Social media toolkit Unfold joins the Squarespace family
Why This Matters
Ask anyone responsible for keeping a business's online presence ship-shape and they'll tell you: social media is a relentless beast. Audiences expect punchy, good-looking content churned out faster than you can say "brand consistency." But while your business needs to look like a million pounds whether on its website or its Instagram grid, there's rarely a designer in the wings ready to leap into action each time you want to announce a flash sale or share your team's Friday cake.
What does that actually mean for you? Countless hours spent trying to hack together templates in Canva, Pixelmator, or whichever app is the current flavour of the month. The result: inconsistent visual styles, missed posting windows, and a gnawing sense that your business is playing catch-up while the competition’s feed gleams with polish.
Maintaining an on-brand, visually crisp social feed used to require expensive design resource or, failing that, the patience of a saint. Small businesses, side-hustlers, and stretched marketing teams often find themselves boxed into two bad options. Either spend precious time learning fiddly design software, or post unremarkable content that, deep down, you know is letting your brand down. Both routes are costly. One costs cash and the other damages credibility.
Squarespace has been addressing this problem quietly for a while. Their acquisition of Unfold, an app that lets people create beautiful, consistent social media posts quickly, caught the attention of many in our industry.
Common Pitfalls
There are a handful of traps that crop up time and again when it comes to social media design for small brands and freelancers:
Assuming Templates Have to be Generic
The most common mistake is thinking that using templates means settling for bland, cookie-cutter graphics. As a result, people waste hours tweaking “unique” designs, only to end up with a mishmash of styles across their feed.
Overcomplicating the Tools
There's a strange human tendency to believe that more options means better outcomes. Many pick up heavyweight design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, or even PowerPoint and get bogged down in detail. The result is paralysis by analysis, and generally giving up entirely after the fourth failed attempt at creating an Instagram Story.
Waiting for the 'Perfect' Visual
Perfectionism strikes hardest on social platforms. Teams stall for days waiting for the “perfect” image, just the right font, or an exact shade of brand green. Meanwhile, the opportunity (and, often, the event you meant to promote) vanishes in the rearview mirror.
Forgetting the Audience Experience
Design isn't for you; it's for the audience. Falling into the trap of designing what you like, rather than what the brand needs, leads to jarring style changes and confusion. Consistency gets overlooked until it's gone.
If any of that feels familiar, you’re in the right place.
Step-by-Step Fix
So, what’s another approach? The Unfold app, now working within the Squarespace ecosystem, is made for design-savvy non-designers. Here’s how to use it for your brand’s benefit.
Step 1: Sign Up and Sync with Your Squarespace Account
Unfold is primarily a mobile app on iOS and Android, but thanks to the Squarespace integration, it now works well with your website workflow. Simply download Unfold from your app store and create an account. If you’re already a Squarespace user, link your Unfold account to access streamlined connections between your website media library and social design hub.
Syncing enables you to pull in assets from your website such as logos, images, and text snippets without dealing with endless downloads and uploads.
Before you start, audit your brand’s most recent posts. Note which visuals, colours, and fonts are already working. Grab your key graphics from your website folders, and stash them in Unfold as you set up. This builds up your toolkit from the start and prevents defaulting to generic visual choices under pressure.
Step 2: Choose a Template Set That Fits, Then Stick to It
Unfold’s value comes from both the sheer number of templates and the fact that they are grouped into visually cohesive collections. Browse the available sets and pick one that lines up with your brand character. Are you aiming for minimal elegance? Something bold and contemporary? There’s a set for that. Avoid overthinking—the best results come from picking a direction and using it consistently.
You need a collection with enough variety for your common post types such as quotes, product shots, and announcements, but enough cohesion for audiences to recognise your posts at a glance.
Resist the urge to chop and change templates every week “for a bit of variety.” A brand looks professional when it’s instantly recognisable, not when every post gets a design U-turn. Keep your chosen set for at least a couple of months before making changes.
Step 3: Customise with Your Brand Elements
Templates are only a starting point. To create posts that feel unique to your business, swap out default images and text for your own assets. Use your logo, your product imagery, and your branded fonts and colours as much as possible with the template. If your brand palette isn’t available in Unfold by default, select the closest options and use overlays or image tint tools to get close to your shades.
Add concise, impactful text. Remember, social content is usually consumed at speed—brevity isn’t just clever, it’s necessary.
Build out a “master asset kit” in Unfold. Upload variations of your logo (dark, light, transparent backgrounds), product images, and at least two versions of brand colours. This streamlines post creation later and ensures no last-minute panics when you realise the new product shoot is still buried on a USB stick in someone’s bag.
