How to Make an Instagram Puzzle Feed

Well-executed Instagram puzzle feeds can elevate the look of your feed and drive home your custom branding and vibe. When you’re first starting out, they can be tricky, but with a little time and effort, you can take your Insta to the next level. There are many ways to achieve a puzzle feed, but here’s one way to make an Instagram puzzle feed.

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What is an Instagram Puzzle Feed?

An Instagram puzzle feed is a curated Instagram feed where the imagery in the individual posts piece together to make a larger image or visual design.

This is an example of a 12 post Instagram puzzle feed I designed in Canva.

When Should You Use a Puzzle Feed?

Choosing to use an Instagram puzzle feed requires careful planning and curation. If your Instagram style is more of a point-shoot-edit-upload process for a more organic look, a puzzle feed may not be right for your brand.

If you are a brand that is scheduling posts and already being strategic with what and how you post, then a puzzle template might be easier to incorporate into your social media workflow.

Puzzle feeds can help to enhance your branding and other visual elements, such as text quotes, which can take the strain off of needing high-quality photos for every post.

Different Types of Instagram Puzzle Feeds

There are many different ways you can achieve a puzzle feed look.

• Puzzle background – the background elements overlap/connect between posts, but each post has its own image or text quote.
• Image and background puzzle – both images and the background overlap/connect between posts. You may only see a piece of the image/design in a single post.
• Image puzzle – individual posts contain only a piece of an image; the whole image can only be seen when all posts are added to the main profile feed.

How to Make an Instagram Puzzle Feed in Canva

These instructions will allow you to create 12 posts per page in Canva.

Step 1: Getting Started

Option A: Start with a Blank Canvas

via GIPHY

If you are creating a template design from scratch, then you will want to start with a 3240 pixels wide by 4320 pixels tall blank design.

Option B: Start with One of My Pre-made Template Guides

I created these free Canva templates so I could see where each post would be within the whole 3240 x 4320 design.

Using these templates helps to balance the posts so you can make sure your posts work well on their own as well as a part of the a whole, especially when you are experimenting to come up with a design.

It is hard to create precise squares like this in Canva, which is why I actually made the checkered pattern in Photoshop and then added it in to Canva. You won’t have to worry about doing that if you use these. These can be accessed with a free Canva account.

Use the gray and black checkered template if you are planning on using white or light colors in the background of your Instagram puzzle.

Use the white and gray checkered template if you are going to use dark colors in your background.

Tip: Each of these templates include two pages, but if you want to add another page with the boxes, simply click the “duplicate page” symbol.

Step 2: Start Adding Your Background and Design Elements

via GIPHY

Experiment with different shapes and textures. If you are creating something for yourself, Canva has a lot of shapes and elements to play with.

You can toggle the checkered template to the foreground and the background of your design to make sure you are putting things where you want to.

If you want to take it up a notch, consider investing in design elements from a site like Creative Market. The metallics I used in the example, which are a part of my official branding, I bought from Creative Market.

Step 3: Add Canva Frames

Once your background is done, you will want to add what Canva calls “frames.” These are image placeholders that will allow you to add and to swap out images. They are found in the “Elements” section.

Here is what that can look like:

Step 4: Add Your Images to Your Frames

Use your own imagery, use stock imagery, or add text quotes to the frames to create the look you want.

Step 5: Download Your Design

Once you are happy with your design, save it as a high-quality .png file

Step 6: Go to Pinetools.com

Pine Tools has a free split image tool that will split the images for our Instagram puzzle feed.

Drag or upload your file in the “Input Image” section.

Step 7: Adjust the Settings

• How to Split the Image
  • Select “Both (grid)”
• Output Format
  • Choose either JPG or PNG
• Vertically
  • For split by, select “Quantity of blocks (equal height)”
  • Quantity of blocks – 4
  • Overlap blocks – leave unchecked
• Horizontally
  • For split by, select “Quantity of blocks (equal width)”
  • Quantity of blocks – 3
  • Overlap blocks – leave unchecked

Step 8: Hit Split Image!

When you hit the Split Image button, your 12 files will appear on the screen. When you select the individual image file, it will auto-download.

Tip: Create a new folder on your desktop to put these images in. Rename the files to something more user-friendly to stay even more organized.

Step 9: Plan Your Feed

It will be helpful to use a visual planning and/or scheduling tool to make sure your posts are published in the correct order to achieve your Instagram puzzle feed.

For some of the most popular social media schedulers, you can get started for free:

• Later
  • One account for each Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest for 30 posts per month for free.
• Planoly
  • One Pinterest account, one Instagram account up to 30 uploads per month for free.
• Tailwind
  • Free trial up to 30 Instagram posts and 100 Pinterest posts.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Do you have any tips or tricks for creating an Instagram puzzle feed? Have you tried to make one? Do you like the way they look?

Let me know in the comments!

As always, thanks for reading Domains & Champagne.