How To Make Aesthetics 101 by Moi

Last week I did The Blogger Aesthetics Tag, and May suggested that I’d do a post on how to create aesthetics. Since I love aesthetics (and being helpful promise I’m a good person) how could I not? So here’s my attempt at being helpful! (because I might like helping and teaching people I always feel like I suck at it lmao)

Step 1: Have an idea/theme

Okay so I don’t always already know what kind of aesthetic I want to make, sometimes I just want to make one? In that case there’s secret Step 0 in which I browse my Pinterest and/or WeHeartIt to look at my boards/collections for inspiration. Usually I already know what kind of aesthetic I want to make though. In this case a Hermione Granger character aesthetic, so let’s take a look at my board and collection

Okay so I already have a lot of pictures to work with, but let’s pretend I don’t!

Step 2: Look for pictures to use 

Personally I use Pinterest and WeHeartIt, because I can save pictures on boards/collections and make the aesthetics later on, but you can look wherever you want. In this tutorial I’ll be talking about Pinterest and WeHeartIt though.

When I first started making aesthetics I had NO IDEA how to find pictures, and I’m sure some of you have this same problem. It’s a lot easier when you’re making an aesthetic for an already existing character, especially a popular one like Hermione:

Look at all the pins and boards! It makes it super easy to find plenty of pictures. Of course it’s not that easy when you want to make an aesthetic for your own character or book. I have boards/collections for my own WIPs and characters as well, so whenever I come across something I can save it to the board/collection and at some point I can make an aesthetic, but still, how do you find pictures?

Since my character Mick is a bookworm, I just look for ‘book aesthetics’ and ta-dah! Of course he’s more than a bookworm, but I wanted to use this as an example

Basically: put aesthetic in your search term.

I also follow aesthetic boards/collections on Pinterest and WeHeartIt: from general ‘aesthetic’ boards to ‘yellow aesthetic’ to people’s own characters’ aesthetics or aesthetics for already existing characters/books/tv shows/movies/etc. that I know are similar to my WIPs and characters, so I’ll be able to save pins/hearts from those to the boards/collections for my WIPs/characters and be able to use them later on when I’m making aesthetics.

Step 3: Save all the pictures to whatever device you’re making the aesthetic on

So by now you hopefully have all the pictures you need, so now you need to save them. Yes all of them. Okay, I’m not looking at you through my computer screen yelling ‘HEY YOU FORGOT ONE’ and if you don’t want to save all of them, obviously you don’t need to, I’m just telling you what I do. Though if there’s an image that I know won’t work I’ll skip it, but I like having all images on my laptop to use.

Step 4: Open your collage making program/website

I always use Fotor, but I found that on the App Store so I don’t know if it’s available on other computers? If it is, I definitely recommend it! It’s not just a program for collages, it’s also a regular editor.

Step 5: Choose a layout

You can choose different layouts, and I never really know which one I want, so basically I experiment a lot. There’s no ‘one layout’ for aesthetics, though four, six, eight and nine squares are used a lot. Those are the ones I use myself as well.

Step 6: Upload your pictures and experiment! 

Whatever program you’re using, there’s a big chance that if like me you end up with a lot of pictures you might not be able to open all of them at once, which I personally find a real struggle. I want all the pictures on the side so I can see which ones go together, but alas Fotor doesn’t allow more than 30 pictures and I ended up with around 70 pictures to choose from.

So this is what I ended up with after experimenting for a bit and well… I wasn’t satisfied AT ALL.

Step 7: Experiment some more until you’re satisfied 

AND TADAH. Sorry I don’t have screenshots of the experimenting, but what looks good and doesn’t look good is very subjective anyway. Personally I look at the following things:

💛 Do the pictures look good together? Is it pleasing to the eye? (composition, colours)
💛 Aren’t there too many pictures showing one side of the character/book? For example: a lot of pictures of books in a Hermione aesthetic and no pictures that have to do with her being a witch, a hardworking student, an activist. I like showing as many sides to the character as possible as long as the pictures look nice together

You’ll most likely end up with a lot of pictures saved on your laptop that you wish you could’ve used, but hey you could always make another aesthetic ;)

Step 8: Throw your pretty aesthetics in everyone’s faces

Why yes that IS a Malvie aesthetic I made

You could share them on your blog, or make a Tumblr dedicated to aesthetics like me (cheeky self promo here). If you already have a Tumblr and don’t want another one, you can also upload them on there of course. Twitter and Instagram also loves aesthetics! Anyway loads of people love aesthetics so no one minds if you throw some in their face (I definitely don’t! THROW ALL THE AESTHETICS IN MY FACE)

Well, I hope that was a little bit useful! If you need help/have questions, I always love to help and talk about aesthetics did I mention I love aesthetics I may have a problem. Do you like making aesthetics? Do you have any tips? Do you have an aesthetics Tumblr? Let me know in the comments!