15 Instagram Stories Design Tips to Create Stunning Visuals

Grow Your Instagram Audience

Instagram reigns supreme when it comes to visual storytelling. Among all the features on the platform, Instagram stories boast 500 million daily users. It means the best way to connect to your audience on Instagram is by creating visually appealing, share-worthy stories. 

We’ve compiled 15 stunning Instagram story design tips and hacks to help you create content that the audience remembers.

1. Let Instagram stories tell a story

Design with a story in mind based on what you are trying to communicate. 

Break your message into a short storyboard – create a summary of the story, break it into main points, and use appealing visuals for each point.

Let’s say, you want to share with your audience how to use your products, and create multiple slides for each step.

Or maybe as a fashion influencer, you want to share your top picks from your favourite brand. Create multiple stories with each story showing one product and how to style it.

2. Use captions sticker

To make your stories more engaging, add captions to your stories. Instagram has a Captions sticker to create automatic subtitles for recorded videos. This feature is only allowed in English countries.

But you can edit closed captions as there are four different font options. Check the text before sharing because automatic captions won’t always be accurate.

3. Design within set dimensions

If you want your design to show up intact on different devices’ screens, follow the guidelines for Instagram story dimensions.

Instagram already warns you about what content gets trimmed by showing blue lines. So, optimise your design for dimensions – 1080 pixels width and 1920 pixels height. Anything outside this will get trimmed.

Keep the aspect ratio of 9:16 for Instagram stories. When creating stories, free instagram video editor is beneficial tool in the way that it automatically sets the aspect ratio and best resolution. You can also find pre-made design templates which further eases the process.

4. Use brand font and colours

Maintaining brand consistency is vital so that the audience recognises your brand. Think of a yellow curvy “M”, what comes to your mind is McDonald’s. Therefore, stick to fonts and colours that represent your brand.

As different colours elicit different emotions, brands use colours strategically, especially on IG stories. If you want to stand out from the crowd, build a colour palette.

For IG story fonts, there are websites like lingojam, Font Joy, Font Pair, etc. You can also create multiple versions of in-built fonts, learn about it in the next section.

5. Experiment with text formatting

Although Instagram offers limited font options, you can experiment with text by adding colours, shadows, overlapping text, etc.

For example, create a 3D text by overlapping the same text in a light and dark colour.

Another example is creating a rainbow effect in the text by selecting each letter and changing the text colour in the VIBGYOR hierarchy.

6. Take boomerangs

Add some personality to your Instagram stories with boomerangs. Boomerang is a 1-2 second GIF-like clip that plays on loop.

It is a fun way to create content and reduces the need to take photos now and then for IG story content. Use Instagram video maker to create high-quality boomerangs.

7. Use a colour picker to choose more colours

If you can’t find a suitable colour for your design from in-app colour options, there’s a trick to access any shade of any colour. Long hold the colour in text or draw feature, a spectrum of colour opens at the bottom, pick any colour of your choice.

8. Hide text in the background

Grab colours from your story graphics/design/background to hide hashtags,

text, and account tags. Select the first circle with a colour picker when you are choosing a colour for the text. And place the colour picker on the element you wish to take colour from. This technique is mainly used to hide hashtags to increase the visibility without affecting the design.

9. Create backgrounds and overlays

Using the draw feature you can create backgrounds and overlays for stories. Let’s see how.

When you don’t want to use an image or graphic, create a background using the pen tool in the draw feature. Hold the colour until the screen turns the same colour.

Moreover, with a highlighter tool, you can create an overlay over graphics. Repeat the steps above and set the opacity using the sidebar on the left.

And erase some parts to give a sneak peek or teasers for new posts, blogs, products, etc using an eraser tool.

10. Use Instagram story design templates

If you are not into designing or don’t have time to create your designs, use Instagram story templates.

With the popularity of IG stories, several video editors came up with designer made IG story templates.

An Instagram video maker is all you need to create interactive stories. Simply select your Instagram story template, change the graphics and text, and directly share to your account.

11. Use polls and Q/A for interactive stories

Interact with your audience using polls, quizzes, and Q/A stickers. To find out which product is doing better, create a poll. 

To see how attentive your audience is when you live sessions and tutorials on IG, create a quiz and reward them with a giveaway. 

Or ask questions to find out what you get suggestions from your audience. Use AMAs to tell your story and address their queries.

12. Animate your stories

Try using animations or GIFs to create a visually striking, extraordinary design for IG stories. Instagram has an in-app library of gifs you can use to animate your stories.

For example, you are having a sale on products. Select gifs from creating board, and type sale or discount in the search bar. Choose your gif, add more info and share the story. 

13. Make your design engaging and fun with symbols, stickers and GIFs

You don’t need to put much thought into stories like posts. 

Besides, an array of design elements like 

GIFs, stickers, hashtags, location, polls, etc make it easier to create visually appealing designs.

However, avoid using too many elements in your story as it creates a mess and looks amateur.

14. Add links to your stories

The new Instagram “link” feature is beneficial to all users. As an influencer, you can use it to guide your audience to your affiliate marketing link.

If you are a blogger, add links to your blogs. If you are a brand, add a link to your product story for items on sale to increase sales.

15. Use symbols as design elements

If you are out of content or design ideas, here’s a quick tip.

Simply, type the name of symbols or design elements in the stickers search bar, and you get plenty of options. Pick the elements.

Want to change the colours of symbols and elements? Add symbols from the keyboard by selecting the text option and changing the text colour. 

Rotate them, enlarge or shrink them and add them as design elements to a solid background.

Final thoughts

You can create an exceptionally well design but it is of no use if it isn’t practical. So when designing an IG story, ensure all elements are in harmony and create a design flow. Your message must be clear and focused, it shouldn’t be lost in design elements.

Read also: 5 Tips to Promote Your Business on Instagram

15 Instagram Stories Design Tips to Create Stunning Visuals

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