A Gen Z on TikTok has published a how-to guide for Millennials wanting to abandon their traditional 2017-style Instagram aesthetic. If you’re a Millennial reading this and are feeling personally attacked, rest assured, you’ll get through this. We promise.
In a video captioned, “Dear Millennials, we just want what’s best for you,” a creator by the name of Nicole outlines her top five tips for creating aesthetically pleasing Insta Stories.
@channingstatum dear millenials, we just want what’s best for you #igaesthetic #igtips
“I work with a lot of Millennials at my work and I’m sort of the resident Gen Z,” she begins.
“They make fun of me for it constantly, but they always compliment my Instagram Stories.
“I don’t think they’re that aesthetic, I just think I’m Gen Z and I know how to use Instagram.”
Ooft! Shots fired. Once you’ve had a chance to locate some aloe vera, we’ll move along.
The first tip is to “always post vertical content to your Stories”. Hard agree.
Every time I see a horizontal photo posted with similarly coloured filler background I want to throw up.
It’s a legitimate crime against design aesthetics and should be dealt with accordingly by the full force of the law.
Nicole adds that videos should always be under 10 seconds and photos should always use 0.5 zoom. Strong.
The second tip is to always use Serif font, the one on the right as you sift through the options.
None of that bold-looking rubbish, please. It’s 2022.
The third tip is to never slant your text. As in, have your text floating on a 45 degree angle.
I’ll be honest, even as a Gen Z I’ve been caught out by this one. What can I say? I love the chaos.
In fourth place, we have “absolutely no Instagram filters.”
Omg YES. Thank God someone said it.
Filters have a chronic habit of ruining perfectly good photos.
What’s that? A nice sunset? Let’s make it look like a flare went off (à la Fed Square during the Socceroos games) and covered everything in an orange plume of smoke. No filters, not even once.
Number five is to “ghost tag your friends”.
What’s ghost tagging, you may ask?
It’s basically when you make your friends’ tags invisible and can be achieved via a few separate methods.
You can minimise the tags to be super small, you can also drag them off-screen, or you can even make the text that you’re using to tag your friend the same colour as the background, rendering it invisible.
Ever the charitable design strategist, Nicole offers one final tip, recommending that folks not use emojis. Or, if they do, “don’t be weird about it”.
Preach, queen. If I have to see one more set of laughing emojis next to a re-share of some silly video, I’m gonna delete Instagram.
That about wraps it up for how to do Instagram Stories in the year 2022. Meet you all back here same time next year!
