What size to choose for a social media campaign before you start designing

The most expensive mistake in a campaign is usually not choosing the wrong size — it is deciding it too late, when a piece has already been designed at a specific format and has to be shoehorned into five others. Planning the sizes before opening the design editor avoids that last-minute redesign.

First decide where the campaign lives, not what it looks like

Before thinking about colours or composition, make a list of where it will appear: Instagram feed, story, LinkedIn banner, YouTube thumbnail. Each entry on that list is a different size, and that list — not the first sketch — is what should determine the ratio in which you design the original piece.

Design the most restrictive format first, not the largest

It is tempting to start with the wide banner because "there is more space to work with", but that leaves the most compressed format (a story, a circular profile picture) until the end, when there are already placed elements that don't fit there. Starting with the format with the least margin forces you to solve space problems early, instead of discovering them at the end.

Not all pieces need the same versions

A campaign is not a single piece multiplied by six sizes — sometimes the story ad needs a shorter, more direct message than the feed post, because the viewing time is different. Deciding which versions need their own text (not just a different crop) avoids discovering too late that the message doesn't fit or doesn't work in that format.

Leave a safety margin from the first sketch

If you know from the beginning that the same piece will end up in a story (with safe zones at top and bottom) and in a square post (without that restriction), design with the most demanding version in mind. It is much easier to remove extra margin in a permissive format than to add space to an element that is already flush with the edge.