How To Make Instagram Highlight Covers
An Instagram highlight cover is pretty simple to make and you dont need to be a professional graphic designer in order to create nice Instagram highlight covers for your profile.
You can use a free application like Snappa and use our profile picture maker to make an Instagram highlight cover in under 5 minutes. Heres a video tutorial we made!
Step 1: The first thing you want to do is create a graphic with the best dimensions for an Instagram cover highlight. Create a custom graphic with the dimensions 2000 x 2000 pixels.
Step 2: Once you have your new graphic open, you can navigate to the backgrounds tab and from here you can customize the background of your IG story cover. In this case, I changed the color of the background using the color picker.
Step 3: Once youve figured out the background of your highlight cover, you can add an Instagram story highlight icon. In Snappa, theres a massive library of royalty free icons and free stock photos you can choose from and these icons can all be used for your Instagram story covers.
Step 4: Once youre done, you can go ahead and download your Instagram highlight cover for free by navigating to the download button located on the top right of the screen. You can choose which file format to download the highlight cover in and from there you can upload it into Instagram.
Mask Text And Graphics For A Beautiful Dimensional Look
Masking is when an image peeks through another image or text. Its a quick and easy way to immediately add visual interest, like the State of Alaska Tourism Office did on their Instagram page.
Get the look in PicMonkey: Add your text and graphic elements to your canvas and arrange them how you want them to look. Select all layers of your design and use the Textures tab to apply one texture to the entire design. Your end result: Glorious cohesion.
What Do You Think About Instagram Story Highlight Covers
Do you think these IG Highlight cover thingies are a stupid waste of time? Could you potentially see the practicality of making your Instagram more uniform and appealing by designing some of your own?
Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below!
This article still has the best of the best information for creating your own Instagram cover!
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#SELFIEGAME2.0
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Make A Statement With Outlined Text
The account uses outlined text in their highlights about not being ashamed. Its a powerful statement and the text treatment helps to highlight that. The image stays on-brand by using the same pink as the other highlight covers.
Get the look in PicMonkey: Highlight your text. From the Text Tools menu, click on Shadow & outline, then add an outline.Play around with the sliders until you’ve got the look you want.
How To Make Covers For Instagram

Use Canva to create Instagram Highlight covers. The service is a leader among tools for creating the icons for a profile. There you can find a collection of vivid designs for posters, presentations, Stories and other types of content for social media.
- Don’t know what to post in your Stories? Here you can find more than 100 ideas.
- If you still struggle to post a Story, check our guide.
Canva provides all necessary tools to make Instagram Highlight covers. Thats why its so easy to create appealing icons for your saved Stories in the service.
You dont have to sign up on the website, but if you do, you can save your projects and templates.
There are both free and paid plans. Free has enough tool for creating a good cover. Paid plans vary in different countries. For example, in the US the price starts from 119.99 USD a year.
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Instagram Highlight Covers Step : Creating Multiple
To make sure your icons are all the exact same layout, simply click the + Add a new page button underneath your design. Canva will create a new page with the exact same layout.
You then simply have follow all the steps again to create another cover!
You can repeat this as many times as you like, if you want multiple icons to download together.
How To Hide Your Instagram Highlight Covers On Stories
If you follow the steps above, youd need to share your Cover icon in your Instagram Stories before you can set it as covers for your Highlight.
Alternatively, you can also set your cover icon straight from your camera roll without actually sharing it in your Stories!
This is particularly great because no one will be able to see the changes you made, every time you upload a new cover to your Instagram Highlight.
Heres how to hide your Highlight Cover on Instagram Story:
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Instagram Highlight Covers Step : Resize And Colour
You can resize the icon by selecting the icon, then clicking on one of the white dots in the corners of the icon, and dragging it inwards to make it smaller.
Youll also want to change the colour of the icon to match your theme.
You can do this by clicking on the icon, and then clicking on the coloured square at the top left of the canvas .
You can then select from a range of colours, or click the + button under the Document colours section to choose your own specific colour.
How To Design Instagram Highlights Cover Icons
As for your other social media and , you can also design your own free icons for your Instagram stories.
For this challenge, I will definitely recommend Canva.
It is a very easy tool and it already has predefined icons that you can easily re-use to make Instagram highlights covers.
You will only need to follow the steps below, and in a very fast time you will be able to create your highlight covers:
Once you want to change the cover, just choose this icon from your phones camera roll.
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How To Make Instagram Story Highlight Icons With Canva
Canva is a graphic design web tool and app that makes designing social media graphics easy. With Canva, you can create beautiful Instagram Highlight covers within just a few minutes, using designs that are ready to go. Heres how to use Canva to create your custom Highlight covers.
What Is Instagram Story Highlights
Influences and brands are very active in using this feature because it helps to build their brand and profile stands out from others.
But as you already know, Instagram stories appear in 24 hours and then they disappear forever. Thats why this Instagram story highlighting feature is very useful for you.
Instagram story highlights are a collection of stories on Instagram. It can be seen below the bio section of your Instagram profile. You can review your disappeared stories back alive on this feature by categorizing them perfectly.
If you use Instagram to promote your business, story highlights would be a great way to engage with more followers and increase your sales easily. And heres how to make your own custom cover in 2021!
Dont you have a highlight cover yet? Read on.
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If You Dont Have Any Highlights Created Yet Follow These Directions:
If you have not created any highlights yet, select the +Highlight icon. Choose one of the covers from your camera roll that you just added to your story.
Select Next and give your highlight a title.
You can also reposition and enlarge your highlight cover. Just use your finger to move or make larger or smaller.
Instagram Highlight Covers To Inspire You

