition between colours, use images that feature both the original colour and the one you want to fade to. To create the effect we recommend posting at least 6 images with the same colour before fading it to the next one. This method works well for professional Instagram feeds where you have access to all the content already.
Dividers
If you’re happy with your day-to-day posts but they don’t always sit together too well on the grid, then a clever way to make the whole feed feel more curated is to post some block colour ‘divider’ images, or images with text.
To do this, try and use the same font or at least similar style fonts and a carefully chosen colour palette.
By frames and image crops
A clever and easy way to make your feed more artistic is to create posts with different frames. This will give your feed a more minimalist feel as it creates more negative space around your content. You can also stress less about the actual image content and whether your posts precisely complement each other
An effective way to do this is to choose your content by alternatively cropping vertically and horizontally. This creates a lovely style to your feed and makes it looks more curated and uniform.
A word of warning though… if the aim is to market a product or a service this method makes the actual image very small, and perhaps not the best approach for making it stand out.
By using the same filter
Anyone who has ever used Instagram knows that it has a great variety of filters built in. To create a consistent look for your feed, choose a filter that suits any occasion or any image and stick with it. This way your feed will automatically look more curated.
By using mixed methods
Sometimes sticking to one design direction with your feed doesn’t create the impact your were hoping for. Especially when talking about brands and getting their product or service out there. Therefore a good way to boost your feed’s appearance is to mix things up!
You can use the brand’s colour palette as the main design direction and create some dividing posts by using this palette. You can also mix up black and white photography with colourful images. You should also make sure that you don’t post similar colour posts next to or on top of each other. It’s always good to spread the feed out so there is a variety of light posts, dark posts and dividers.
Here too, it is beneficial to design at least 6 posts in advance to make sure they sit well together.
A more experimental approach
If you have more time on your hands and feel extra creative, a good way to express that is to design a feed that spreads the content between posts. This so called “puzzle method” uses several images within one post and creates a wholesome art piece. To do this you need some careful planning, keeping in mind that only posts that are vertically aligned on the feed will stay in their position. As soon as you post an uneven number, the feed will break.
Why not try using some minimal overlaps initially, and see if they bring any impact to your feed.
Use an app
If you don’t own design software but would still like to design a nice feed for yourself, there are a variety of apps that can help you out. We’d recommend Plann, Planoly, Preview and Unum.