Instagram marketing can deliver great results. The figures don’t lie:

90% of users follow at least one brand or business. 80% of IG users use the platform to help them decide if they want to purchase something. 83% of Instagram users find new products on the platform. 54% of millennials made purchases after seeing them on Instagram.

This means that whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or influencer, you need to be on Instagram. But the visual platform has a dynamic aesthetic and the graphic design trends used on Instagram are constantly evolving.  If you want your visual content to be lively and current, you need to master the upcoming graphic design trends for Instagram. As we don’t want you wasting creative hours scouting for information, we’ve put together 10 of the top graphic design trends for Instagram in 2023. We also have pro tips to help you take your content quality a notch higher.

There’s a reason why Instagram has become a cult favorite. The platform is brimming with high-quality visual content. Moreover, it allows innovation in terms of content creation. There’s never a dull moment for creative folks on Instagram.  The graphic design trends for 2022 were all about 90s nostalgia, creative typography, minimalism, to name a few. For 2023, we expect to see content creators follow and take inspiration from these graphic design trends extensively:

1. Custom Illustrations

Customized illustrations are creative, dynamic, and emotive. They easily bring ideas to life, resulting in highly effective branding and marketing. Among the digital marketing trends for 2023, it’s worth following the surge in the use of illustrations since they enable you to create and define your own style while also establishing a strong and unique brand style for your business.

 

Pro tip: You can use custom illustrations to personalize packaging design, bring graphics and statics to life, and give a unique dimension to videos and clips.

2. Vintage Touch

Old is not outdated anymore. The vintage theme dominated Instagram in 2022. Presets, watermarks, and grainy effects will lend your visuals a vintage edge. Color tones will be saturated and warmer, tilting more towards natural browns, greens, and orange.  While the vintage or retro look has always been popular on Instagram, it will remain mainstream in 2023. The aim is to move from picture-perfect imagery to pictures that reflect real, imperfect nuances from life.  Pro tip: Built-in filters are passe. You can create complete vintage-look themes using apps like Preview. There are special video editing apps for Instagram that can take your videos up a notch. Apart from retrofitting your videos, you can also add transitions, stickers, and background music.

3. Embrace Imperfections

Think crumpled papers, dog-eared novels, wrinkled faces, shattered glass. You’ll see more of this in your Instagram feed in the coming year. Analogue will meet digital when perfectly-shot objects will be offset by imperfections. In 2023, there will be a big focus on authenticity on the platform, as seen by fewer filters and edits. Next year will be the era of real, raw, and anti-perfection. These “imperfections” could be a smudged mirror, hazy lighting, or a messy background.

 

In a way, Instagram will kick back into an older time when social content wasn’t judged for being less than perfect. “Analogue textures” will look grungy and gritty. Vogue magazine has already embraced the trend. Perfectly-groomed women posing against messy backgrounds look relatable and edgy. Pro tip: For starters, you can try the raw look in your Instagram Stories as they disappear after a day. You can overlay images with real-life textures such as tarmac, scratched metal, and sand, and experiment with degrees of transparency.

4. The “No-Edit” Edit

Over-the-top edits are no longer popular on Instagram now. Just a hint of color modulation or a tiny tweak to orientation grew popular in 2022. The more real your feed is, the better it will be received. This design trend has been popular since 2019, and it’s consistently featured in the top design trends for the app year after year. There are currently over 5.2 million Instagram posts with the hashtag #noedit. Brands didn’t shy away from posting less-than-perfect user-generated content (UGC). The no-edit edit trend is an effort to make social media more responsible, real, and empathetic. Pro tip: Focus on seizing moments in your pictures. Visual storytelling is big on Instagram. It can be great if you align your brand story with a societal cause or trend about which you are passionate or which matches your brand’s values.  Airbnb, which is known for providing immersive travel experiences, does this beautifully. Their posts focus on experiential travel which is a vogue with young travelers.

5. Photography + Emoji

Adding emojis to pictures is not new on Instagram. But we see the trend being more widely adopted in 2022. Using emojis is not child’s play.  Even “grown-up” brands like Durex and Pepsi are styling their entire marketing campaigns using emojis. Emojis add a playful vibe to your feed and can boost engagement rates if used as sliders in Stories.

 

Pro tip: Emoji edits to create custom emojis will give a playful twist to your feed. You can add these custom emojis as stickers in your Instagram Story. Check out the video below to see how a custom emoji is created.

6.  Experimental Typography

While sans-serif fonts are still the go-to typefaces in marketing, experimental typography is a font-related trend worth following in 2023. Longer letters with broader strokes, warped typefaces, and artistic serif fonts are all expected to go mainstream.

 

Pro-tip: Your brand may experiment with creative modifications of traditional serif fonts for use in branding designs and social sites. These experimental typographies will elevate these fonts to help maintain stability while keeping the typography relevant to present times.

7. Digital Collage

Collages will get more edgy and rustic this year. We’ll see cut-outs, artistic typography, monochrome, and retro overlays. There will be a good mix of images, video clips, emojis, and stickers to give a scrapbook effect. Analogue textures will dominate. Pro tip: You can use the Layout for Instagram app which is available for free in both the Play Store and Apple Store. They offer a variety of layout options. You can pick pictures from your gallery or from their Photo Booth. If you’re short on ideas, you can use photo editing apps which typically have a plethora of collage designs.

8. Phygital Objects

Digitally-created objects, ranging from mock-ups to furniture, will be popular on Instagram. 3D-enthusiasts and digital sculptors like Bat Labat and Simon Kaempfer have broken the realms of the physical world to create near-perfect digital images.  You can create a zillion images out of thin air just by using the right tools. This could be perceived as an effort to support the sustainability of material resources. Pro tip: You can combine your products with digitally-created objects, like skincare brand, Aesop, does.

 

9. Coherent Color Schemes

It’ll all be about consistent color palettes in 2023. Several brands will keep using their primary feeds as a more curated display, establishing an overall theme or vibe for their profile. Typically, you’ll see brands or creators posting content that reflects a specific color palette. Pink is particularly popular, but you’ll find this appealing monochromatic trend in a variety of hues. Pro tip: Choose a color palette that closely reflects your brand colors. Otherwise, go for neutrals.

10. Childlike Expressions

As you might have gathered, rebellion seems to be the predominant trend on Instagram in 2022. A childlike expression is another way of unrestrained self-expression. You’ll see more doodles, colour splatters, and illustrations, that don’t look pixel-perfect. Mr Doodle or Sam Cox is an early adopter of this trend. He calls himself an “obsessive, compulsive drawer” and his Instagram account has 2.7 million followers. His feed is replete with artistic scrawls, crayon drawings, and wall murals.  Pro tip: If you’re unsure of how to tap into this trend, take a cue from Paynter, a limited-edition jacket retailer. They use hand-drawn illustrations to tell their brand story and explain their jacket-remaking process. It’s a great way for conservative brands to look playful and creative.

 

Over to You

Competition on Instagram is fierce. If you want your feed to look daisy-fresh, you’ll have to stay abreast of the latest graphic design trends. It’s best to adopt trends that align with your brand’s aesthetics. Try to look for ways to improvise on the trends above and add a unique twist to make your content stand out.