Three rules that matter more than exact pixels
- —Design for the phone. Almost everyone will see your post on a small screen, so text needs to be large — if you can't read it with the image at thumbnail size, it's too small.
- —Respect the safe zones. Profile photos, buttons and captions cover parts of banners, Stories and Reels. Keep text and faces clear of those areas.
- —Stay consistent. Use one portrait size for feed posts across Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and you can design once and post everywhere.
Making it easy in Canva
Canva has presets for most of these sizes, but its defaults aren't always the ones that perform best — the Instagram post preset is square, for example, when 4:5 portrait gets more space. Create a custom size once, save it as a template in your brand kit and reuse it. Our Canva guide for therapists shows how, and social media banners for therapists has ten design ideas for your LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube headers.
Accessibility
Add alt text to every image (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X all support it), keep text-on-image contrast high, and caption every video. These help people using screen readers or watching without sound — and they help platforms understand what your post is about. For colour combinations that pass contrast checks, see our colour palettes for therapists.
Want a set of on-brand templates in all the right sizes? That's part of our graphic design for therapists.