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I hand-lettered a logo on the corner of a sheet of paper, scanned it, then cropped out everything but the logo, turning it into a small rectangular shape. I then made modifications on Illustrator.

The problem I'm running into is when I try to upload the logo as a profile photo on Instagram, you can see black bars on top and bottom because it's rectangular. I've enlarged the artboard but whenever I save down the image, it's rectangular again.

I'm sure that what I'm trying to do is quite simple, but I need some help as I can't seem to figure out the best way to do it. I'm an Illustrator newbie, so please bear with me :)

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  • I'm not sure I understand. All images are rectangular. There's no such thing as a non-rectangular image.
    – Scott
    Sep 17, 2015 at 17:22
  • Are you trying to figure out how to get your rectangular logo to fit nicely into the square shape on Instagram? Can you clarify your question a little, and maybe add a screenshot of how you've got your artboard set up?
    – Vicki
    Sep 17, 2015 at 17:57
  • Since all profile photos on Instagram appear as circles, my logo isn't fitting properly. When I drag it inwards to crop it to fit, the circular area exceeds the rectangle logo.
    – user51097
    Sep 17, 2015 at 18:59

2 Answers 2

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Are you uploading your image at the correct ratio? I did a quick search and I think Instagram profile picture is 110x110. You will need to upload at a 1:1 ratio or you will need to crop the image. So make your canvas 1:1 size as well.

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I would place a white box without a stroke behind the logo - or which ever color you'd prefer. Then save again - of course, as stated you must keep the 1:1 ratio for Instasquare.

Here is why:

Illustrator's art board appears as white - creating the illusion it is an object. In reality the white art board is transparent and non-existent, differing in this way from photoshop. It is "painted white" for you so that you do not have to struggle to see your vector lines against the checkered background.

However, when you save down a file - it will "crop" to the bounding box (or more) leaving the visible object and/or group. So if you have an object that does not fill the full area of the canvas- you have nothing to communicate to illustrator that you want to "keep your canvas".

Hope this made sense - I hated figuring this out on my own years ago!

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