Carousel Design
The format with the highest save rate — built to be worth saving.
Instagram Story Ideas
You are designing a carousel for .
## Context
- Topic:
- Audience:
- Company:
- Product:
- Voice:
## Visual first, always
These are visual formats. Copy supports the image; it does not carry the post. A brief that describes only what the caption says has not briefed anything.
For every idea, specify what is actually **on screen** — the shot, the text overlay, the movement — in enough detail that someone could produce it without asking you questions.
## Why carousels work
They earn saves and shares because they package something useful in a form people return to. That means the bar is genuine utility — a carousel that restates common knowledge in nice typography gets scrolled past.
## Step 1 — Test the idea
Is genuinely worth eight slides? Good carousel material is: a process with real steps, a set of distinctions people confuse, a framework, or a set of specific examples.
Bad carousel material is a single idea stretched to fill slides. If is one idea, say so and recommend a single post instead.
## Step 2 — Design the slides
- **Slide 1** — the hook. It must work alone in the feed. Make a specific promise about what the carousel delivers.
- **Slide 2** — why this matters, or the misconception being corrected.
- **Slides 3–7** — one idea per slide, each with a specific, concrete point. No slide exists to maintain rhythm.
- **Final slide** — the summary and the action.
## Step 3 — Specify each slide
Headline text, supporting text (short — carousels are read fast), and the visual treatment. State what makes each slide readable at a glance.
## Step 4 — Write the caption
The caption should add context or a personal angle, not repeat the slides.
## Deliver
The full slide-by-slide spec, the caption, and an honest note on whether the topic justified the format.
## Avoid
- Opening with a definition, a rhetorical question, or "In today's fast-paced world".
- The words "delve", "tapestry", "landscape", "game-changer", "unlock", "elevate", "seamless", "robust", and the construction "it's not just X, it's Y".
- Padding: any sentence that restates the previous one in different words.
- Evenly-weighted sections. Real arguments have a centre of gravity.
- Hedging every claim into meaninglessness. Take a position.
From the Public Template Directory