Find Communities in Australia

Join activities, celebrations, study groups, spiritual empowerment and education programs for young people, and more.

Learn about the Baha’i Faith

Baha’i beliefs address essential spiritual themes for humanity’s collective and individual advancement. Learn more about these and more.

DISMISS MENU

How to Make Inspiring Baha’i Quotes in Images

September 9, 2013, in Articles > Art & Creative Works, by

Putting inspiring Baha’i quotes against beautiful visuals to compose a graphic representation is a novel way to share our Holy Writings. It’s also really easy to do thanks to all the tools and resources out there! Today we’ll give you some tips on how to create your own quotes in image form from your phone. From there you can turn them into wallpapers, share them with friends, post them to social networks, or even print them. Let’s get started!

1. Using Mobile Apps

The easiest way to create a Baha’i quote image is to use one of the popular apps available for iOS and Android phones and devices. These apps typically give you a range of backgrounds, text styles, and effects that you can use to create your images. They also have built in sharing features so you can post from the app straight to your favourite social network or if you’re creating an image for your personal use (e.g. as a phone wallpaper) you can just save the image to your camera roll.

Most apps are free to use but will leave a small watermark unless you purchase the paid or ‘pro’ edition for a few dollars. There’s lots of options, but the nicest that I’ve come across are:

  1. Instaquote iOS (iPhone/iPad/iOS)
  2. Instaquote Android (Android)
  3. Overgram (iPhone/iPad/iOS)

Most apps provide free background images that you can use. If you get tired of those, you can of course get creative and take your own photos! Try finding simple textured background photos, like closeups of grass, or wood, or other natural elements. Landscapes and slightly out of focus photos can also work beautifully. At the end of the day, the best thing to do is experiment!

You can also grab professional photos from sites like Flickr or 500px, but be sure to search for images with an appropriate license (such as the Creative Commons Non-commercial Usage license). Alternatively you can even purchase photos from sites like iStockPhoto but these can be pricey.

Here are a couple of examples of beautifully digitally composed images:

2. Using Web Tools

Along with all the mobile tools, there are also lots of websites that offer free services to create various types of quote images . A couple of my favourites are ReciteThis and Behappy.me.

Here’s a couple of images made with ReciteThis:

3. Using Photo Composition

Making images of Baha’i quotes doesn’t have to be a digital composition! You can create setups and then photograph them. For example you could try writing or illustrating out a quote by hand on a lovely piece of paper and photographing it. Or you could photograph a quote from an existing printed source like a book cover or poster.

Here are a few examples of beautifully photographically composed images:

Printing & Making Wallpapers

There are a number of great services that let you print your Instagram photos to a wide range of mediums. One of the more popular services is Prinstagram where you can turn your Baha’i Quote images into prints, framed prints, booklets, calendars, stickers and gift cards!

There are lots of other services out there, and you can print to magnets, pillow cases, and all sorts of odd stuff! Here are 13 more ways to print Instagram images.

Once you’ve created an image on your phone, it’s also easy to make it your phone’s background or wallpaper. Save the image to your camera roll or image library, then use the phone’s settings to make it a wallpaper or lock screen image.

Inspiration

There are some very talented graphic designers making quotes in this format, and you’ll find lots of them on Pinterest. For example check out this user’s Quotables Pinterest Board for inspiration. To get really serious you may need some more advanced graphics tools like Photoshop or Pixelmator.

There are also lots of dedicated Baha’i quoters on Instagram, here are three of our favourites:

  1. Perspactive
  2. Nekonya7
  3. Baha’i Quotes

Share Your Creations with Us!

We’d love to see your creations, so if you’re posting images to Instagram, be sure to add in a link to your Instagram profile in the comments below!

Have fun!!

Posted by

Collis Ta'eed

Hi I’m Collis! I live in Darwin, in the Northern Territory. I’m a Baha’i, designer, entrepreneur, climate tech angel investor, and engaged in philanthropy to support First Nations young people in Australia. I've been working on Baha'i Blog since its inception in 2011!
Collis Ta'eed

Discussion 5 Comments

Thanks so much for these great ideas.

I tend to use BeFunky.com for making sharable Baha’i photo-verses because, as an older person, I was able to learn it quicker and it is easy to use.

Also, every image on WikiCommons, the image site for Wikipedia is creative commons. It a great place to go to look at fine art that is out of copyright.

Also, you can use these sites and this process to make inspiring birthday posts and even in honor of those who have recently died.

Check out my work for the Wilmette Institute at BeFunky.com

Candace

Candace Hill

Candace Hill (September 9, 2013 at 8:03 PM)

The quotes and their presentations are beautiful. The only objection I have is that they are not referenced. There is a way to do this discretely so that it does not detract from the artistic beauty. I refer you to a youtube slide show of still pics with citations in the corner of each – photos from Glenn Franco Simmons Photography – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnhE-MBPaEQ#t=168
Also, another good example of this is a Baha’i website, “Heart to Heart”, where each and every slide shows the citation with the quote – http://hearttoheart.net/
I believe that any use of the Writings should be properly referenced to protect the Faith and avoid confusion. There are many people online being exposed to the Faith for the first time. We need to ensure that they are reading the actual Writings and not a distortion or misquote.

– Candace

Candace Jacallen

Candace Jacallen (September 9, 2013 at 5:07 AM)

I’ll be offering free un-watermarked downloads of some of these images soon. These are poster size typography/digital photo compositions in a calligraphic style.
http://www.enochsvision.com/illuminations/

Cary Reinstein

Cary Reinstein (September 9, 2013 at 9:25 AM)

All are so nice and thanks for sharing.

jeffmoore

jeffmoore (October 10, 2013 at 1:48 PM)

can you get paid for making or creating inspirational quotes? kind of like freelancing?

katalyst

katalyst (November 11, 2013 at 12:29 AM)

Leave a Reply

YOUR EMAIL WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED
REQUIRED FIELDS ARE MARKED *

"*" indicates required fields

Receive our regular newsletter

Join activities, celebrations, study groups, spiritual empowerment and education programs for young people, and more.

Find Communities in Australia

or Internationally

The arts and media have a critical role in how we share our community experiences. We’ve got resources, projects and more to help you get involved.

Visit our Creator Hub

Baha’i beliefs address essential spiritual themes for humanity’s collective and individual advancement. Learn more about these and more.

What Baha’is Believe

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia.

We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their cultures; and to elders both past and present.

Baha’i Blog is a non-profit independent initiative

The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the official views of the Baha’i Faith.