Instagram has evolved into a bustling online community with over 2 billion monthly active users as of January 2024, greatly benefiting businesses. By the end of 2023, advertisers could reach 176 million more users through the platform than the previous year.
Instagram’s allure lies in its user-friendly interface and innovative storytelling. Crafting a successful, branded Instagram account goes beyond beautiful imagery; it requires a distinct brand style, a curated feed, and effective community management.
Your Instagram aesthetic—colors, layout, mood, and tone—is your profile’s first impression on clients. Cohesive aesthetics attract new followers and enhance brand recognition and awareness, boosting page performance and driving sales.
Investing in a strong aesthetic early on sets your content apart in users’ feeds, making it essential for engaging new audiences and effectively portraying your company’s personality.
In this post, we’ll explore how to create a stunning Instagram aesthetic for your brand and maximize its impact in 2024. Let’s dive in!
What Is an Aesthetic Instagram?
The term ‘Aesthetic’ has charmingly evolved, thanks to Gen Z’s creative vocabulary. The dictionary definition of aesthetic is visually pleasing, and similarly, a well-curated and beautifully designed Instagram profile is an ‘Aesthetic Instagram.’
This means transforming your Instagram account using creative elements that reflect your brand and personality. Undoubtedly, your Instagram account gains popularity primarily by the content you post. However, the design, color, and visuals you embed in your account matter and influence the overall vibe of your Instagram.
Key Elements of an Instagram Aesthetic
- Use a cohesive color palette that complements your style guide
- Selecting a consistent color scheme for all your
- Using fonts, spacing, and even emojis.
Let us learn more about Instagram Aesthetic in this guide!
Why is a Stunning Instagram Aesthetic Important for your Brand?
Simply stated, your Instagram aesthetic is one of the most effective strategies for attracting more followers and expanding your account.
Considering that a brand’s growth has become more reliant on social media, it is more important than ever to build your Instagram aesthetic! Instagram is growing in popularity as more users and business owners resort to it for better bargains.
The platform attracts audiences of all age groups. For instance, let us look at the distribution of the millions of Instagram users as of April 2024: 31.7% of users are aged 18-24, 30.6% of users are aged 25-34, 16% of users are aged 35-44, 8.7% are between 45-54, and 4.6% are aged 55-64.
A strong Instagram aesthetic elevates your Instagram profile to the same level as your website, thus helping to grow trust and credibility for your brand. Furthermore, the Instagram feed of your account is the first thing a customer notices when they visit your profile.
Finally, one of the most important techniques to ensure the growth of your brand without manipulating the Instagram algorithm is to leverage the Instagram aesthetic effectively.
11 Steps to Create a Stunning Instagram Aesthetic for Your Brand
With so many other companies vying for similar market share, it might be difficult to differentiate your brand from competitors. If you want to attract the attention of Instagrammers, it’s important to amplify what is unique about your brand and what makes it stand out from others.
Here’s a brief guide on how to design an appealing Instagram aesthetic for your business:
1. Revisit Your Brand Guidelines
Your Instagram aesthetic is an extension of your brand’s identity, so you must maintain a balance between your Instagram content and other marketing materials. Review the brand guidelines, including your visual style guide, brand voice and tone, core values, and mission statements. Also, use keywords, images, videos, and values to set the pace for your Instagram aesthetic.
2. Define Your Target Audiences
Identifying the target audiences for your Instagram strategy is crucial. Instagram’s analytics tools can offer key insights and help you identify your follower demographics. Consider how much of your target audience is active on Instagram. The platform attracts a younger demographic; thus, you must ensure that you design your aesthetic accordingly.
3. Characterize Your Brand Personality
Even at first glance, your Instagram aesthetic should be able to convey who you are. That is why it is critical to begin by precisely establishing your brand identity. What is your brand’s identity? What distinguishes you from the competition?
This phase is significantly simpler for content providers since it requires you to define your brand. As you already know yourself well, it’s primarily a matter of determining how to display yourself visually via your Instagram feed.
It may be difficult for brands since the process requires a careful examination of their fundamental beliefs and target audience. In other words, your brand’s personality should be consistent with the audience you wish to target and the values you uphold.
For reference, a gentle and minimalist attitude might suit your brand’s objectives of eliminating waste and keeping a sustainable lifestyle. If you want to connect with a bold and varied set of women, your personality should be feisty and as powerful as the ladies you want to connect with.
Begin by getting back to fundamentals and determining who you are as a brand. Then, consider the adjectives that best describe your personality.
4. Establish the Visual Identity of your Brand
Next, focus on the images that best represent your brand’s identity. This doesn’t have to be a comprehensive process, but having a basic notion of the brand style you want to preserve will help you create your Instagram aesthetic later.
