Gone are the days when tween girls ruled the world of “Instagram aesthetics.”
Crafting a beautiful Instagram aesthetic is becoming a powerful branding tool, and the number of companies hopping on this trend is steadily increasing.
An Instagram “theme,” or “aesthetic,” is like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s made up of hundreds of different images, but when these images come together they create a bigger picture, a bigger story. This is the story of your brand. The goal of an Instagram theme is for your brand to be recognizable once your puzzle is put together.
The key to creating a cohesive, visually appealing Instagram theme is consistency. You have to commit to posting photos that stay within your brand guidelines. For Flying Cork’s Instagram, we stick to a bright color palette of blues, whites and a pop of red or orange here and there.
If your business has a very minimalistic logo, you might want to try a neutral, minimalistic Instagram theme. If your brand is bold and powerful, model your Instagram aesthetic after that.
So how do you create an Instagram theme that exemplifies your brand and is visually appealing?
Edit your pictures the same way
Once you’ve chosen a theme that aligns with your overall brand message and feel, it’s easy to stick to if you apply the same basic editing techniques to each photo you post. One photo processing app that we recommend is VSCO. It has plenty of free filters that allow you to customize the tone of your pictures.
Filters can make a huge difference in the look of your picture. Here’s one photo that we recently posted with three different filters applied:
See how drastically each filter changes the overall tone? Choosing one filter to apply to all of your pictures will assist in unifying your feed. Again, choose one that compliments your brand message and the colors in your photos.
Utilize negative space
One of the easiest ways to distract from your Instagram theme is to post too many “busy” photos. Notice how the row of pictures below has lots of negative space that allows for the colors of our aesthetic to stand out:
Posting photos that have too much going on can take away from your Instagram aesthetic and become distracting.
Limit your color palette
In the row of photos above, our color palette is pretty clear. One of the keys to establishing an Instagram aesthetic is knowing what won’t fit. Make sure that you only publish posts that have the same color scheme and flow nicely. Be ruthless! You’ll thank yourself later.
Also, don’t assume that because you’re limiting your color palette, you’re also limiting your creativity. You might be surprised at how much this opens your options and refines your eye.
Plan Ahead
If you want to preview how your photos will look next to each other, you can either create a separate, private Instagram account or download Planoly. Both of these options will let you see how your feed will look ahead of time and allow you to play around with the order of your future posts.
Remember, the purpose of Instagram is to engage your audience with visual content, so imagine you’re one of your own followers. What do you want to see? What would make you hit “follow” or “like?”