Why You Shouldn’t Have Been Surprised by the Instagram Update

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Instagram just made some pretty dramatic changes to their grid layout.

If you haven’t already seen it for yourself, they changed their iconic square grid…

Wait for it…

into rectangles!

Gasp! We know. But in these trying times, we’re here to hold your hand and talk you through it.

All the Signs Were There

Check out the first sentence of this article we found from 2015:

“In an unexpected twist, Instagram has announced it’s now bringing official support for landscape and portrait photos and video.”

In the age of TikTok and AI Influencers using the phrase “unexpected twist” to describe the addition of new image ratios and video seems laughable, but at the time, it really was an exciting update.

Instagram started as a photo-forward platform, with many of its first users being photographers or aspiring photographers like me. (Shoutout to the sepia filter!) So, allowing users to post landscape and portrait photography without those dreadful borders made it easier for photographers to share their work as they intended it to be seen.

Variable aspect ratios are old news in 2025, but Instagram has remained true to its original square format on the profile grid. That is, until recently. Many users were sad to see it go, but not for the nostalgic reasons you might think. 

They were sad—and some were downright angry—because the update totally f****d up their grid.

But not us. Here at Fortress, we kept our cool. Did we see the update coming? Not exactly. But we’ve been doing this long enough to know when something is more than a trend and staying on top of the latest updates across all platforms, not just Instagram, is what saved us from grid-pocalypse.

First, let’s talk about how we got here.

The Rise of Vertical Content

Beyond making it easier for users to post non-square images to their feed, there were a series of events after 2015 that would cement the portrait layout in Instagram’s platform.

First, after 2015, the world became more and more focused on their phones. Before 2015, taking photos on our phones was far less common. We sent emails almost exclusively from our computers (unless you were one of those people with the fancy Blackberry and ridiculous Bluetooth headset.) As we became increasingly reliant on our phones—and our iPhones in particular—it just made sense that the content we were viewing was vertical. Granted, the first iPhone came out in 2007, well before Instagram allowed vertical photos. Still, the widespread adoption of the iPhone, and other phones like it, didn’t happen overnight. Eight years and six iPhones later, we were fully immersed in vertical content.

 

Next, the rise of short-form video made the portrait format essential to any social media platform. Remember Vine, the precursor to modern-day TikTok? Vine was an app that allowed users to post six-second videos. It also exclusively used the square aspect ratio. Vine’s popularity was largely responsible for the increase in short-form video content on social media, with apps like Facebook and Instagram quickly adopting similar features. However, to my own and many others’ dismay, Vine was shut down in 2017. But the ball was already rolling, and many users migrated to Instagram or Musical.ly, which rebranded in 2018 to a platform we all know, TikTok. (A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?)

There were a lot of reasons Vine didn’t stick around, mainly its lack of monetization and competition with larger platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. But even if it did stick around, it wasn’t going to be able to exist in its original form for much longer, mainly because of its heavy restrictions on video length and format. In a world that craved more content and better content, six-second videos that barely took up half the screen just weren’t going to last.

Another reason the vertical format has become so popular is one that marketers will appreciate. The longer the image or video, the more real estate it takes up on a phone screen. That translates into longer impressions and higher engagement.  Think of it like driving past a yard sale sign versus a billboard, one of them is going to make a lot more of an impact than the other. It’s a whole lot easier to scroll past a horizontal or square image than a full screen one. Combine that prime real estate with a video and you get social advertising gold.

So, with all the signs pointing to vertical content, why were so many people shocked by the Instagram update?

Unphased and Unbothered

Instagram has a history of stealing…. I mean borrowing features from other apps. They borrowed their Reels from Musical.ly, stories from Snapchat, and Threads from X. With the mega-popularity of TikTok, it’s not all that surprising that Instagram would mimic TikTok’s grid layout to be more accommodating of vertical video content. Especially with the potential TikTok ban in the United States, it makes perfect sense why Instagram would do something like this. 

