The problem: In early 2025 Instagram changed the aspect ratio of images on the profile grid to a magazine style 4:5. This meant that images posted in the standard 1:1 square aspect ratio to that point looked strange when viewed in the profile view. At the ABA key stakeholders would be shown, or view our instagram in this view.
The process: In order to solve the problem at hand, I began research. At the start I wanted to avoid throwing out our old library of images, images can be reused if they suited the content and were far enough out in time to not be remembered by the audience. The initial solutions I devised were less-than-ideal, creating a new image for every post in the new format would be too time consuming and raise issues with images suited to one size or another. Layering on top of this idea was also the idea of having to approach every campaign which had disparate treatments by design.
The Solution: Rebuild our approach to social graphic design to be less rigid, more on-brand, and able to push in new and interesting directions as the organization’s needs evolved. Using the existing brand guidelines as a starting point I worked up multiple approaches to featuring images, text, and carousels. Patterns support large fields of ABA brand colors, text is legible and professional, using Sabon for image-text, and Gotham for more exclamatory statements.
This new system has been built to evolve with design trends while staying true to the ABA’s brand. Since the basics of the system was laid out I have developed it further, adding more patterns, different variants of the primary design language to drive growth.
Carousel’s are becoming more and more important in the current social media ecosystem. At the ABA, we recognize the value of these and the value of the content the ABA puts out in articles. Because of this I’ve developed an extremely flexible set of templates to work off of in order to make each carousel unique and suited to the content within. These have been purpose-built to encourage readers to swipe, read, and discover more ABA content.
Some carousels are typographic design focused, while others rely more heavily on images to carry the reader through. Much like the standard images, this is an evolving system of design, all carousels clearly come from the same source, and each have the freedom to explore their subject matter thoroughly.
