Improve Your Instagram Design: Critiques, Tips & Advice PT 1

ليس كمثله شيئ و هو السميع البصير

So, so, so helpful, thank you!

Wonderful video Chris, thx so much for sharing such valuable info!

hahaha that hat is great

apples mission statement is "making the best consumer products" afaik...

Favour (and colour) are standard English spelling! :)

Thank you. Would love to see more content breakdowns.

what did you just say english is a second langauge for you cant believe it

haha i can't find apostrophe on my keyboard lol

Really like your observations and takes on these! Very helpful, just earned yourself a new follower, keep up the good content 🙏🙏🙏

1- Be consistent with colors, stick to 3 with tints and shades.
2- Consistency in imagery
3- use commas and ellipses to connect singular thoughts.
4- Attention grabbing headlines
5- Clear promise, be very clear of what you want people to think or feel .
6- Be careful to use apostrophe instead of prime
7- put a space before the ellipses and consistent space between them.
8- your photo at the end of the post should easily convey who you're. ✨✨✨
Thanks for this great lesson 🙏🙏

hmm "people can't access the link from the carousel anyway"
Nice one 👏👏👏

I’m a year late but this is really good! I’m realizing that all your in depth videos are old. What’s happening?

really great observation and all takes, i learned alot through this video, thank you so much 🙏.

I can't find the apostrophe is ( ' ) this it? '''''''''''''''''''''''

How to contact bro?

Chris plz give a huge discount to be on your Instagram carosels course

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I love this type of critique video, so fun, thanks Chris!

Ok, i know this was posted two years ago but I have question. Is it recommended that I only use three color for branding throughout my INS content? Or just on single carousel posts. I tend to use whole mash up of colors and styles. Yes its not consistent.

Great video and what the most I like Chris? Your CAP, I love it soo much!!!

are you critique the message with your personal opinion or the design itself??? because the video is called improve your instagram 👉🏾DESIGN .

it’s ok for people NOT to agree with the messaging. that actually helps boost you in the algorithm when people disagree. polarization is good for us all. 💚

This reminds of the fact that we must always go back to the basics...

It goes a long way.

There is too much to digest here in one sitting for some people.

Here are my comments. A long read! Be prepared.

1. How to overcome anxiety
Very typographically incoherent. Font size is sometimes smaller if text doesn’t fit. Emphasised words are sometimes bold, sometimes semibold, sometimes coloured red, sometimes heavy & italic. Sometimes even a different font was used (Helvetica on the penultimate slide). Sloppy! Also, a space before the colon on the last slide, and the emphasised words should really stand out more. And indeed, Chris, ‘relaxed’ is correct.

2. Impulse buying
The illustrations don’t share one style, even though you said it did. It’s mostly corporate memphis, but the specific art style and colour palette varies from slide to slide. The typography is mediocre. The main all-caps font and the script font don’t go well together at all. I’m also not a big fan of all-caps bold myself, it is harder to read than just sentence case. Putting everything in bold doesn’t make your message more prominent. Emphasising words with a more boring colour (pale red) doesn’t make sense in my opinion.

3. Loyalty to a cup of coffee
The font-size change on the first slide doesn’t make sense. The emphasis of the story is: ‘from the same place’ – the slides are about loyalty, after all.
Why the hashtags in the bottom left of every slide? Why a space after the at sign in the upper right?
The colour palette change from mild light brown to deep brown on the later slides is too sudden.
Typographically: not a fan of all-caps. some dumb apostrophes (slide 4, use curled apostrophes!) Also, Chris, it’s not a prime mark. A prime is slanted, compare: 3′ and 3' . The dumb quote is a typewriter compromise. You’re right about the ellipsis. A no-break space before is mandatory – even the AP style guide says that, and as a newspaper style guide, they try to conserve every millimeter! The space between the dots is debatable. I prefer to just use the Unicode composite. Like this … instead of this ... it’s subtle, but better. Spaces between the dots disrupt the typographical colour too much, in my opinion . . . see?
Then … when you have a coloured background, be very careful when emphasising with different colours! You have an orange background and your main text colour is black, so the text is darker than the background. Then keep it that way for all text on the slide! It is tough to read when the text jumps around between lighter and darker, so pay attention to that. It holds for all slides after this one.
The turquoise photo is not turquoise. Look at the edges of the hand and the blocks and you can clearly see it changed from green. Sloppy chroma keying … it looks horrible.
And finally, not a fan of the question mark at the end; its proportions are off.

