You produce a campaign image. Then you crop it to 1:1 for the Instagram feed, 9:16 for stories, 4:5 for LinkedIn, 16:9 for a YouTube thumbnail. Four crops, four text overflows, four rounds of “the logo got cut off”.
It looks like design work. It is not. A crop is a decision that belonged at the start of production and got deferred to the end of it.
Cropping breaks composition
A horizontal composition does not fit a vertical frame, because composition is built together with the frame. The breathing space in a landscape image either disappears in portrait or pools awkwardly on one side. That is the main reason text overflows: the layout was made for a width that no longer exists.
The usual outcome is that one channel looks good and three are tolerable.
Ask for the format first
The right order is the reverse. You say which channels this is going to, and production composes separately for each ratio. Same idea, same palette, same message — four different layouts.
That is not four times the work. The idea is defined once; what changes is how much room each element gets.
Which ratios actually matter
The set in real use is short:
- 1:1 — Instagram and Facebook feed, LinkedIn image posts
- 4:5 — the ratio that takes the most vertical room in a feed
- 9:16 — stories, Reels, TikTok, Shorts
- 16:9 — YouTube thumbnails, blog headers, decks
When you think you need a fifth ratio, what you usually need is a new channel.
The same is true of video
On video the cost is higher: re-cropping a scene usually means re-shooting it. Naming the channel set before the edit starts turns “four versions of the same take” from a fix into an output.
Leaving format to the end means composing twice — and the second one is never as good as the first.