I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across something I had not seen before – a well-designed 3×5 box-grid layout of the @heartandsocialmedia landing page. I loved it – thought it looked so clean, creative, and cool. As an added bonus, I realized quickly that this women-owned business is run by TWO Murrow College alumni who also happen to be my former students from COMSTRAT 310 Digital Content Promotion. Heart and Social Media was founded in 2020 by Brianna (Hoefer) Perry (advertising, ’15), and Christina Snow (strategic communication, ’18). They specialize in social media and branding services offering packages in social media management, do-it-yourself (DIY) branded kits, curated content, messaging and graphics, and brand strategy. Their materials look fantastic. I am so excited to watch their journey unfold!
Back to the purpose of this post. After I landed on the Heart and Social Media landing page, I set out to figure out how they created this cool box-grid landing page. I found an app called PhotoSplit for Instagram: Profile Photo Grid Maker. I don’t know if this is the app or method they used. There are several ways to do it. Anyway – here is what their’s looked like when I screenshot it earlier this week:
10 Steps to creating your own PhotoSplit art in Canva
So I downloaded the app and set out to create one for my newly minted Instagram professional page @professorcooney. You can upload a single image into the app and it will split it out for you by default (see instructions and short tutorial). But I wanted to create something similar to Heart and Social Media where there was a mix of images, graphics, box-overlay, and text. So I decided to use my favorite – Canva!
Here’s how I did it so you can do it too!
- Create a design with custom dimensions: 3000x4040px
- Upload images and artwork you want to use in your PhotoSplit landing page or search through Elements and Photos for royalty-free options
- Use the Add Text feature to create various text areas
- Use shapes as needed
- Try new things! Play and experiment
- Download your finished product as a .png
- Open the PhotoSplit app and upload it
- The app will break up your image into a series of 15 boxes you upload as posts in Instagram (in reverse order)
- And there you go!
- As you add posts each square will move down so you may want to be mindful of how your page looks when you add posts one at a time.
#KeepGoing #KeepGrowing
This post is part of Rebecca L. Cooney’s Professional Pathways – Never Stop Learning series. Check out more posts in the Professional Pathways category.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Cooney is a Clinical Associate Professor of Strategic Communication and Director of Murrow Online Programs at The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. She is also a Research Associate for the Center of Excellence for Natural Product-Drug Interaction Research. Rebecca has more than 26 years of professional experience. Her core areas of expertise include user experience design, integrated communication, brand strategy, and digital communications. She holds a BA in organizational communications and MS in communications and is the recipient of the 2019 Oaks Award for innovation in teaching, 2015 Scripps Howard Visiting Professor in Social Media, and 2014 Plank Center Educator Fellow awards.