Beginner’s Guide to Instagram Themes

Over 95 million photos are shared on Instagram every single day, and if you use Instagram, then we are sure you ran into an ‘aesthetic’ feed at least once in your life. This is what we call an Instagram theme, and it is by no means a new or revolutionary concept, but we find many brands still not only don’t use it, but aren’t even aware of what it is and why it can be useful for branding.

Brand cohesiveness is an essential part of creating a well-developed, professional business. It includes things such as a recognisable logo, brand colours, font, packaging, etc. If a business has social media, it can also include its Instagram account’s feed! 

So, what is an Instagram theme and should you have one?

An Instagram theme is a visual cohesion of all the posts that make up your Instagram account’s feed, i.e if you visit an Instagram profile, all images will look like they go together, whether colour scheme, object, perspective, or general theme wise. It will ensure all your posts appear cohesive and synced up with your brand aesthetic or under whichever visual concept you choose. Simply put, a themed Instagram looks more put together and attractive to the eye. 

Instagram themes can be used by absolutely anyone – from brands to individuals, from creators and influencers to even casual users. It is a way to represent yourself or your brand in an authentic and unique way, it will help you stand out from millions of posts flooding our social media every single day.

A well-developed theme can and will inevitably attract new followers, especially those who are compelled by visuals. It can create more visibility and result in more customers. Instagram is a visually dominated app, so it is inevitable that what grabs people’s attention first is the image and only then comes the content and caption – come for the looks, stay for the contents.

How to develop an Instagram theme?

Find the Roots

If you have a developed brand already, this is a good place to start. Think about what makes your brand visually unique and put it down simply: brand colours, logo or symbols unique to your brand, brand theme, etc. Once you found out what your brand is visually, move on to your feed. If you have no personal brand created, now would be a great time to do so. You can read our blog post about Marketing and Branding on Interphase Design by clicking right here to help you with that! 

Choose Your Path

Now it is time to think about and select what element/s you would like your theme to focus on. It can be one or several, depending on what level of consistency you would like to achieve, and essentially, how much visual freedom you would like to have. The more elements you will try to keep consistent – the variety of what you can post will decrease. Most accounts include several elements, but it is up to you what you would like to do. Testing it out is always the first step, so, don’t be afraid to experiment and play around. You can always use Instagram planners such as Planoly, Tailwind, Later or similar software to put together a feed visually before you even publish anything and see if it works.

Here are the elements to consider, including but not limited to:

Content – essentially what you would like to post. Are you focusing on the products you sell, or results of services you provide? Are you wanting to show more of your lifestyle? Would you like to just share photos including food? So on and so forth. Ultimately, think about whether you want to limit the very content of your photos. You can also think about general themes, meaning you can choose an aesthetic that suits you. It can be anything: grunge, clean, minimalist, dark or bright, abstract/geometric, etc. This will naturally limit your content variety and create a consistent profile look.

Colour Scheme – perhaps one of the most popular ways to achieve a cohesive feed is picking a colour story. This can be either your brand colours or a colour palette you choose, although matching your brand colours will improve brand recognition. For example, our good friend’s BlueCoo’s Instagram colour theme is bright blue and white, which makes the feed feel polished. They don’t shy from use of other colours in their images, but the colour scheme is always present and pops out the most. That means you can be very specifically focused on a colour/s or be a little more lax but still make sure it shows as the main colour/s.

You can choose a whole palette, a couple colours or even one colour. This does mean, however, the images you produce will have to be based on these colours primarily, meaning more prep work and/or post-production editing. 

Colour Concept – instead of picking specific colours, you can go a little easier and select a concept that suits you or your brand. You may want to post images that are all in natural earthy tones, black and white, vivid pops of colour or go through gradual colour changes as your feed progresses, like our own Instagram – we chose to do image blocks of pops of vivid colour concepts (ours also mixes in colour schemes and layout, which you learn about below). 

Filters and Editing – an even easier way to achieve cohesiveness is choosing the same filter and/or editing your images to visually fit together. This means your images do not necessarily have to be already restricted by content, colour scheme or colour concept, but they will still go together. For example, one of our client’s Knightsbridge Court Dental Instagram contents are varied in colour and content, but because of the use of the same editing techniques – the colours and the border surrounding the posts – the feed looks consistent no matter what. It is a mix of colour concept and editing.

Layout – you can choose to balance your feed with a specific layout choice. Perhaps you want to do rows (vertical or horizontal), checker board layout, specific crops and borders and so on. Anything that will give your feed visual consistency through the very shape of it. As we mentioned earlier, our Instagram follows blocks of nine, limited by colour scheme layout. So, we make nine posts that focus on a general colour, then the next nine feature a different colour that compliments the previous, therefore creating a colour-based layout.  

Bonus Tip – don’t forget that your Instagram profile also includes stories and story highlights, bio and profile picture which can and should also match your selected theme to achieve ultimate consistency! Like BlueCoo, which has highlights and profile picture matching the blue theme.

So, at the end, it all comes down to your creativity and determination. Up-keeping a beautiful, consistent Instagram feed is undeniably a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time and often a good design eye, but there are so many choices out there that even a complete social media beginner could possibly have a ‘poppin’’ theme. 

If you find yourself confused, unsure, intimidated, lacking time or all of these combined, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We offer both training and social media management, so we can help you start and, if you wish, upkeep a great theme that will help your business and your brand become more consistent, unique and polished! Please contact us through email jan@interphasesocial.co.uk or by mobile 07968 542472 and we will get back to you as soon as we can.