Step 4: Batch Schedule Content for Consistency
One-off design bursts undermine brand consistency. Unfold works best when you set aside dedicated sessions: plan a week (or better, a month) of posts, create them all at once, and schedule or save them for later. This keeps your posts on-brief and on-brand and helps your visual story stay cohesive.
Using the Spacesquare-Unfold integration, you can share directly to your connected platforms or download final images for uploading via your social scheduler, whether that’s Buffer, Hootsuite, or your tool of choice.
Plan content from a “zoomed out” perspective: look at your profile grid or story sequence as a whole. Does each post relate to the ones around it? Are you keeping a consistent font, colour, and tone? Editing in blocks makes it much easier to spot jarring one-offs.
Step 5: Adapt and Optimise Based on What Works
Analytics apply to your social content too. Track which posts perform best in terms of engagement, reach, or clicks. Unfold doesn’t include analytics, but your social platforms do. After a few weeks, review your posts and adjust your template use accordingly. For example, determine if there is a style or layout that always gets more saves or shares.
Update templates as your audience shows preference, but keep those updates subtle to avoid “brand whiplash.”
Keep a simple spreadsheet tracking key stats for each template or post style. After a month, the trends will be clear. Iteration beats guesswork every time.
Step 6: Prepare for Real-Time Posting
Some posts can’t be planned in advance: sudden news items, behind-the-scenes snaps, or a customer feature. With Unfold on your phone, you can quickly drop a fresh photo or announcement into your brand’s template and share it while the topic’s still relevant. Quick, on-brand updates require no marathon Photoshop sessions.
Make an “emergency template” ready in Unfold, primed for those immediate updates (product sell-outs, seasonal opening hours, new testimonials). Having something pre-set means your reactive content always fits your visual style.
What Most People Miss
The real win with tools like Unfold comes from building a system. Most brands create posts as one-off art projects, hoping that everything will eventually look cohesive. Consistency comes from a process, not inspiration. Using Unfold encourages you to systematise your visuals so every post moves your brand image forward.
There’s also a mindset shift to adopt: you don’t have to design a brand new social look with every post. Your audience wants reliability and recognisability, appreciating the familiarity of your brand.
The Bigger Picture
This process is about more than making your Instagram grid look polished. When your design workflow is streamlined, you free up time for engagement, strategy, or simply wrap up early on a Friday.
A strong, consistent visual feed signals professionalism and builds credibility. Over time, people recognise your style, associate you with reliability, and are more likely to pay attention to your content. Unfold’s template-first workflow puts this professional consistency within reach for small businesses, not just big brands.
As your business scales, a process-driven approach to design allows easy delegation, guest contributions, or even outsourcing content creation without losing your unique brand style. Think of it as setting a visual “house style” that anyone can follow rather than keeping it in your own head.
Wrap-Up
Design frustrations on social media are now avoidable. With Squarespace and Unfold working together, small businesses and solo brands can compete with bigger players and keep their weekends free.
Want more helpful systems like this? Join Pixelhaze Academy for free at https://www.pixelhaze.academy/membership.
Jargon Buster
-
Unfold:
A mobile app now owned by Squarespace, providing well-designed templates for social media posts and stories. -
Squarespace:
A website builder offering all-in-one site, e-commerce, and marketing tools, now with integrated social content capabilities via Unfold. -
Templates:
Ready-made designs for posts. The best templates offer both flexibility and a clearly defined style. -
Brand consistency:
Keeping your fonts, colours, tone, and visuals the same across every channel so people always recognise your business. -
Scheduling:
Planning and queuing posts in advance, using either built-in tools or third-party platforms like Buffer or Hootsuite.
FAQs
Q: How does Unfold differ from other mobile design apps?
A: Unlike many “all-in-one” design tools, Unfold is built specifically for social storytelling. It prioritises visuals made for Stories, Posts, and carousels over generic graphics. Its templates are clean and style-led, making it easier to look like an art director without actually hiring one.
Q: Is Unfold only for Instagram?
A: While Unfold started with Instagram Stories, its templates now work well for Facebook, Snapchat, and even LinkedIn or Twitter image posts. If your audience is active on social, there’s a template that will fit.
Q: Do I need graphic design skills to use Unfold?
A: No. The idea is to give you a solid, brand-focused look with minimal effort. If you can upload images and edit text, you’ll be up and running.
Q: Can Unfold be used by a team?
A: Unfold is mainly intended for individual users or small teams. However, when everyone syncs brand assets and template choices from the start, it’s straightforward to keep content consistent even with multiple contributors.
Q: Will Pixelhaze Academy offer Unfold tutorials or workshops?
A: Most likely, so stay tuned. As we explore Unfold’s features and see where it fits best for Pixelhaze members, we’ll add step-by-step resources, walkthroughs, and best practice guides for the community.
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Article by Elwyn Davies / Pixelhaze Academy