How to Make a 3-Post Banner on Instagram

Creating a three-post banner on your Instagram grid lets you make a bold visual statement that stops the scroll. It’s a powerful technique for announcing a new product, launching a campaign, or transforming your profile with a high-impact branding moment. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from planning your design to posting the final images in the correct order, ensuring your banner looks seamless and professional.

What Exactly is a 3-Post Banner (and Why Use One)?

An Instagram banner, often called a puzzle feed or a grid layout, is a single large image that has been split into multiple smaller, square posts. When uploaded in the correct sequence, these individual posts realign on your Instagram profile grid to form the original, larger picture. A three-post banner is the simplest and one of the most effective versions - it creates a panoramic strip across your feed.

But why go through the trouble? The benefits are purely strategic:

• High Visual Impact: It breaks the monotony of standalone square posts. The oversized format immediately catches the eye of anyone visiting your profile, drawing attention to your most important message.
• Powerful Storytelling: You get more real estate to tell a story. Instead of cramming info into one square, a banner gives you a wider canvas to showcase a landscape, a detailed product, or a team photo.
• Perfect for Launches &, Announcements: Is a new product dropping? Are you announcing a big event? A banner is the digital equivalent of a billboard, making your announcement unmissable.
• Reinforces Brand Aesthetic: A beautifully designed banner can instantly elevate the look and feel of your profile, making it look curated, professional, and intentional.

Step 1: Plan Your Banner Design and Concept

Before you even open a design tool, a little bit of planning goes a long way. A banner that looks amazing as a whole can fall apart if the individual posts look awkward or confusing on their own in your followers' feeds. Here’s what to consider.

Choose Your Core Message and Image

First, decide on the purpose of your banner. Is it to…?

• Showcase a new clothing line?
• Announce a podcast episode?
• Reveal a new brand mantra or tagline?
• Highlight testimonials from happy clients?

Once you have your goal, select a single, dominant image that supports it. This image needs to be very high-resolution. Since you'll be splitting it into three, a low-quality photo will look pixelated and unprofessional. A clean, striking, and high-quality image is the foundation of a great banner.

Think About Composition Across Three Frames

It's time to think like a photographer. Imagine your single panoramic image is divided into three equal squares: left, middle, and right. How will each of these sections look as a standalone post?

• The Center Post: This is the anchor. The most interesting or important part of your image should typically be in the middle square. When someone sees that post in their feed, it needs to be engaging enough to make them curious.
• The Left and Right Posts: These side pieces should still look intentional. Avoid having them contain just a bland corner of your background or an awkward crop of an object. These posts can contain supporting elements, negative space, or parts of your text.

If you're using text, map out where it will go. A common approach is to have a word or two on each panel that forms a complete sentence when viewed on your grid. For example:

• Post 1 (Left): Our Biggest
• Post 2 (Middle): Sale Ever
• Post 3 (Right): Starts Now

Make sure the text isn't awkwardly cut off and that each piece is still somewhat legible on its own.

Step 2: Create a 3-Post Banner in Canva (For Free)

Now for the fun part. While you can use advanced tools like Adobe Photoshop, Canva is the most user-friendly and accessible option for most creators and marketers. Here’s a detailed walkthrough.

How to Set Up Your Canva Document

The secret to a perfect banner is getting the dimensions right from the start. A standard Instagram post is 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels.

For a horizontal three-post banner, you need a canvas that is three times as wide as it is tall.

Your custom dimensions will be: 3240px wide x 1080px tall. (1080 x 3 = 3240).

1. Log in to Canva and on the home page, click "Create a design" in the top right corner.
2. Select "Custom size" from the bottom of the dropdown menu.
3. In the width box, enter 3240. In the height box, enter 1080. Make sure it's set to "px" (pixels).
4. Click "Create new design."

You now have your blank panoramic canvas.

Add Guides to Your Canvas

This is the most important step for making sure your design is perfectly divided. Guides are non-printing lines that help you align your elements.