by Amplitude Marketing | Jan 19, 2022 | Digital Marketing
Today, your Instagram profile is like a mini-version of your website.
Think of your profile page as your homepage and each tab as a different section of your website. serve as your navigation bar, each one points to a collection of Stories relating to a specific theme.
Youll find everything from Meet the Team and event recaps to FAQs and customer reviews on Highlight covers. While brands often set up their Highlights early on, many forget one important step: Designing Highlight covers.
In this article, well cover the steps to make your own Highlight covers, some tips to keep in mind, and examples to inspire you.
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How To Create Your Own Instagram Highlights
Jessie RichardsonRead more August 25, 2021
Instagram has become one of the leading platforms for marketing, businesses, and brand recognition. For that reason, every serious business, influencer, and celebrity has their own Instagram highlights. Your best stories on Instagram are all compiled into your Instagram highlights.
If you want to know how to create your own Instagram highlights, youre in the right place. Keep reading to find out all about the best ways of creating Instagram covers on your own.
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Why Create Instagram Stories Highlights
At this point, the placement is so popular that you must create regular Instagram Stories if you are running a business and the account that you are using is a business account. There are various available online to help you create engaging Instagram Stories.
These stories help your audience get to know more about your products and connect better with your brand, and with Socialbakers you can to help keep them coming out regularly.
Creating a highlight for your Instagram Story helps you make your story more attractive. Here are a few major reasons why you must create an Instagram Story Highlight for your business account:
- Showcase your content/product
- Drive traffic to your website, blog, landing page, etc.
- Keep your audience engaged
- Grow your audience
You must also incorporate your Instagram Stories into your social media marketing strategy to keep your account active and users engaged. Lets now check out how you can create an Instagram Highlight.
What Makes An Excellent Instagram Story Highlight Cover
Here are a few tips to help you learn how you can make your Instagram Story highlights more attractive:
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Instagram Highlight Cover Dimensions And Size
The proper sizing of an Instagram highlight cover will have square dimensions. I recommend using the dimensions 2000 x 2000 pixels and an aspect ratio of 1:1. This is similar to the and uploads very similarly as well.
For Instagram stories, you will need to upload a story before you can include it into your highlights. However, you can choose to upload an Instagram highlight cover. This will give you the flexibility to create a customized IG highlight cover outside of Instagrams platform.
Design Custom Highlight Covers That Reflect Your Brand
The cool thing about custom highlight covers is that they can bring your unique branding to your Instagram. In the mood board above you can see the companys logo, colors, fonts, etc. that inform the design and grid layout of its Instagram page. Each of the icons features a brand color, making for a professional and polished look.
Now for some design inspo.
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Other Tools To Create Customised Instagram Highlight Covers
Here are some of the best photo editing tools that you can use to design your Instagram Highlights cover pictures.
InShot
This is a popular and high-rated photo-editing app that you can use to create beautiful Instagram Highlights cover pictures.
The process is quite similar to the one discussed above as it also has preset templates for different image sizes. So, all you need to do is select the right template and get creative with your design skills.
You can find this app for both Android and iOS devices.
StoryArt
This is another great tool for designing Instagram Stories and cover images for your Highlights. It provides numerous templates, design effects, and other useful tools needed to create beautiful designs.
The interface is fairly easy to use and does not require any design skills on your part.
This app is also available on both Android and iOS devices
Choose An Icon Or Add Text

Now that you have a background color, you can add an icon, emoji or text. Its up to you.
For this tutorial, Im going to show you how to add an icon.If you want me to show you other designs with photos and text, let me know and Ill make another tutorial.
To add an icon to your cover:
- Select the + button on the bottom right corner of your screen
- Select Graphics
- You can scroll to discover all the graphics they have, or you can search for a specific icon
- Press on the icon you want to use for your cover
- Choose the color of your icon
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Tip : Be Innovative Use Words Instead Of Icons Or Vice Versa
When creating Highlight icons, make sure it is in line with your brand identity but still have fun, and try to be as innovative as possible to make that small space eyecatching.
For example, see how is doing this.
They use their colors but not for designing the cover icons.
Theyve literally swiped the spaces.
They use the actual icons for cover icons. Cool right?!
How To Add Instagram Story Highlight Cover Without Posting
If you already using Instagram story highlights, but you need to add a cover to them. Heres how you found it. Take a look!
Do this for each of the story highlights that you want to add a cover.
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Instagram Highlights Examples To Get Inspired
Once you know how you want to create the icons, you will need to make a plan for the overall design of the Highlights section.
This is a current trend, and as you are probably aware you want to make sure people coming to your profile click on these icons and check your great Instagram stories.
In the following section, you can find some interesting ideas on how to organize the Instagram stories and design the Highlights covers.
Here are few Highlights covers for inspiration:
1. Glossier Inc. is a people-powered beauty ecosystem they use pink color only for their profile image and for the Highlights covers they use only blankwhite images or product-line images. Very minimalistic and very different than other accounts, which usually use icons or some product images.overs they use only blankwhite images. Very minimalistic and very different than other accounts, which usually use icons or some product images.
2. Carrots n Cake Flexible Macro Plans & Coaching provides a very indebted structure about their content published via Instagram stories and uses all light-orange icons with the same layout to represent all different categories of the Highlights.
3. Starbucks Coffee they use real people photos as they use real people photos or cute green product images as cover icons for the Highlights. This appeal brings the design of their profile to life and it makes the visitors feel the user-friendliness of the profile.