Your Guide to Creating Your Instagram Aesthetic

When creating content for your Instagram page, you want to craft a unique, memorable aesthetic. This will help make your Instagram profile appear more cohesive and help you gain followers.

Learn the most important steps to creating an Instagram aesthetic that attracts followers and boosts engagement.

Craft Your Brand Identity

Before you can start working on your aesthetic, you need to have a solid brand identity. You should hopefully already have a good idea of your brand identity, as this affects every single aspect of your marketing efforts. But if you haven’t, now is the time to do so.

When crafting your brand identity, think about how you would describe your brand in a phrase or a short sentence. Consider your target audience and purpose. Also, think about what you have to offer followers. Why should they follow you?

Consider Your Audience

Don’t forget to consider your audience’s interests when crafting your brand identity. Your identity needs to appeal to your target audience. Ideally, it will help you connect with them as well.

You can even look at your target audience’s profiles or competitor profiles for inspiration. Just make sure you only get inspiration from them; don’t copy.

Consider the Visuals of Your Brand Identity

After creating your brand identity, think about how that translates into visual form. For example, a brand identity of elegance may come with rich and dark visuals. Or a fun, creative brand identity may use bright, bold visuals.

At this point, you still just want a general idea. You will narrow it down in the next step.

Decide the Type of Content to Post

This is also the time to determine what type of content to post on your Instagram profile.

For example, some brands only post memes, while others only post product photos or behind-the-scenes photos. This list can be as limiting or inclusive as you want it to be.

The important thing here is that by knowing the type of content you want to post, you can make sure your aesthetic works with it.

Choose a Color Palette or Theme

Once you have a clear brand in mind, you can start actually designing your Instagram aesthetic. The first step is to come up with a color palette of some sort.

Alternatively, you can combine various colors and come up with an overall theme or vibe.

Ideally, the theme or palette will include various patterns, fonts, textures, and colors. A theme can be nearly anything as long as it brings your content together.

For example, you can opt for blurry images, stick to pink hues, or opt for unedited yet curated content.

Tips on Choosing Your Colors

If you are overwhelmed by the idea of coming up with a color scheme, here are a few ideas that can help you:

• Look at your branding, including on your website and brand logo.

• Make a mood board on Instagram.

• Choose up to six colors instead of just one or two.

• Consider color moods or categories, such as “warm colors” or pastels.

Choose an Editing Style

You will also want to choose complementary editing styles, filters, and other photo editing methods. Remember that the goal of creating an Instagram aesthetic is to give your profile a consistent look and feel.

The easiest way to edit your photos in a consistent style is with Instagram preset filters. This will save you time and let you do most of your editing in seconds.

Follow that Color Palette or Theme

Now that you have a color palette or theme, follow it as your aesthetic. You want to keep all of your content within that aesthetic. This includes your Stories, profile picture, Feed, and anything else you post.

Choose the Appropriate Instagram Icon

One of the first decisions you will have to make on Instagram is your icon or profile picture. This is your first impression on potential followers, so make sure it fits your newly defined aesthetic. At the same time, make sure it is relevant to your brand.

Create Consistency in Your Posts and Stories

Continue the consistency of your aesthetic in the photos on your Instagram feed and Stories. Follow the guidelines you set yourself for cropping, editing, and using filters. Follow your chosen color scheme, fonts, or textures.

Plan Your Posts and Stories

You don’t want to have to come up with each individual piece of content right before posting. Not only is that time-consuming, but it also makes it harder to plan and ensure your feed will match your aesthetic.

So, plan a bunch of upcoming posts at once. This will let you see how they will all look together on your feed, confirming that they complement each other and your aesthetic.

Best of all, Instagram recently added a content scheduling feature, so you can easily plan out and schedule your content for up to 75 days in advance.

Create Templates

Planning your posts and Stories is just one way to ensure that you have enough time to follow your aesthetic. You can also make it easier to create future content by coming up with templates.

Just come up with several variations of posts that let you easily add photos, captions, and other text post elements. This way, when it’s time to create and plan new posts, you just insert your new content.

Don’t Be Afraid to Let It Evolve

Your color palette or theme will guide the Instagram content you post, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As your brand or audience changes, don’t be afraid to let your aesthetic evolve. You can always rebrand to keep up with your audience’s changing preferences.

In fact, you should make it a point to check your aesthetic at least yearly to confirm it still makes sense for your brand and is doing well.

Conclusion

Choosing an aesthetic for your Instagram page will help you create a cohesive, visually appealing profile. You will want to follow your aesthetic on your in-feed posts as well as your Stories and other content.

You can start creating an aesthetic by evaluating your brand identity and then coming up with a plan for color schemes, editing, fonts, and other visual elements.