Instagram highlight covers that match your brand

Instagram highlight covers are the small circles under your bio that label your saved stories. You upload each one as a full 1080×1920 story image, and Instagram crops a circle from the middle and shows it at a tiny size. So the rule is simple: design the whole frame, put one large, simple thing in the centre, and make every cover in the set share the same background and ink. Do that and the row reads as one brand rather than a drawer of odd thumbnails.

Instagram highlight cover size

There is no separate cover format. A highlight cover is a story, so design it at the Instagram story size: 1080×1920 pixels, 9:16. When you set the cover, Instagram lets you move and zoom the image inside a circle, and the profile shows that circle small enough that fine detail disappears.

Icons, words or colour: choosing a cover style

Most highlight covers fall into three styles. Each works; mixing them in one row is what makes a profile look unplanned. Pick the one that suits how people use your highlights.

• Icons. A single glyph per cover: a fork for Menu, a pin for Visit, a star for Reviews. Best when your highlight titles are short and the topics are obvious. Draw them all from one icon set so stroke weight and corners match.
• Words. One short word set large: Menu, Prices, Book, FAQ. Best when the topics are not obvious from a picture, or when your brand is typographic. Keep to one word and one font.
• Pure colour. No symbol at all, just a different light or colour on the same background for each cover. Best for creators and studios whose highlight titles do the labelling, and whose profile should feel calm.

Word covers need the words to read at a small size on every part of the background. If the light behind the word is too close in value, it vanishes. Text on a gradient explains how to keep contrast across a blend.

How to make highlight covers match your brand

Matching is mostly about restraint. Choose one background family, one ink colour and one style, then vary a single thing from cover to cover. Here is a set built that way: the same deep ground, with the light moving to a slightly different colour for each topic.

Notice that each glow is centred. That is deliberate: a cover background with its brightest area in a corner looks like a flat disc once it is cropped to a circle. Put the interest where the crop lands.

If your brand already has colours, start from them. How to choose brand colors helps if you are still deciding, and instagram grid aesthetic shows how the covers sit against the posts beneath them.

How to add a highlight cover without posting it

1. 1

   Design and save every cover first

   Make the whole set in one sitting, export each at 1080×1920, and save them to your phone's camera roll.

2. 2

   Open the highlight

   On your profile, press and hold the highlight, then choose Edit highlight.

3. 3

   Choose Edit cover

   Tap the image icon beside the cover circle to pick a picture from your camera roll, rather than a frame from the highlight.

4. 4

   Centre it in the circle

   Drag and pinch until the icon or word sits in the middle with an even margin all round, then tap Done.

5. 5

   Check the row from another account

   Look at the profile at normal size on a phone. If you cannot read a cover at a glance, the symbol is too small or too thin.

Highlight cover mistakes to avoid

Keep highlight titles short too. The title under each circle is cut off when it is long, and a cover that says Menu above a title that says Menu twice over adds nothing. Let the cover and the title split the job: a symbol in the circle, a plain word underneath.

Making a full set quickly

The fastest way to a matching row is one design duplicated, with only the word or icon changed. In Gradiently every cover wears the same Mark, a living gradient background that renders fresh at the story size, and your words read because the Mark moves its calmest area behind them. Make the first cover, add a page per topic, and change one word on each. When your brand moves on, swapping the Mark updates the look of the whole set together.

For the stories that live inside the highlights, Instagram story templates covers a reusable set of frames, and Instagram branding pulls the profile, grid and stories into one system.