Every January a blog posts a 900 pixel wide image of forty sizes you must memorize. You don't. Most designs only need four shapes.
Updated August 08, 2026, after a fresh review, with updated visuals and links.
Memorize these four ratios and cover 95% of every platform's real estate with zero squinting at spreadsheet tables.
Where people go wrong
- Uploading landscape photos to Stories crops them to oblivion: reframing takes a minute and saves the message.
- Relying on platform auto crop: it picks the middle, which decapitates anything important living at the top.
Doing it properly
- Shape one: the square, 1080 x 1080. Instagram feed posts, Facebook feed, profile pictures (they crop to circles, keep the face centered). One square design works almost everywhere feeds exist.
- Shape two: the vertical, 1080 x 1350. Instagram's portrait feed format: it takes 25% more screen than the square for the same scroll, which is why grown-up brands post portrait now. Same design, taller canvas.
- Shape three: the story, 1080 x 1920. Stories, Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts: the full vertical phone. Keep text and faces inside the middle 1080 x 1420 'safe zone' or buttons and usernames will sit on your captions.
- Shape four: the wide card, 1200 x 630. Link share images: paste a URL on Facebook, X, LinkedIn or WhatsApp and the preview card is this shape. One good wide card makes every link look intentional.
- Blog social image? This is the one
- Keep important text dead center, platforms crop edges
- The two exceptions worth knowing. YouTube thumbnails live at 1280 x 720 (16:9) and Pinterest breathes at 1000 x 1500 (2:3). Only take them on when those platforms actually enter your plan.
Good habits to keep
- Design once at 1080 wide square, then duplicate and resize per shape: Canva's resize makes this minutes not hours.
- Text bigger than you think: most viewers meet your design at 4 inches tall on a phone.
- Export PNG for graphics with text, JPG for photos: text artifacts vanish at the right choice.
Quick answers
Do these change often?
The ratios are remarkably stable: 1:1, 4:5, 9:16 and the link card have survived years of app updates.
One size forced for everything?
1080 x 1350 portrait wins that contest: decent in feeds, acceptable everywhere except stories.
Keep reading
- How to Pick a Color Palette That Doesn't Look Amateur (Free Tools + One Rule)
- How to Make Professional Designs in Canva When You Can't Design
- How to Pair Fonts Without a Design Degree (5 Rules That Always Work)
One last thing
Square, portrait, story, wide card: four shapes, zero spreadsheets, every pixel of modern social media covered.