For example, if your brand identity is elegant and simple, you may want to match it with a clean, crisp, and minimalist visual identity. An exquisite and exclusive brand personality, on the other hand, may be better associated with a rich and dark visual identity.
Similarly, a vibrant and eye-catching visual identity may establish a joyful and creative brand personality. Meanwhile, you may tie a calm and down-to-earth brand attitude to a subdued and pleasant visual design.
Use these initial suggestions to create a broad description of the visual identity that would be most appropriate for your business. This will then assist you in deciding on the colors and other visual components to include in your Instagram design.
5. Craft Your Instagram Aesthetic with Brand Colors
The world’s top brands are associated with specific colors. For instance, McDonald’s is associated with yellow and red, Facebook is associated with blue and white, and Starbucks with green and white. A specific color scheme triggers instant brand recall over time. Hence, the color scheme you employ is one of the most crucial parts of your Instagram look.
- The perfect color combination may effectively portray your business’s visual identity on Instagram, just as the appropriate colors assist in establishing your brand. As a result, the color selection should be deliberate.
- Utilize colors from your company logo to maintain consistency and reinforce your brand’s personality.
- Consider the emotional impact of different colors; for example, pastel pink may evoke calmness, while bright pink can convey energy and positivity.
- Ensure your chosen colors complement each other to create a visually appealing and instantly recognizable aesthetic that reinforces your brand’s identity.
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6. Stick to a Style Guide for your Instagram Aesthetic
Now that you’ve established your brand style and colors, it’s time to compile everything into a style guide. This document is used in industries like advertising and fashion to help standardize communication and ensure consistency across all channels.
Here’s how you can create a style guide for your Instagram aesthetic:
- Compile a style guide to standardize your brand’s visual communication across all channels, including Instagram.
- Create a color palette consisting of up to six colors based on your brand’s selected colors for use in Instagram Feed posts, Reels, and Stories.
- Select fonts for text posts, overlays, and Stories that align with your brand personality, specifying which fonts to use for headers and body text.
- Use consistent filters or presets on all Instagram photos to maintain a cohesive visual identity, reflecting the desired mood or concept.
- Define any additional unique features, such as backdrops, borders, frames, or images, that should be considered when creating Instagram content to enhance your brand’s identity further.
7. Leverage the Power of Editing
Photos can be shot anywhere and are impacted by various factors. How can you ensure that your images adhere to your theme and color palette?
The first and best option is to employ pre-planned, professional photos. This way, you can help guide the colors, components, and composition of your images. Your photographer or professional photo editor can then handle the post-processing required to give the photographs that on-brand appearance.
However, amateur or phone images are acceptable on social media. Presets, which are tried-and-true settings that give your images a polished, professional appearance, can be very handy here.
A preset, on the other hand, will not have the same impact on every shot. It’s vital to understand the ins and outs of photo editors like Lightroom so that you can tailor preset settings to specific photographs.
8. Keep your Instagram Feeds Balanced
The first step in creating a balanced feed is categorizing your various article formats. For example, you might have text-based visual announcements and quotations, close-up portraits, group photos, and object flat lays. Make a point of not uploading the same sort of graphic again.
Minimal graphics might help provide visual “breathing zones” between your busier postings. It might be tempting to overcommunicate by squeezing as many details as possible into a single post, but keep in mind that there will always be a future post and another after that.
As a result, a smart rule of thumb is to arrange active photographs next to basic articles to create a peaceful, balanced atmosphere. Remember that first-time visitors to your account will not like a visually cluttered feed. They are more likely to react favorably to a feed that seems constant and well-curated.
Plan your Instagram Feed online to see how your feed will look like with Predis.ai’s Free Instagram Feed Planner.
9. Don’t Restrict Instagram Aesthetic to Feeds Only
While your main feed is the most visible, it is not the only thing that influences your Instagram appearance. Your style should extend beyond your feed and include your profile photo, Stories, and even Highlights.
While templates should cover your Instagram Stories, don’t pass up the opportunity to develop Highlight covers that flawlessly suit your brand style.
You may use several Highlights to group your Stories. Make certain that each category has an aesthetically consistent cover.
10. Create a Content Calendar and Schedule Your Posts
A key element in creating a captivating Instagram aesthetic for your brand is developing a content calendar and scheduling your posts. By planning, you can maintain consistency and ensure that your content reflects your brand’s identity and messaging. Additionally, this process helps you stay organized and saves valuable time in the long run.
A well-planned content calendar offers multiple advantages. It allows you to strategically schedule your posts to align with special events, holidays, or product launches, thereby maximizing engagements and reach. Be sure to use the corresponding hashtags to drive virality to the content.
Additionally, it helps maintain a harmonious blend of various content types, such as images, videos, stories, and reels.
