Each month, we try and profile a design trend sensation that’s sweeping the web. This month, we’re looking at Instagram’s move away from the square, where it came from, and why it’s here.
Update 7.5
In late August, Instagram announced that their 7.5 update would move users off the square and let them post images in rectangle dimensions, like more traditional photography (e.g. landscape and portrait format).
This is a big deal.
While it sounds like a bit of a nothing announcement, consider this: Instagram’s entire visual look is defined by its square-ness. It’s what sets it apart from a gallery function on a phone (plus filters and sharing). We think it’s fair to say that the Instagram square is a hugely important part of the brand and the driving force to the app’s look and feel.
So moving away from that towards a larger format image is a big move.
The motivation
According to the official
Instagram blog:
“the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.”
That’s pretty on par with Instagram’s general ethos – sharing photos, made easy. They also note that 20% of images on Instagram are already out of their restrictive square format, so in a lot of ways they’re jumping on a bandwagon rather than setting a trend.
But the fact remains that Instagram is arguing that the motivation is purely user focused – it wants to bring the Instagram experience to something people are doing already, and it wants to make it easier than ever to share images, whatever your creative vision for them might be.
The advertising angle
But the
BBC thinks that there’s an ulterior motive here. They say that the driving force is advertising. Advertisers want wider, larger formats for their campaigns, especially since it means they don’t have to awkwardly reformat video anymore. Disney, for example, was quick to take advantage of the new format: shortly after the new format was released, they uploaded a teaser for the new Star Wars movie. In conjunction with Instagram’s announcement to have more ads then before, this might be a move to cater to companies rather than users.
But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. If 20% of people want a new feature or function, then Instagram is right to fulfill that need. We think that while it does definitely benefit advertisers, there are definite UX gains here as well.
Design implications
It’s worth noting a few things. From a UX perspective, the actual experience of using Instagram hasn’t changed that much. If you’re taking pictures from Instagram, they’re still going to be square. What’s more, the look of Instagram’s scroll is still a grid of squares – it centre crops any landscape/portrait images to fit. So all in all, the change is maybe less dramatic then you might think.
However, what you can do now is upload a picture taken elsewhere (e.g. with the camera function of your phone) and you won’t have to crop it to a square anymore. So now, you can have images that show more width, like a picture of a city skyline, or you can upload a group photo and not have to cut anyone out.
From a portrait perspective, you can better capture tall buildings or trees, you can create head-and-shoulder shots (instead of just face).
It’s a good piece of functionality, but we would rather that Instagram made it possible directly from their app. As it is, it forces users out of the app to take a picture, only to go back into the app to upload it. But we like that the clean, regimented grid structure stayed the same. They could have created something with a Windows 10 feel, with different sized boxes, but we think that it would have been distracting and hard on the eyes.
Wrap up
Instagram has once again proven themselves to be a dynamic company capable of change. Lots of organizations would have baulked at the idea of changing something so fundamental to their brand. But Instagram sat back and said ‘ok, well how are people actually using our service? What can we do to improve that?’
And that’s a really positive thing for any company to do. Of course, it helps that what 20% of users wanted was also high on advertisers’ Christmas list. But the fact remains: Instagram has iterated seamlessly to match changing user demand, and that’s a win in our books.