Who’s going to tell them that their visual layout isn’t what makes TikTok the better platform? But that’s for another blog post.

The main reason why people were shocked, or at least a little surprised, by the grid update is because of how long Instagram has clung to it. As I mentioned before, Instagram allowed vertical images way back in 2015 and then added Reels in 2020. Through it all, they remained faithful to the almighty square. 

I get it, there is a bit of nostalgia around those little squares. Ever since I downloaded the app back in 2010 the grid has looked essentially the same. But all good things must come to an end. And some users agree.



Love it or hate it, the question still stands. Why are people making this such a big deal?

Oh No, We Messed Up

At Fortress, our grid still looks as good as ever. Dare I say that it looks even better than it did before? That’s because we have been posting vertical images and videos for a while now. That’s not to say we ignored the squares. Even when posting vertical images, we were sure to optimize the content to crop nicely to the square aspect ratio. Now, our images fit into the new grid seamlessly.

Others weren’t so lucky. Although, in our opinion, luck doesn’t have much to do with it, not if you were paying attention, but more on that later.

A lot of Instagram users out there, especially brands, use their profiles as a curated showcase of who they are and what they do. As a result, even though Instagram allowed vertical and horizontal images for years, users continued to post squares for the sake of keeping their grid aesthetic. This has proved to be a mistake because the new layout has now zoomed in and cropped those original square posts to retrofit them to the new grid.

Jokes aside, we understand why an update like this on a visual-first platform is upsetting., especially for users who rely on the platform to promote their business. Reddit user QueenMackeral took to the r/artbusiness subreddit to express their disappointment and frustration. They said:


I’ve been designing my artwork in square format for years now, it just feels more 

natural and looks nicer to me. I have 170 posts and probably another 100 unposted artworks. 90% of them are square.

 

I use my Instagram as a portfolio, I send it to all my clients. […]

Now that they’re testing out the vertical grid layout, my profile looks like crap, my square artworks are now squished and cropped.

 

If you’re in a similar situation as QueenMackeral, don’t panic just yet. Instagram does allow you to adjust each of your posts for the new grid. Just view the post you want to change and click the three dots in the upper right corner. There, you’ll be able to adjust how the image is cropped, and for non-vertical aspect ratios, you can add a background in the color of your choice. Also, don’t forget about the “pin to profile” feature which allows you to move your best work to the top of your page, and the “archive” feature which allows you to remove fewer desirable posts from your feed without deleting them. It’s not much of a consolation, but it’s something.

Speaking of aesthetic grids, we’ve all been unwillingly subjected to the accounts that post multiple cropped images in a row to create one large image on the profile grid. While the breadcrumbs of nonsensical, zoomed-in images dropped into our feeds may have been annoying at the time, the ensuing hilarity of what the update did to those posts was, I think, worth it. Take a look at one of my favorite results from musician Niall Horan’s profile:

Or this magazine’s amazing new look:

Other celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Beyoncé were also affected by the update, but I have a feeling they’ll recover.

The point I’m trying to make is that it pays to understand the platforms you use on a deeper level and then utilize them accordingly. Especially for brands and agencies, it’s important to keep up with trends and updates, no matter how small. I won’t go as far as to say that we predicted the Instagram update but knowing that vertical content is best from both an aesthetic and marketing perspective made it so we were way ahead of the game. 

It’s worth mentioning that as of now, the grid layout on a desktop browser is still using squares. But virtually no one is viewing Instagram anywhere other than their phone, so vertical posts should still be the priority. Just don’t let the square dictate your posts anymore.

All in all, this update isn’t that big of a deal. Every update Meta makes to their app usually causes some kind of uproar while we all readjust to the new normal. But the update does serve as a lesson to brands and marketers alike—when the content climate shows signs of changing, dress for the weather.

With that being said, let’s pour one out for what we’ve lost along the way. Vine, Musical.ly, and the beloved Instagram square, we’ll miss you.

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