Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from endlessly scrolling through your feed — and endlessly scroll through someone’s individual Instagram page instead.
Welcome to The Grid.
Lined up neat rows of three, each Instagram post suddenly is part of a bigger picture, with artfully planned posts that, together, create a gorgeous Instagram grid layout. If you haven’t thought about what your own rows of squares add up to, it’s about time.
Here’s all you need to know about building an attention-grabbing Instagram grid to grow your following and engagement.
Source: Disruptive
Why the grid matters
When someone follows you for the first time, or navigates to your profile to check out your content, your grid is an opportunity to showcase your vibe or brand. Are you avant-garde, or on trend? Will your content soothe, or bring the drama? Is your brand consistent, or chaotic? One look at a grid, and they’ll get the picture.
Ideas to create a professional and cohesive grid layout:
1. Commit to a Colour Scheme
This is probably the most common grid style going because of its simplicity to achieve. Pick a color palette (pinks and greys?) or a certain tone (high contrast neons?) to feature in every photo. Viewed together, your gallery will look like a matching set, even if the content of your pics vary. This colour palette could be your brand colour, or a set of colours that express a mood.
Home and lifestyle influencer @the.orange.home exclusively features photos with bright, white backgrounds with earth-tone accents. It’s a vibe.
In case your home or office isn’t decorated like an Insta-ready backdrop, one easy way to make sure your photos all speak the same visual language is simply to use the same filter for every photo to help create a consistent tone.
2. Create a Checkerboard Effect
By alternating the style of photo you post, you’ll easily create a checkerboard look on your grid. Try alternating text quotes with photography, or mixing close-up shots with landscape photos. Going back and forth with two distinct colors can work, too.
Some adorable inspo for you: here, parenting resource @solidstarts alternates between photos of snacking babies and how-to graphics.
Hot tip: if you’re using text-based posts, keep the background color or fonts consistent to really make the pattern clear.
3. Design Row by Row
Uniting the images on each row by theme or color can create a powerful impact. The trick for this one, of course, is that you have to post three images at a time, or the alignment will be off.
PR firm @ninepointagency, for example, goes with a different background color for each palette on their grid.
4. Design by Columns
Breaking up the grid with squares that create a vertical, central image is a great way to mix graphic branding elements and photography together on your profile.
Vancouver’s @communitybreathwork uses both a vertical and a horizontal connected image in this part of their grid — but the images can technically all still stand alone.
5. Turn Your Grid into a Rainbow
For a fun and artistic brand, this experimental layout can work wonders if pulled off correctly. The goal is to post regularly in one saturated color… and then slowly transition to the next shade in the rainbow with your next rows of posts.
To truly get the full effect of drag queen @ilonaverley’s rainbow ‘gram grid, you’ll need to scroll for yourself, but here’s a screenshot of her transition from green to yellow.
6. Embrace Borders
Creating a consistent look can be as simple as applying a border to all of your images.
Stylist @her.styling uses white square borders on all of her images, but you could create a signature look with any range of colors. The free Whitagram app is one option to quickly apply this edit, with borders and backdrops in all sorts of different shades.
7. Turn your Feed into a Puzzle
This layout is a tricky one to pull off on a day-to-day basis, but for a big announcement or campaign, or to launch a new account, a puzzle grid certainly packs a punch.
A puzzle grid creates one big, interconnected image out of all the squares. Individually, these posts probably look like nonsense. But viewed together, it’s a work of art.
Give commercial photographer @nelsonmouellic a round of applause for this visual feat:
Go Create an Awesome Instagram Layout!
Now that you have the tools and ideas for creating your Instagram grid, you can plan an awesome and cohesive layout that will speak to your audience and get them to push the follow button!
Of course, creating a great grid is just one way to capture attention on the ‘gram. If you would love our help to take your account to the next level, drop us a message here to find out more!
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