4. Eisenhower decision matrix
Again, not a fan of the bold all-caps. Images are incoherent too. And adding Open Sans in the mix is not a good idea. Font size has probably been determined by rolling a die on every slide.
Slide 8: ‘or important vs urgent’; add quotes around ‘important vs urgent’. Make sure they’re properly curled.
Slide 9: ‘urgent & not [line break] important’; meh. The diagram is supposed to be ordered: urgent in left column, important in top row. It doesn’t follow easily from this drawing.

5. F in chat
The colour palette is on point! Font is a bit whimsical, it’s overly geometrical maybe, I can’t put my finger on it. The Geomanist font has the style that you’re going for, but it’s a lot more consistent than the one you’re currently using.
The text angle changing every slide is disturbing. Sometimes even within the same slide (4, 5). It isn’t easy on the eyes. I’d say, if you really want this, pick one (small) angle and use it consistently.
Slide 7: ‘Ask for referrals’ has a slightly larger type size; it’s disturbing. Try making it bold instead. And Chris, you’re partially right: ‘favour’ is actually the non-American spelling, not necessarily European.
Slide 10: ‘and get going’, not ‘and getting going’; congruence.

6. Calligraphy in layout design
Excellent typography!
I’d change the paragraph spacing between the bullet points on the ninth slide – it’s just two newlines right now, not so professional – something like half a line height should do the trick.
You should also put a margin around your face on the last slide – the parenthesis clashes. Also, the parentheses after a question mark and then an additional full stop in the parentheses – meh. Try rephrasing the sentence.
The light green logo at the bottom doesn’t fit the theme at all. Try using only the white contours.
And referring to fonts as ‘who’; make it ‘which’. Fonts are inanimate objects.
Finally, there’s a double space between ‘of the’ on the last slide.

7. Elephants can’t jump
A typographical abomination of a caroussel, but they did do the colours right: dark background and all text is lighter (orange). And the emphasised text (white) has a stronger colour contrast, good job! I don’t think the orange on dark purple has a large enough colour contrast, though.
The image on the first slide has an odd light purple. It doesn’t fit with the style.
Title casing on slide 2: no. Just keep the text in the same font size and emphasise the word ‘afraid’. And a space before the ellipsis. This is just ugly.
Slide 3 too: stop title-casing. And a space before th
Slide 4: space before ellipsis, and the image has the same odd colour palette.
Slide 5: why emphasise the word ‘required’? It doesn’t make sense.
Slide 6: stop title-casing, please.
Slide 7: Split those five points into separate slides. The first six slides can be compressed to three, probably, or two if you can write concisely. Also, there’s no such thing as ‘110% certain’. And add a space before an ellipsis.
Slide 8: the opening quotation mark is far too high. I get that you want the line to start with the first letter and put the quotation mark aside, but then make sure you align it properly. ‘LOVE’ doesn’t need to be capitalised, or emphasised at all. Also, a hyphen before ‘Crystal’ – try using an en dash or an em dash.
Slide 9? ‘BIG JUMP’ stands out too much.
‘Sarah Mandy’ in the lower right corner: make it visually similar. ‘Sarah’ seems separate from ‘Mandy’. Write out your full name and increase the stroke width.

Thank you for reading. It has taken a while to write all this; I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Thanks, Chris! I absolutely love how you politely and accurately point out what is great as is and what can be improved. Your videos on how to create Instagram content, despite being one year old at the moment (and I don't mean this in a bad way, but visual trends tend to get old quick), is ageing really well and is extremely helpful. Thank you, great design monk! ^^

Apreciate it... This is absoultely what the channel content__focused would come up with... The greatest help on social media that I have tracked down!!

Just really have to say how much I appreciate your talent of verbalizing your observations and knowledge. A lot of people are pros at what they do, but being able to communicate it is next level stuff. I find it hard to focus on people speaking sometimes, when they observe. Yours was a dream to listen to. Thank you, man!

I am not a designer or a marketer but an aspiring author and I wonder if I could write micro stories using this method. 🤔

good

This is excactly what I was looking for. More videos like these pls

Thanks!

I have a question, why should I use later if I have studio creator for free?

Do someone know what is the font used on the video thumbnail?

More videos on instagram please update

This is awesome! I was nodding my head all the way

This guy is savage. Haha!

Great Video! Thank you for sharing!

Wheres part 2??

I am learning a lot. Mahalo!

I love this kind of videos ☺️ please make more of them !

This taught me so much, Especially about type...Thanks!!

Great tips!

ok I really love your hat !!

What font do they use for the headings

Never thought I'd say this, but THANK YOU MASTER DO!