Instagram Style Guide

Introduction

While much has been said about pictures which are Instagramable, not much has been said about actually composing an Instagram post. This is particularly relevent as posting has become much more intentional in recent years. Stories increasingly filling the role of documenting the informal quotidien. Posts expanding to carousels with first 10, and now 20 images and videos enables more expressiveness and comprehensive posts (Sato).

The goal of this guide is not as a guide to photography or editing photos, as there are already adequate resources—as a starting point I recommend A geek’s guide to photography, because it gives useful advice that’s easy to follow.

I hope to provide some guidance and things to keep in mind when making an Instagram post, and hopefully results in people’s profiles looking better overall.

Photo Shoot

Photography is beyond the scope of this tutorial, however there are some important considerations if the intended medium is an Instagram post.

Request whoever takes the photo to take both a landscape and a portrait mode photo.

If it's a group photo, be mindful of how the layout will look. Try to be symmetrical, and prefer more rows rather than more spread out. This is important for cropping.

Aspect Ratios and Cropping

Instagram supports 3 aspect ratios for posts:

• 1:1 (square)
• 4:5 (portrait)
• 16:9 (landscape)

Choose the aspect ratio based on the content being posted. Crop to frame photos as well as possible, adhering to the usual rules of photography. Don't post landscapes in portrait mode, and don't post portraits in landscape mode.

Prefer portrait in cases where more than one aspect ratio can work. Instagram is a mobile first platform, and portrait fills the screen the most on a mobile device.

Advantages of portrait

• Takes up more of the screen
• Often more “Dynamic” and closer to the subject

Advantages of square

• Works better with more photos (landscape and portrait can both usually be cropped down to square)
• Better look in the profile overview. It's the post, but shrunk, not cropped

Advantages of landscape

• Flexibility in shooting. In practice, photo subjects tend to be wider rather than taller. Think group pictures, buildings, bands, sports, etc.

Picture Choice and Ordering

You want to tell a story. Usually how I have it:

1. Cover Photo: An Action shot of the most interesting part of the event/theme/subject of the post. This should be the most interesting photo that catches the viewer's eye.
2. Group/Summary Photo: A photo that shows who was there or what the event is about as a whole. Less interesting than the cover photo.
3. (photos 3 to n - 2) Body photos: Things that happened in the event, photos with people you care about, etc.
4. Photo n-1: Something to get us back on track. Usually less interesting, and might not include people. For instance feet in the middle, or hands in the middle, something like that
5. Final photo: Something the most silly or most serious that concludes the post.

The point is to tell a story. A good rule of thumb is you should be able to write a short paragraph based on the post photo by photo

It's important to note that having a bunch of group photos often is annoying and gets boring.

Filtering and Edits

Filters are bad at making the subject look beautiful. Don't use filters as a way of making yourself more beautiful. It's easy to tell when someone is doing it for that reason. Instead, think of filters as a means of color correction, or as a way to fix the lighting of a photo. If the picture as a whole looks beautiful, then you will look better as a result as well

In circumstances where edits must be made to the photo, bring it onto the computer into Gimp, Photoshop or any other program. I prefer that it is obvious the photo is edited in some way, but with the edits keeping in the theme of the photo. Additionally, when saving, save as a PNG sothat nothing is lost on the saving process. Although lossless compression usually results in huge photos, Instagram will always re-encode the photos to their own small jpg format anyways, and with recent technology lossless image compression isn't that bad anyhow.

Descriptions

Sentiment and Descriptions

Keep it simple, stupid. That's not to say you can't say something heartfelt, but format it so that there's a short description at the top no more than 1-2 sentences, then a longer description afterwards. No one is reading the whole thing if it's long from the start, so give them a summary of what you're going to say, then get sentimental.

Hashtags

Limit yourself to ≤ 8 hashtags. From a ranking optimization standpoint, Instagram seems to recommend this.

As for which hashtags, you want to find hashtags that aren't too popular, but also one that some people use. Ideally, you will appear at the top, or at least on the hashtag page when you post.

Honestly though, hashtags are pretty irrelevant. It matters a lot more the content of the post. Think to yourself, "why would someone want to view this post?"

Conclusion

Well, this is my guide. Submit any feedback to the e-mail at the bottom of the page, or contact me on Instagram: @sidsu_