Cora

Photo ideas for cool girls: the scattered-words cover

one selfie, five lowercase words floating around you in one pastel, a few ★, then a page per pose idea. ten minutes on the phone. · 2 min read

You've seen this cover all month: a mirror selfie, and the title isn't a title at all. It's five lowercase words floating around the person in one pastel, with a couple of ★ stuck in the gaps. Then every page is one pose idea with a two-word caption. Here's the ten-minute version.

Why it works

The words behave like stickers, not a headline. Nobody "designed" this; it looks typed on the phone in thirty seconds, and that is exactly why it reads as a person and not a template. The title promises ideas, which is a save magnet: people keep it for their next shoot. And because the pages are real photos with tiny captions, each one is proof the idea is doable by someone with a phone and no photographer.

What you need

One candid or mirror selfie with air around you. You are not the whole frame; the words need room. Four more phone photos, one per pose. Instagram's own text tool or any free photo editor. Ten minutes. No filter, no preset, no graphics.

Step by step

1. Pick the cover. A mirror selfie where you stand off-centre, or a candid with a wall or sky behind you. Crop to portrait 4:5.
2. Pull one pastel from the photo: the wash of your top, the tile, the lipstick. Go lighter than you think. That is the only colour on every slide.
3. Type the title as separate text boxes, one word each, all lowercase: photo, ideas, for, cool, girls. Use the rounded sans (the plain one, SF Rounded on iPhone), mid size, about a fifth of the frame wide. Not huge.
4. Scatter them: one by the shoulder, one at the hip, one in the top corner, one low. Tilt a couple slightly. Leave it uneven; evenness kills it.
5. Drop two or three ★ stickers in the gaps, same pastel, smaller than the words.
6. Pages 2 to 5: one real photo each, a two-word lowercase caption in a corner, same font, same pastel, small. hands in frame. mid-walk, don't look. from above, coffee first. mirror, phone up.
7. On the last page add a caption line asking which one they will try, then post caption: photo ideas for cool girls, save for your next shoot.

Make it yours

Beauty: ideas that need no makeup. skin in daylight. the mirror at 7am. hair, from behind. Fashion: angles that skip your face. shoes first. the fit, from the knee down. mirror, phone up. UGC or small business: the shots brands ask for. product in hand, out of focus. the unboxing, mid-motion. Swap the title words to match the niche; photo ideas for lash techs scatters just as well.

Plan it in Cora

Save the card, build the five slides, and drop them in the Plan tab at the slot Cora suggests. The reminder takes it from there.

Cora · hello@coraplanner.com