1. Go to File >, View settings >, Show rulers and guides. A ruler will appear at the top and left side of your canvas.
2. Click on the left-side vertical ruler and drag a guideline out onto your canvas. Position it exactly at the 1080px mark on the top ruler.
3. Click and drag another vertical guideline and place it at the 2160px mark (1080 + 1080).

You should now see your canvas neatly divided into three perfect 1080x1080 squares. These guides show you exactly where the image will be split, allowing you to design with confidence.

Design Your Banner

Now, start designing! Upload your high-resolution photo and stretch it to cover the entire canvas. Add your text elements, logos, or any other graphics. As you design, keep referring to your guidelines. Ask yourself:

• Does the centerpiece look good on its own in the middle square?
• Are the left and right sides visually interesting?
• Is my text centered correctly within each block?

Once you are happy with your final design, it's time to get it ready for Instagram.

Step 3: Split the Image into Three Separate Posts

With your banner designed, you need to slice the single large image into three individual files. Trying to do this manually with a cropping tool is a recipe for frustration. Instead, use a free online image splitter.

Many reliable tools are available with a quick search for "split image online." One popular choice is PineTools' "Split Image" feature, which is simple and quick.

Here's the general process:

1. Navigate to an image splitter website of your choice.
2. Upload the 3240px by 1080px banner you just downloaded from Canva.
3. In the tool's options, specify how you want to split the image. Select to split it horizontally.
4. Set the "number of blocks" to 3.
5. Choose your output format (JPG or PNG) and make sure the quality is set to high.
6. Click the "Split Image!" button (or equivalent). The tool will process your banner and give you a zip file containing your three finished images, usually named something like `image_1.png`, `image_2.png`, and `image_3.png`.

Download those files to your phone, and you're ready for the final, most important step.

Step 4: Post Your Banner to Instagram in the Right Order

Uploading the posts in the correct sequence is critical. Get it wrong, and the entire banner will be reversed and nonsensical on your grid. It might feel counterintuitive, but you have to post them backward.

The Golden Rule of Posting: Right to Left

To have the banner appear correctly on your profile, you must upload the images in reverse order.

1. First Post: The piece from the far right (image_3.png).
2. Second Post: The middle piece (image_2.png).
3. Third Post: The piece from the far left (image_1.png).

As you upload them, your grid will update, and the new posts will push older ones down and to the right, assembling your banner perfectly from left to right for anyone visiting your profile.

Crafting Your Captions

How you write your captions is a chance to add another layer to your banner. Here are a few strategies:

• Consecutive Story: Have each caption build on the last, telling a story across the three posts. Label them "Part 1," "Part 2," and "Part 3" to guide your audience.
• Unified Caption: Use the same or a very similar caption for all three posts. This keeps the focus entirely on the visual. You can add a simple (1/3), (2/3), (3/3) to signal it's part of a series.
• Unique Captions: Give each post a completely different caption that speaks to that specific part of the image, while still connecting to the overall theme.

A Quick Word of Warning

Remember that your beautiful banner is only perfectly aligned until you post again. The moment you upload your next single post, it will shift the grid, pushing the banner posts down and breaking the seamless look. For that reason, banners are best used for temporary, high-impact campaigns rather than as a permanent fixture. Also, be careful with Instagram's "Pin to Profile" feature, as pinning another post to the top row will also disrupt the banner alignment.

Final Thoughts

Making a three-post banner on Instagram is an incredibly effective way to capture attention and communicate a powerful message. By planning your creative, using guides in your design tool, and posting the final images in reverse order, you can easily execute a professional-looking grid takeover for your next big campaign.

Organizing and scheduling a multi-post banner requires precision, especially to ensure everything goes live in the correct sequence. That's why at Postbase, we built our visual calendar to give you a bird’s-eye view of your entire content strategy. You can drag and drop your three banner images directly onto the calendar, see exactly how they’ll align on your grid before they're published, and schedule them with trusted reliability, so your launch goes off without a hitch.