Why profile pics are circular?

Aman Khan
1 min readJun 21, 2020

Profile pics for Instagram, Facebook, and almost every website are cropped to be circular.

Reasons being that circles bring the focus to its center and that’s where the face is and also where you want your viewers to be looking. This also helps reduce background noise.

Hard edges emit light (corner brightness) and that interferes in the image processing for the brain.

I had read articles before that said “we have circular pics because we have oval like shaped faces.” That point is completely discussable. Let’s discuss

Pictures that don’t need the user to be focused at a particular area are square in shape. They display as much of the scene as they can.
Here the background supports the pic as opposed to profile pics where it acts as a noise.

What do you think about circular profile pics? **If you are looking for a User Experience designer that will help your business grow, DM me, let’s talk. I am open to opportunities

#uxdesigner #uidesigner #appdesign #webdesign #freelanceuxdesigner

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Aman Khan
Aman Khan

Written by Aman Khan

Freelance UX designer that helps businesses grow in revenue through ROI driven UX conversion *Open for remote projects

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