How to Create Visuals for Social Media Posts

A scroll-stopping visual does more than just grab attention, it tells a story, builds trust, and communicates your brand’s value in a split second. Getting your visuals right is one of the most effective ways to build a brand organically on social media. This guide will walk you through a simple, repeatable process for creating great visuals, from defining your brand’s look to mastering the tools and formats that work today.

Good Visuals Start with a Strong Foundation

Before you open Canva or start filming a Reel, you need a plan. Creating visuals without a visual identity is like trying to build a house without a blueprint. You might end up with something, but it’ll likely be inconsistent and confusing. Take a little time to set up these core elements, and you’ll create better content faster.

Find Your Colors

Your color palette sets the mood. It’s the instant feeling someone gets from your content. You don’t need an art degree to choose good colors. Start simple:

• Primary Colors (2-3): These are your mainstays. Think about your logo and the core emotion of your brand. Is it bold and energetic (reds, oranges)? Calm and trustworthy (blues, greens)?
• Accent Colors (1-2): These are your highlight colors, used sparingly for call-to-action buttons, key stats, or a splash of contrast.
• Neutrals (1-2): These are your background colors - black, white, grays, or beiges. They give your primary colors room to breathe.

If you're stuck, tools like Coolors.co can generate beautiful palettes for you. Just plug in a color you like, and it will give you complementary options.

Choose Your Fonts

Typography is your brand’s voice. The fonts you choose say a lot about your personality. Like colors, keep it simple:

• A Headline Font: This is for grabbing attention. It can be bold, unique, and full of personality. This could be a serif font (with the little "feet" on letters) for a more traditional, authoritative feel, or a bold sans-serif font for a modern, clean look.
• A Body Font: This is for longer text and captions. Readability is the most important thing here. A simple, clean sans-serif font is almost always a safe bet.

Make sure they pair well together. A common strategy is to pair a serif headline font with a sans-serif body font, or vice-versa. Sites like Google Fonts are an incredible resource for high-quality, free fonts you can use for your brand.

Create a Mood Board

A mood board is just a collection of images, colors, fonts, and textures that capture the feeling of your brand. It’s your visual north star. Don't overthink this. Hop on Pinterest and create a private board. Start searching for terms related to your industry and brand vibe (“minimalist tech,” “warm and cozy cafe,” “bold fitness coach”) and pin anything that resonates. After saving 20-30 images, look for patterns. You’ll quickly see a consistent style emerge.

Your Essential Toolkit for Creating Social Media Visuals

You don't need a massive budget or years of design experience to create high-quality social media content. The tools available today are incredibly powerful and accessible. Here’s a breakdown of what you might need.

For Easy Everyday Graphics: Canva & Adobe Express

For 90% of business owners and marketers, these tools are all you’ll ever need for static posts, Stories, and simple animations. Canva is famous for its massive library of templates and user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Adobe Express is a strong competitor that integrates beautifully if you already use other Adobe products. You can’t go wrong with either. Upload your custom colors and fonts to create stunning on-brand content in minutes.

Pro Tip: Don’t just use the templates as-is. Use them as a starting point. Swap in YOUR colors, YOUR fonts, and YOUR photos to make them unique to your brand.

For Winning with Short-Form Video: CapCut

CapCut has become the go-to editor for TikToks, Reels, and YouTube Shorts for a reason. It’s owned by the same company as TikTok, so it gets all the best features first - like auto-captions, trending effects, and a seamless sound library. It’s mobile-first, intuitive, and gives you everything you need to create professional-looking videos right from your phone.

For Sourcing Great Imagery: Unsplash & Pexels

Stock photos have a bad reputation, but they can be amazing if you know what to look for. Unsplash and Pexels offer millions of high-quality, beautiful, and - most importantly - free images that don't look like cheesy corporate stock. Look for photos with natural lighting, unposed subjects, and authentic emotion. Search for your niche, plus terms like “flat lay,” “lifestyle,” or "detail shot" to find more artistic options.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Standout Visuals

With your brand identity and tools ready, it's time to create. The best social media visuals follow a few simple principles that anyone can learn.

1. Designing Static Graphics That People Actually Read

Static images aren't dead, but they have to work harder to earn attention in a video-first world. That means they must be clean, clear, and deliver value at a glance.

• Focus on One Idea: A single, powerful visual with one strong piece of text is far more effective than a cluttered graphic trying to say five things. Creating a weekly "tip" style post? Great. Make sure each tip gets its own design.
• Embrace White Space: Don't cram elements into every corner. White space (or negative space) is the blank area around text and images and is an essential design principle. It gives your message room to breathe and makes it easier to read and understand. When you think you're done, try removing one thing from the design.
• Create Hierarchy: The most important element on your graphic (like a headline) should be the biggest and boldest. Your supplementary information (like a username or website) should be smaller. Visual hierarchy guides the viewer’s eye and tells them what to read first, and what you want them to do next.

2. Making Short-Form Video That Stops the Scroll

Today is all about video. Reels, TikToks, and Shorts are the engines of organic growth on almost every platform, and they all run on the same fuel: attention.

• Hook Them in a Heartbeat: The first three seconds determine if someone watches the rest of your video. Your opening shot or line must be compelling. You could tease the outcome ("How I made $10k in one week from this Notion template"), ask a provocative question ("Are you making this common photography mistake?"), or use a visually interesting dynamic motion.
• Add On-Screen Text: A huge number of people watch social media with the sound off. If your video needs audio to be understood, you’re losing a massive part of your potential audience without captions. On-screen text allows you to tell a story whether the volume is on or not. Use your headline font and brand colors to supercharge your message.
• Use Trending Audio Wisely: Trending sounds can give your content a huge visibility boost, but only if they fit your brand. Don't jump on a trend just because it's popular. Find sounds that fit your niche, or that you can creatively adapt to your content. Explore the trending audio that others in your industry are using, and you'll be inspired and can come up with more ideas for content faster.

3. Optimizing for Each Platform

You wouldn't wear a tuxedo to the beach. In the same way, you shouldn’t post the exact same visual format on every platform. While it’s smart to repurpose content, a few small tweaks can make a huge difference.

• Instagram: For the feed, prioritize vertical portrait images (a 4:5 ratio) as they take up more screen space than a traditional square photo. For Reels and Stories, full-screen vertical (9:16) is the only way to go.
• TikTok & YouTube Shorts: Always create full-screen vertical video at a 9:16 aspect ratio.
• LinkedIn & Facebook: These platforms are more flexible, but vertical content still tends to perform best in mobile feeds. For link posts, make sure your "featured image" is optimized for how the platform renders them (usually a wider, landscape format is recommended).
• X (formerly Twitter): This feed favors horizontal (landscape) images. Multiple images in a single post can also perform very well on this platform.

Creating different sizes for each platform used to be tedious, but tools like Canva and Adobe Express have a “Resize” feature that can automatically adapt your design to the correct dimensions for any platform in just a few clicks.

Final Thoughts

Creating amazing visuals for social media is no longer reserved for professional designers with expensive software. By establishing a clear visual identity, choosing the right modern tools, and applying a few core design principles, you can produce consistent, high-quality content that builds your brand and connects with your audience.

During the design and content creation process, we've found that having a central place to see everything mapped out is a game-changer. Scheduling content from your phone or desktop ahead of time is always a struggle. This is why we created a visual, drag-and-drop calendar inside Postbase that lets you plan how all your newly-created visuals will look across all your social content. Since we built it with modern formats like Reels and TikTok in mind, you can trust our reliable scheduling will ensure your hard work goes live exactly as planned, letting you create and move on without worry.