Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
Instagram publishes a larger copy of every public post's picture so link cards can render it. Here is how to reach it, and why the link stops working.
X keeps one file per photo and serves it at six named sizes. The timeline shows you a middling one; the largest is a single word away in the URL.
Every platform publishes a larger copy of a post's picture than the one the feed renders. Here is where each one keeps it, and where the trail goes cold.
Pinterest serves every Pin at four fixed widths and keeps the original under a path the interface never links to. Here is how to get the file as uploaded.
Comment-as-hook is a format now. Here is how to draw a TikTok comment card that reads as real, including the Creator chip almost every generator gets wrong.
Draw an Instagram post card with the caption cut exactly where the feed cuts it, so you can see which sentence disappears behind "more" before you publish.
Draw a Facebook post card for a slide or a client mock-up, in desktop or mobile width, without screenshotting a real feed and cropping four things out of it.
A drawn post card is a mock-up, not evidence. Here is what these generators are genuinely useful for, where the line is, and how to stay on the right side of it.
A LinkedIn carousel is a PDF rendered as swipeable pages. Here is the page size, the type size, and the structure that keeps people swiping.
A phone screenshot of a post looks poor when scaled and proves nothing about who wrote it. Here is how to share a post as an image without misleading anyone.
Instagram Story size is 1080x1920, but the top and bottom bands belong to the interface. Here is the usable area and how to design a template once.
An Instagram Reels cover is shown at 9:16 in the Reel and cropped square in your grid. One image has to survive both. Here is how to position it.