One Design, Every Size - The Social Image Kit
Design the cover once, then export every platform size in one pass.
A social image kit is one cover design rendered at every size you ship - the link card, the hero, the portrait, the story, the pin, the banner - exported in a single pass instead of remade six times. Build it once, compose it for the crop they all share, and export the set. That is the whole answer; the rest is which sizes are worth keeping, and the one habit that makes a single design hold at every shape.
Most size guides hand you a chart of platforms and leave you to make a file for each. That is the slow read. For one blog post you do not need six designs - you need one design, sized six ways, and the gap between those two sentences is most of an afternoon.
One design, not six
Open a fresh canvas for every platform and you redraw the same decisions each time: retype the title, re-place the logo, re-pick the scrim, nudge the focal subject back into frame. None of that is new design work. It is the same design, paid for six times.
And every redraw drifts. The title creeps a few pixels, the color lands a notch off, the logo sits somewhere new, and stacked in a feed your covers stop reading as one brand. A kit removes the drift by removing the redraw - you build the cover once and the sizes come off that single source. Same title, same weight, same logo spot, every shape. The build-once, swap-the-rest workflow is the habit underneath it: settle the frame one time, then never re-decide it.
The kit: which sizes, which platforms
Here is the set most blogs actually ship. Read the first two as the ones you cannot skip, and the rest as add-only-if-you-post-there:
| Size | Ratio | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| 1200×630 | 1.91:1 | the link/share card - your og:image (Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Slack, Discord) |
| 1280×720 | 16:9 | the in-article hero at the top of the post |
| 1080×1350 | 4:5 | an Instagram feed post (the feed now favors 4:5 over square) |
| 1080×1920 | 9:16 | a Story or Reel |
| 1000×1500 | 2:3 | a Pinterest pin |
| 1500×500 | 3:1 | an X / profile header banner |
The first row does the most work, so get it right before the others - the per-platform breakdown covers exactly which feed reads which file, and the two core cover sizes is the pillar behind both the card and the hero. Every other row is the same design on a different canvas; tick the shapes your blog uses and leave the rest.
Compose for the crop they all share
One design has to survive a 1.91:1 card, a 4:5 portrait, and a 9:16 story. Those shapes share almost nothing at the edges and everything in the middle, so the rule writes itself: keep the title and the focal subject in the center, and let the edges carry only background.
Build for the center; the edges are the platform’s to keep or cut.
A wide card trims its top and bottom to reach a portrait; a portrait trims harder to reach a story. Center-weight the composition and each of those trims takes only background with it. Drift the title into a corner to fill the wide card, and the tall story slices it clean off. Center the thing that has to be seen, treat the edges as flex, and one composition reads at every ratio.
A kit is rendered, not cropped
The reflex is to make the 1200×630 once and crop it down for the rest. It does not work, and not because of pixels - because a crop throws away composition. The story needs the title where the card never put it.
A kit re-renders the design at each canvas instead. The layout re-flows for the shape, the title re-sits, the subject re-centers, and every size exports sharp because each one is drawn at its own resolution, not stretched up from a smaller file. An export kit - Lede has one built in - renders a stack of sizes from a single design in one export. Save each as WebP at 2x so the heaviest images on your feeds still load fast. Same design, each size its own clean render - not one picture crammed into frame after frame.
A quick checklist
- Build the cover once - title, colors, layout, focal subject - and treat it as the source for every size.
- Keep the title and focal subject in the center, so every crop takes only background.
- Always ship the 1200×630 link card; it is the one platforms read and the one you do not control.
- Add a 1080×1350 Instagram portrait, a 1080×1920 story, a 1000×1500 pin, or a 1500×500 profile header only for the platforms you actually use.
- Re-render each size from the design - never crop one export into another.
- Export at 2x as WebP so the whole set stays sharp and light.
I made this post’s cover in Lede and exported a stack of its sizes in one pass. You can do the same: open the editor, build the cover, then export the kit - the preset sizes come out together, and any extra ratio is a quick custom export. Start from the gallery if you want a layout to size up from. One design, every shape - made once.