Are we designing for people or algorithms?

For many creatives, social platforms have become tools for inspiration, networking, and promotion. But how much have they influenced the visual language and graphic design itself? To understand this shift, we spoke to designers and creative professionals about how social media is changing the way they design, how platform formats and algorithms start to dictate creative decisions, and what happens when work is created with social media in mind.

Speakers:

Rachel Horlick, design and creative director, previously the global brand design lead at TikTok.

Sumner Howells, photographer and graphic designer.

Danika Baker-Sohn, video content creator at Readymag.

Mariia Chupina, communication designer at Readymag.

Esenia Hortus, social media and community lead at Readymag.

Designing for social is a task of its own

When Readymag’s social media team selects websites from the Examples gallery for social media, they ask themselves: Would you stop scrolling if you saw this post? Is the main idea clear within the first few seconds? Why would someone like, save, or share it? Would you save or share it yourself? 

A website that stands out from a design perspective won’t necessarily work well on social media. Esenia believes that some of the best websites are quite difficult to translate into social media: “A lot of websites are built around scrolling, animation, or a visual narrative that gradually unfolds as you move through the page. Some websites are highly interactive: you can drag things around, click, and explore. That’s part of what makes a website such an interesting medium in the first place—you can actually interact with it. Social media gives us a much more limited set of tools: we can show screenshots or record the website in action, but you’re still watching someone else interact with it rather than experiencing it yourself,” says Esenia. That’s why creating content for social media feeds becomes a separate design task.

Maria, who creates all the visuals for social media and the blog, gives the example of adapting Readymag’s meetup visual identity for social media. It worked beautifully on landing pages, but eventually the team realized it wasn’t enough for Instagram. “A few elements from the landing page and one post template turned out to be too little—they started to look repetitive pretty quickly,” says Maria. So the team created a sub-identity for social announcements, with large typography and a new element each time: animation, color, or graphics. “That’s why at Readymag we try to synchronize and think about the scalability of a project in advance,” she says.

Danika, who works with video, approaches social content from the perspective of narrative and attention management. One option is to start with visuals of the finished project, then move into the details and work backward through the process. Progress shots, behind-the-scenes footage, and voiceovers can help with this. “The social version of a project might end up quite different from the original work,” she says. “Sometimes I like the social version of a project even better than the original project—it takes on a life or mini-identity, or becomes a mini-project of its own.”

For Danika, that transformation can actually add something to the work. “I think if it feels like you’ve created something new then you’ve actually done it right. If your finished project is the destination, your creative process is the journey, and showing the destination without any journey is just less intriguing.” She compares it to making a movie trailer: the trailer and the movie show the same thing, but they have different purposes and take the audience through different emotional journeys.

How social media starts to dictate design decisions

Esenia admits that over time, her team has noticed more websites that seem naturally suited to social media. “Certain visual ideas translate especially well into reels and feed posts, so they tend to appear again and again,” she says. One example is the draggable “trinket” layout, where objects representing a designer’s interests and personality can be moved around the page. “I’ve seen this approach so many times that I’m personally getting a little tired of it, but I also understand why it keeps coming back. It’s a simple way to make a portfolio feel more playful and interactive, and it works well on social media.”

Danika says she doesn’t design something solely because it’ll work on social media, but she does think about how the work will eventually be presented.

“I think the same way musicians now have to think about which snippets of their songs will work well on TikTok, we as designers have to think about which parts of our work will translate best to social content.”—Danika Baker-Sohn

That might affect something as basic as format: creating an identity more vertically because it’ll eventually be seen on a phone. But it can also affect the overall visual thinking. 

Danika admits she’s caught herself wanting to use a visual idea because she knew it would work well on TikTok and Instagram, though she sees that approach as a slippery slope.“That would be short-term gain, and isn’t authentic to you or your voice—which is important to nurture if you’re trying to build an intentional career. Trendy visuals are also uninteresting over time. I always try to keep most elements of my work true to myself and true to the needs of my project, and then maybe apply a format of presentation that I know does well on social to show the work, but not let trends influence the work itself too much. Basically, I try to create from a place of authenticity and integrity, then use social hacks to get the work out there.”

Maria notes that she’s started making certain decisions more often based on what she knows works better on social media. These include things like a large headline and an attention-grabbing visual, with the headline often playing the main role. “Sometimes an image illustrates the topic perfectly well without any text, but when you’re quickly scrolling, that might not be enough to grab your attention. So I almost never make completely abstract visuals—I try to add text or use a visual that communicates something on its own. Animation can also make a post more noticeable and interesting, especially when it adds another layer of meaning rather than being used just for the sake of movement,” says Maria. At the same time, beautiful but abstract images can fail to engage, even when they’re animated. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit of mystery and visual sharpness in favor of a clearer meaning.”

Rachel Horlick notes that social media affects design on a technical level, too—there are boundaries and safe zones that designers have to respect to make sure content is seen and not obstructed. But she sees an even bigger shift in the emphasis on the hook. “If you think about some of the most famous advertising commercials in the world, it was storytelling, and storytelling was a big buzzword for a long time. And then, of course, we all hated the word storytelling. But now, we’re often not even trying to tell stories anymore—we’re trying to grab someone’s attention in the first few seconds.” Production can now be deliberately scrappy and immediate, while trends can dictate sounds, colors, type styles, filters, and other visual choices. “It’s a complete mind shift as far as the creation and the consumption.”