For an even smoother process, you can utilize Predis AI’s Content Scheduler, which includes a convenient calendar feature. This tool streamlines the scheduling process, ensuring that your content is posted at optimal times and helping you effortlessly maintain a consistent and visually appealing Instagram aesthetic. Start planning with this tool and witness your brand’s presence on Instagram truly shine.
11. Check What Your Competitors are Doing
When aiming to create a captivating Instagram aesthetic for your brand, it’s important to monitor your competitors’ strategies but avoid simply copying them.
Here’s how you can leverage insights from your competitors’ strategies to inspire your own unique approach and tailor your content to better resonate with your target audience:
- Monitor Competitors’ Strategies: Regularly observe what your competitors are doing on Instagram without directly copying them.
- Identify Trends and Patterns: Pay attention to the colors, styles, and themes that resonate with your audience and are successful for your competitors.
- Analyze Engagement Metrics: Study the content your competitors share, their posting frequency, and the level of engagement they receive.
- Spark Creativity: Use insights gained from competitor analysis to ignite your creativity and brainstorm unique ideas for your Instagram aesthetic.
- Maintain Authenticity: While drawing inspiration from competitors, ensure your Instagram style remains true to your brand identity.
- Adapt Lessons Learned: Adapt successful strategies from competitors to create a distinctive Instagram aesthetic that sets your brand apart.
Did you know that you can produce stunning Instagram Reels effortlessly with the help of AI? Explore the innovative features of Predis.ai Reels Maker to enhance your creativity and elevate your content to new heights.
Fabulous Instagram Aesthetic Ideas to Inspire Your Feed
Here are some fantastic Instagram aesthetic ideas to spark your creativity and enhance your Instagram design:
- Monochrome Aesthetic – A monochromatic or black-and-white theme can make your posts stand out and draw immediate attention.
- Colorful and Bright Theme – Bright colors are eye-catching and can convey your brand’s energy and passion. Energetic and vibrant brands benefit from using bold hues to capture attention and express creativity.
- Quotes for multiple emotions/moods – Adding funny or inspiring quotes to your posts can give your Instagram a memorable touch.
- Minimalist Design – Minimalist aesthetics revolve around simplicity. This style can complement or contrast with product designs.
- Unicorn Aesthetic – The unicorn theme is colorful with bright pinks and purples. You can also add gradient backgrounds and stylish graphics.
- Moody Aesthetic – A dark and moody theme has its lure, which can evoke a sense of exclusivity and allure. High-end or luxury brands often use this style.
- Unedited, Yet Curated – Authenticity is paramount. Sharing unedited photos and videos in carousel posts or Reels captures raw, unfiltered moments. This approach involves posting random uploads, monthly highlights, or specific events, maintaining some curation to ensure the post is appealing.
- Blurred Shots – Blurred photography is trending. This aesthetic can be achieved by adding movement when taking photos or using blur effects with elite editing apps.
- A Mix of Product and Lifestyle Shots – Brands can integrate product and lifestyle shots in their Instagram feeds. This approach involves mixing product clips with user-generated content and lifestyle images to create a cohesive profile.
- Colorful Hues – Instagram thrives on vibrant hues, from muted pastels to neon shades. To replicate this aesthetic, use an editing app with a toned filter and add a grain effect. Check out how Pixi, a beauty brand, uses soft pinks, greens, and yellows to create a calming aesthetic.
Implementation of Instagram Aesthetic
Here are some ways you can make aesthetic changes to your Instagram Account
1. Aesthetic Instagram Bio Ideas
Crafting an aesthetic Instagram bio requires creativity due to limited space. Emojis can make your bio visually appealing and organized, and using an uncommon emoji can make your profile stand out. Another option is to place emojis at the end of each line for a playful vibe.
2. Aesthetic Instagram Highlight Covers
Highlight covers can enhance your profile’s visual appeal and unify your aesthetic. Due to their small display size, the key to effective highlight covers is simplicity. For instance, you can use single-color icons that align with the brand’s visual identity.
3. Aesthetic Instagram Fonts
Instagram’s updated in-app fonts offer a creative way to enhance your posts, especially for memes. These fonts, combined with a pop of color, can seamlessly integrate with your overall aesthetic.
4. The Instagram Reels Aesthetic
The Reels aesthetic, characterized by stylized photos or clips set to trending audio with atmospheric filters and custom text overlays, has gained popularity. To keep up with trending audio, refer to blog posts on top Instagram Reels trends.
5. Aesthetic Instagram Profile Pictures
Your profile picture, though small, is crucial as it represents your brand. A simple yet aesthetic profile picture, such as a brand logo in matching colors, can be highly effective.
6. Aesthetic Instagram Story Backgrounds
If a post for your Instagram story doesn’t align with your overall aesthetic, story backgrounds can help maintain cohesion.
