How to create a knockout Instagram aesthetic, step by step
Learn how your bio, profile picture, grid, and more can help build your Instagram aesthetic.
“Instagram aesthetic.” It’s the first thing potential new followers and fans notice, but, well…what is it, does it matter, and how can you find your own? Today, we’ll cover the essentials.
We’ll discuss:
- What are Instagram aesthetics?
- Do Instagram aesthetics matter?
- Who has the best Instagram aesthetic?
- How do you find your Instagram aesthetic?
- First things first: Username
- Choose your profile picture
- Pair your bio with your Instagram aesthetic
- Use video editing to find the perfect thumbnail aesthetic
- Work with photos and line them up on the grid
- Find some solid filters
- Select the right font for your Instagram aesthetic
- Bolster your aesthetic with captions
- Try some hashtags
- Don’t forget Stories
- How to make your Instagram aesthetic sing? Music
What are Instagram aesthetics?
In a nutshell, “aesthetic” is short-hand for beauty. The term is often applied to art, film, fashion, design, and architecture, but “Instagram aesthetics” broadly cover the look, feel, arrangement, and general vibe of your Instagram profile and content.
At face value, Instagram aesthetics can be seen as the bigger, more noticeable aspects, like color schemes and composition. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that everything from emojis to captions help make your profile and content feel on-brand. A strong Instagram aesthetic is visually appealing, cohesive, and something that matches your content.
Do Instagram aesthetics matter?
We’re told never to judge books by their covers…but it’s hard to remain neutral if the book’s dust jacket is covered in literal trash. Before people dive into your content, they’ll likely browse your profile — think of them as an employer reviewing your portfolio or resumé.
If they see a jumble of styles, they might swipe away to something more instantly appealing. For that reason, Instagram aesthetics are essential for building your personal brand and reaching a wider audience.
Who has the best Instagram aesthetic?
We’re not playing favorites, but if you want to check out some top-tier Instagram aesthetics, read our article on the most-followed Instagram accounts. These accounts are professional, world-famous names, and have the aesthetics to match.
Even if what they’re posting seems scattered — award ceremonies, trips out, promo appearances — it’s usually tied together aesthetically with a well-placed thumbnail.
How do you find your Instagram aesthetic?
No Instagram profile is perfect from day one, and that’s fine. Through experimentation, audience feedback, and your own intuition, you’ll be able to sculpt an aesthetic that resonates with people.
For that reason, most of the points we’ll cover would look great in your brand toolkit. From there, you can cross-reference prior decisions, give your grid a consistent look, and follow a guide if you’d like to change your aesthetic later.
Now, let’s get into it. Here are 11 steps for creating a knockout Instagram aesthetic.
1. First things first: Username
Let’s start with a short one: the username. We know that pretty much everything’s been taken, but try to think of something that makes sense and doesn’t look spammy. Try to avoid unnecessary numbers and characters if possible.
2. Choose your profile picture
The DP. Display photo. Profile picture. Whatever you want to call it, the little circle at the top of your profile factors into your Instagram aesthetic. It’s often the first thing people see, so make it count.
If you’re a solo creator, a well-lit, themed photo should do the job. If you’re a brand, jump into Photoshop and ensure your logo works within the profile picture’s tiny dimensions.
This can feel a little like trial and error, but you can remove some of the guesswork by publishing potential display photos on your grid or Story. Gauge the reaction, see if there’s a clear winner, and use that as your profile picture.
3. Pair your bio with your Instagram aesthetic
You don’t have a whole bunch of leeway in your Insta bio, but you can still make it shine. Some creators and brands include an emoji before every new line in their bio, almost acting as bullet points. These break up the text and foster a sleeker, more well-defined bio aesthetic.
We’ll touch on fonts further down, but you can use an Instagram font generator to spice up the text in your bio. It’s also handy to include a link to your website, blog, or other socials — if it’s too long, condense the URL with something like TinyURL or Bitly.
4. Use video editing to find the perfect thumbnail aesthetic
Video editing is the nuts and bolts of your content’s aesthetic, but how do you convey that on the grid? Thumbnails. Once you’ve aced your video content, pore over it to find the right thumbnail.
Think of it in relation to the rest of the grid. A solid thumbnail stands on its own two feet and looks exciting, but should also work within the context of your other content. Look at mega-popular accounts like MrBeast — he’s the undisputed king of YouTube thumbnails, and he’s ported that over to his Instagram.
5. Work with photos and line them up on the grid
Like video thumbnails, on-grid photos sell your content once people move away from the main Instagram feed. The color scheme, the framing, the areas of interest — they’re the most visually striking aspects of your Instagram profile. If you’re creating carousel posts, select the strongest and most aesthetically appropriate photo as the main image.
Some creators compose complex, triptych-style images with three consecutive posts on the grid. These posts act as the left, center, and right portions of an image, respectively. Together, they create a whole picture, and they look stunning — sometimes, they’ll even comprise six or nine images.
