Instagram Story Highlight Covers are the new ‘must-have’ when it comes to making your Instagram account stand out from the crowd! I recently used photoshop to design my own covers and loved how they turned out. Even better, it only took me a few minutes to throw these together. I’m giving you a quick and easy guide to how you can create your own that are completely unique to you and your brand. Bear in mind that although I have used Photoshop, you could use any editing program of your choice and still get great results.
How To Make Beautiful Instagram Story Highlight Covers That Are Uniquely Styled to YOU…..
The first thing you need to do is find yourself a high-quality background image that you’ll use for your covers. If you use the same one for each of your covers it can really help pull your theme together and will make it easy to edit each time you need to create a new one. The best way I’ve found to do this is to either use one of your own images (if you’re a blogger then some of the flatlay images you may have on file could work really well for this) or to go and download one from one of the many free images sites online. You could even take the plunge and buy a photograph if you want one at high-res, professional quality with a certain look. I personally recommend using images that are modern, crisp and clear as this will make the fonts you’ll place on top easier to read.
The next thing to do is open up your chosen image in Photoshop or your editing program of choice. First you will need to think about what you’ll want the text on each of your Instagram Story Highlight Covers to actually say. Once you have your wording in mind, then you can start to look at fonts and colours that compliment your Instagram channel or branding.
I’m a bit of a typography addict so I love to take my time and play around with different fonts that work well together and sit nicely alongside each-other. You can of course just keep things super sleek and simple by just using one font. Just remember that these will be quite small on Instagram so you need something that is easily readable.
Place your chosen wording somewhere near the centre of your image. Positioning isn’t super important as you’ll actually be cropping this later down the line when you add it as your Instagram Story Highlight Cover.
One you are happy with how your text looks, save your image as a jpg to your desktop before uploading it to your camera roll on your phone. Once it’s in your camera roll you are ready to head over to Instagram and put it to good use!
On Instagram simply add your finished image into your Instagram stories as you would with any other static photo image. If you are going to be adding a lot of images in quick succession, it may be a good idea to give your followers a bit of a heads up, or white a little explanation afterwards as this may come across as a little bit spammy if done multiple times!
Once your image has been made into a ‘story’ post then the last step is easy! Simply head to your Instagram profile page where your highlights appear. Click ‘add new highlight’ and select all of the images you want to add into this specific Instagram Story Highlight category. Remember to include the image that you’ve made as your cover and tick the box on this too! Then when you have the option to edit your highlight cover at the end of the process, select your custom image and crop it to the size you feel it looks best. The more you zoom in to crop, the easier it will be for your followers to read.
Et voilà! You now have your first Instagram Story Highlight Covers image and you can replicate this for as many different Instagram covers as you want. Just change the text on each one and re-save it and upload.
The beauty of creating and choosing your own images and fonts from scratch, rather than on Canva or similar is that you can really create a theme that is a custom fit to your personal branding. Your fonts, colours and style can be completely tailored to your requirements!