Social makes discovery possible

There’s a reason designers keep adapting their work to these platforms: social media can put creative work in front of people who might never have found it otherwise.

For Sumner Howells, that was one of the biggest changes social media brought to their creative life. Tumblr opened up one world, then Pinterest, then Instagram. Each platform made it easier to find photographers and artists working in niches they might not have encountered otherwise.

“It helped me find people who were creating art outside of the box that had been placed on me, which helped me find my own voice in my work.”—Sumner Howells

Rachel describes a similar experience with TikTok. Its algorithm can lead people into rabbit holes by introducing them to things they didn’t know they were interested in. “It’s a discovery-centered platform versus others that might be more intentional, where you seek out a certain type of content.”

That ability to reach beyond an existing audience has also changed what’s possible for creators and businesses. “We saw a lot of small businesses being born on social media at the beginning of the pandemic,” Rachel says. “That was something that couldn’t have happened at that speed or scale before.”

Designing for social vs Designing for the algorithm

“For me, the difference is in how much you let it influence the work,” Esenia says. “Of course we think about how content works on social media, but it gets tricky when every decision starts coming back to what will get more views. If everyone follows the same logic because it performs well, eventually everything starts to look the same.”

Mariia notes that she always tries to look at a post through the eyes of the user, which also means keeping the specifics of the platform and its algorithms in mind. “On Instagram, interaction with content happens very quickly, and users are overloaded with information. So I try to make posts compact and carry a clear message, but at the same time calm so they don’t throw messages at a person too directly.” That means taking the platform seriously without trying to make everything rigid. Back in the day, Mariia used to aim for a perfectly curated Instagram grid, but now she prefers something more flexible. “The social network is constantly changing—it’s alive and moving. A change in the grid format or interface elements can already destroy this carefully built idyll.”

For Sumner, the distinction is more personal. “Purely creating art to do well on social media is a little silly,” they say. “The point of art is to make art for ourselves in hopes that others find it as special as you do.” Visibility matters, as do jobs and opportunities, but making work primarily for performance can change how it feels. “Doing it to such a degree strips the soul from the work,” says Sumner.

After losing an Instagram account she’d built for more than 13 years, Sumner took a month away from the platform. Coming back with less concern about how individual posts performed changed their relationship with the work. “I make art for myself, and if people like it, of course that makes me happy, but I’m no longer feeling like I’m in competition with myself.”

Can you actually crack the algorithm?

From the outside, viral content can look almost effortless, but Rachel argues that this is misleading. “I wouldn’t say social media is simple because even though it may appear that way from the finished content, what it takes to get there could still be very complex.” Social teams have to balance strategy, calendars, cadence, reactive content, and the possibility that something completely unexpected will happen. If a trend takes off and a brand wants to respond, the idea might come at midnight and need to go live the next day. “There’s nothing simple about that,” Rachel says. “The hamster wheel is spinning so much faster.”

The same pressure has changed how long-form content gets made. Podcasts, for example, increasingly need a video component, while clips cut from an episode can attract a very different level of engagement from the full episode. People have started creating content with those soundbites in mind.

“To me, that’s unfortunate because I appreciate long form, and I appreciate craft, and I appreciate what isn’t said sometimes. Understanding a brand through a soundbite is reductive, and still very powerful.”—Rachel Horlick

Rachel notes that the longer someone spends with a piece of content, the more it affects what they see next, but the deeper mechanics remain unclear: “There’s no repeatable recipe for viral content, and no formula.” She describes it as lightning in a bottle: something that can be incredibly powerful for a brand or creator, but that can’t simply be scripted and reproduced. “If there were a reliable formula, you’d see fewer people struggling with things and even more competition.”

Social has changed more than design

Rachel remembers when “Instagrammable” became a concept in its own right. Coffee shops, restaurants, and clothing stores started designing physical spaces around how they would appear on social media. “It’s influenced far more than just design,” she says. “It’s influenced consumer behavior at an extreme level, and it’s spilled into the physical world.” Brands have been born on social, and brick-and-mortar businesses have redesigned themselves around a curated visual sensibility. The cultural value of going viral has changed, too. Rachel grew up with the idea that being underground was cool and selling out was something to avoid. Now, successfully going viral can be an achievement in itself. “It’s wild to me how much that’s shifted,” she reflects. “It makes me feel very old.”

Social has also changed how brands talk to people. The same brand can—and probably should—use different tones in a YouTube ad and an Instagram carousel. Copy-pasting the same content won’t work nearly as well, or won’t work at all. “We saw how a lot of brands would take a 30-second TV spot, cut it into like a six-second 9-by-16 clip, put it on TikTok, and expect it to perform, and it just wouldn’t.” The audience, behavior, and context are just too different, and you need to adapt every time.

Esenia agrees: “There’s a lot of back and forth between social media and design, and different perspectives help us question our own decisions from time to time. I think the goal is to do the best work you can, stay open to other opinions, and try to have fun in the process.”