How did Instagram evolve from a purely social tool into a tool for curation?
The idea of our project was to analyze how, from the creation of our Instagram accounts to now, our utilization of Instagram had evolved. For this matter, we focused on our saved posts, and we made a visual gallery to compare how different the posts we saved before, during, and after our graduation as graphic designers.
It is clear that over the years, our use of Instagram has undergone a significant transformation. What initially functioned as a purely social platform—where we interacted mainly with posts shared by close friends, acquaintances, and relatively private circles—has progressively shifted towards a more professional and research-oriented practice. Instead of simply reacting to personal updates, we increasingly engage with a much wider range of public content, often produced by artists, studios, institutions, or cultural actors whose work resonates with our own graphic design practice.
This evolution reflects a broader change in the way Instagram is used: from a space dedicated to social connection to a space of visual exploration, documentation, and archiving. The number of posts we save has dramatically increased in recent years, turning the “saved posts” feature into a genuine working tool. What was once a casual bookmark has become a methodical way of building a personal gallery of references, inspirations, and design cues. These saved collections now function almost like mood boards or research libraries, allowing us to structure our creative process and revisit ideas. In this sense, Instagram has gradually moved beyond its initial purpose. It has become an everyday instrument of curation—a platform where we gather, organize, and reinterpret visual material that shapes our practice.
