Create Instagram story layout in Adobe InDesign

In this lesson, learn how to create simple, yet visually stunning, Instagram story layouts in Adobe InDesign.

For this tutorial, I will be using a template from Creative Market, with ready-to-use frames, fonts and colour palettes built in. Of course, these can all be tailored and customized to your liking.

If you'd like to use the same template I am working on, you can license and download this Instagram Pack from Creative Market. It has a combination of customizable Adobe InDesign layouts for both Instagram Stories and Posts.

In this specific example, I'll choose four Instagram story layouts of interest, edit some of the design elements and then post go over how to share them to an IG story.

What if you wanted to animate some of the story layouts before posting on Instagram? Don't worry, I have you covered in this lesson.

For this part, you'll need to open the Animation and Timing panels from InDesign's Interactive tools. This can be done by going to Window > Interactive > Animation as well as Window > Interactive > Timing.

Animate IG Story

1. Click on a title or multiple text elements in the layout and add animation preset of your choice

2. Have all elements play with a duration of 1 second

3. Check the Loop option so it plays repeatedly

4. Publish the layout online and open it in a web browser to play

5. Open a screen-recording software program, such as Quicktime and use the crop settings to select a portion of the video to record while it's playing

6. Save the video to your desktop in MP4 or MOV format

7. Save the video to your phone and open Instagram

8. Create a story and add the video with animation to your IG story (Note: If you want to add multiple animation layouts, you will have to create different videos and add them to the IG Story).