But consider how they’ll look when new content fills the grid and they end up in different rows. The only way to get around this is to always post in batches of three. If you have a strong, evergreen idea for this kind of post, you can always pin the three images to the top of the grid.
6. Find some solid filters
We’re not saying that you have to stick with one filter for all of your content, but it’s worth reviewing which kinds of filters and presets you use. Similar to most of the points peppered throughout this article, choosing filters that complement your personal brand will serve your content well. When viewed on the feed and your profile, these filters will solidify your aesthetic.
Take a look at Laurie Vincent’s grid. The guy’s not a huge influencer or anything — he’s the guitarist in a punk band. For the most part, he sticks to black-and-white images, or pictures with a vintage/grainy filter. This ties his aesthetic together, making his grid feel like a collection of work rather than a group of random photos.
7. Select the right font for your Instagram aesthetic
Think about your favorite brands. They’ll usually deliver copy with just a few fonts across all of their channels — perhaps one for headers, another for body copy, and a third for callouts. Each of these fonts will likely be subtle variations of the other, rather than pairing Comic Sans with Merriweather and Impact.
Weigh up different fonts’ vibes, and how they ladder up with your content. From there, build the fonts into your brand kit, noting where to use which, if you’ve selected more than one.
8. Bolster your aesthetic with captions
“Captions” could mean one of two things, the first of which is the text below/to the side of your Instagram post. These captions are used to engage viewers, as calls to action, as witty little one-liners — it depends on how you present yourself on the platform.
For example, tech reviews would benefit from a short description of what you’re discussing and why, with a few relevant hashtags and product tags. Quirks like emojis, punctuation, and formatting all trickle into your Instagram captions’ aesthetics, too.
One popular formatting fix is using hard returns to “hide” parts of your caption, if it’s particularly long or contains a lot of credits and/or tagging. This way, only the “essential” part will show up to first-time viewers, who can click to read more if they’re intrigued.
Now, let’s talk captions within your content, describing the events and speech on screen — you might also call these subtitles.
You can get away with autocaptions if your content is super-clear and there’s no room for error, sure. But even then, you’re missing the chance to work captions into your Instagram aesthetic. Mess around with on-screen captions based on the points we mentioned for fonts, and it’ll make your output more cohesive and accessible.
Film-cataloging platform Letterboxd constantly ace this assignment. The font is clean, the captions match the rest of their content’s font choices, and it makes for a richer experience when browsing their feed.
9. Try some hashtags
Hashtags aren’t the be-all and end-all, but they’re a necessary building block. Aside from reinforcing your Instagram SEO, they offer followers a window into your thinking process, your personality.
A legal advice account wouldn’t use #yolo for every post, nor would a comedy skit creator include serious, long-winded hashtags. Plot some primary hashtags into your brand kit, which you can then apply to any relevant content.
10. Don’t forget Stories
We’ve already discussed how photos and videos play into your Instagram aesthetic, but what about Stories? Even though they don’t show up on your grid in the same way, they’re still part of your overall look — they’re a snapshot, a bite-sized advert for your full profile.
If your Story content doesn’t quite match the rest of your grid, don’t sweat it. Select a fitting background image to place behind your Story content, framing it as you would a regular video or still-image post.
Likewise, if you’re pushing out multiple Stories within the same 24-hour slot, consider how they hang together. Can you visually link them in the same way you would with content on your grid?
If you want to go the extra mile, Story highlights make the top of your grid pop when viewers first arrive. Some brands and creators use specific colors or themes to spotlight this section, almost making each Story highlight look like a button or thumbnail.
Not to bang our own drum, but Epidemic Sound’s social media team have done a great job with this on our official Instagram.
11. How to make your Instagram aesthetic sing? Music
We’ve walked through 10 steps to finding your Instagram aesthetic, but that’s just the start — we’re sure you’ll discover different aspects to focus on. Some creators lean heavily on captions, others go all-in on Stories, and so forth. One thing you shouldn’t forget, though, is the music.
After all, the soundtrack can make or break your content. There’s nothing wrong with a diverse music taste in your personal life, but you might need to narrow it down for your Instagram content.
You probably wouldn’t soundtrack a makeup tutorial with blasting death metal, nor would you pair a high-octane workout video with polka. In these cases, the music could detract from your content’s aesthetic, making it seem unfocused, off-brand, and not in keeping with the sector or niche you’re targeting. Let us take care of it.
Our catalog is high-quality, affordable, and safe. An Epidemic Sound subscription goes beyond royalty-free music, removing the headache of licensing and freeing you up to do what you do best. You can enjoy the safety of our license hand-in-hand with our massive catalog of 50,000 tracks, covering just about every genre you can think of. You’ll also gain unlimited access to our advanced search functions — finding the right sound’s never been easier.
It’s better than royalty-free. It’s worry-free. Get started with Epidemic Sound below.
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