When sharing a post to your story for a unified look, select an aesthetic photo from your camera roll as the background to add depth. If you’re posting a link in your story, avoid the standard ombre backgrounds from the “Create” option. Choose an engaging photo to capture your audience’s attention and overlay the link on top for a more appealing presentation.
7. Aesthetic Instagram Posts
Your feed posts form the core of your Instagram aesthetic. High-quality, visually appealing photos are essential. You can try these posts:
- Bright, eclectic posts can showcase a unique style, filled with various elements to capture attention.
- Another approach is the “organized chaos” aesthetic, featuring bright and colorful posts with a grid-like structure. This method can be highly effective in creating an appealing aesthetic.
- Nature is a reliable aesthetic hack. Landscapes and outdoor photos typically have a calming, organic feel.
- If it fits your brand, incorporating outdoor images can naturally foster a consistent and serene aesthetic.
Instagram Aesthetic Examples That Can Inspire You
You can edit your Instagram material to match that requirement after you’ve established your brand identity and defined your target market. Instagram is a medium for fascinating content, and marketers can take advantage of this by posting consistently and creatively.
Now that you know all of the steps to developing your Instagram appeal, we have some suggestions to keep you motivated!
1. Nike
Nike’s Instagram feed extends beyond fantastic athletic clothing and footwear, with one of the highest followings. They have built a unique “Just Do It” philosophy and a methodical social media presence to mirror that inspiring brand image.
Nike has done an outstanding job of highlighting inspirational athletes to promote and advance its mission, as shown in the post above and the rest of the recent films released on its Instagram feed. You wear Nike if you want to achieve at the highest level like these athletes.
2. Squarespace
If we’re talking about well-curated content customized to an audience, Squarespace’s Instagram is a must-see. The brand replicates this statement with a carefully curated feed, promising the easiest method to build a beautiful website.
Squarespace entices followers by presenting eye-catching photos that mirror the brand’s minimalist ethos. Best of all, it includes photographs from customers, displaying success stories, and the many ways the Squarespace service can be utilized, which helps to engage followers and inspire future clients.
3. Red Bull
Red Bull conjures up images of great energy. That’s why Red Bull’s Instagram account is filled with incredible videos and photos, each one more exhilarating than the last.
When it comes to extreme sports and weekend vacations, Red Bull identifies their brand with an exuberant lifestyle that pushes limits. The coordinated sense of their postings is another way they build a story.
Take note of how the bulk of their posters are situated outside. It contributes to the perception that when you consume Red Bull, you live on the edge.
4. Tough Mudder
Tough Mudder has cultivated an image of overcoming a military-inspired challenge that requires collaboration, fortitude, and a lot of feeling like a complete “badass.” Their Instagram feed is packed with photos of muddy racers wearing orange, which serves to symbolize the brightness and feeling of togetherness that prevails in an otherwise difficult scenario.
The beauty of their Instagram feed is its ability to capture competitors’ emotions as they go through the course. They have perfected the art of instilling sentiments of strength and the drive to complete a challenging goal that only a small number of individuals have accomplished.
The images of rigorous training and being part of a program that pushes you to your limits are both thrilling and fulfilling. This Instagram account, as the name implies, focuses on persistence and toughness.
5. Taco Bell
When you think about Taco Bell, tacos and ‘LiVE MAS!’ come to mind. This implies that their social media pages, like their individual Instagram postings, will include many tacos, bright colors, and a lifestyle that entails living quickly and ‘on the move.’
Taco Bell’s major audience is increasingly millennials; thus, they have concentrated on incorporating fun and authenticity into their style, which simplifies generating interaction.
6. GoPro
GoPro’s Instagram photographs perfectly exemplify what it means to capture a lifestyle full of adventure and activity through their product’s lens. Their feed focuses on showing a range of one-of-a-kind situations that will inspire you to get out and film your travels—from death-defying mountaineering trips and underwater adventures with whales for company to life in the Arctic with polar bears.
GoPro’s Instagram feed also promote contests with exciting prizes, nudging their customers to get creative and shoot breathtaking videos with their GoPro devices. The winning videos are post on GoPro’s Gram, which further adds to its aesthetic appeal. Followers can enjoy the colors of nature at its best, thus creating a unique brand aesthetic on their Instagram pages.
Wrapping It Up
It takes a lot of effort to bring your desired Instagram look to reality. When you compare a brand’s latest postings to those from a year ago, you’ll see that their visual style has altered or developed.
This implies that if you’re just starting, it’s OK not to be a professional designer or photographer. It’s OK to be a beginner and to improve your postings over time. Don’t hesitate to try out new things.
Every few weeks or months, try out new filters, frames, and colors. Take images from various angles to see what works best. The more you publish, the more you’ll learn about which tools and effects work best.
Simply concentrate on learning the fundamentals and creating the finest Instagram pictures every day. As your visual aesthetic matures, you’ll learn to realize prior faults and refine your style.
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