r/graphic_design rules, stats, and what to post

This is a collaborative learning community for graphic designers at any stage. The description says it focuses on education, mentorship, and mutual support, so the people posting here are designers sharing their own work for feedback, sharing the work of others as inspiration, and talking about the craft itself. It is a room for learning and critique, not a marketplace and not a place to collect attention for your product.

The first rule that decides survival is “No job posts or self-promotion.”. You cannot hire designers, promote your services, run surveys or polls, or push social media accounts, and the rules say requests for unpaid work get an instant ban. If you share your own app, platform, resource, or plugin, it must be free, high-quality, and relevant to design. The line I keep coming back to is that it is okay to be a Reddit account with a website, it is not okay to be a website with a Reddit account. Next, “All posts must be flaired.” and “Work must be posted with the green “Sharing Work” flair and include relevant context.” mean every post needs the correct tag, and work posts need real context about the objective, the audience, and your design decisions. Then there is “No AI or low effort/low quality posts”, which bans AI-generated content and design that heavily relies on AI imagery, and the rules state this applies to generated descriptions of your work too. The rule “No basic/repeated questions, doom-posting, or font identification requests.” tells you to search before asking and keeps venting about the state of the job market out of the sub. “This is not a “homework” forum.” means you can ask specific strategic questions but you cannot get other designers to do your job for you. Finally, “No off-topic/non-civil discussion.” requires feedback to be professional and constructive, and “Contact and engage mods appropriately.” says concerns go through modmail, never a meta post or a personal message.

If you are a founder, the safest strong post is a discussion. Bring a real design problem you are facing and ask a specific strategic question about it, because the rules allow that while banning homework dumping. If you made something, share your own work with the green Sharing Work flair and include the objective, the audience, and your design decisions, because context is what makes those posts survive. If you have a genuinely free, high-quality resource that is relevant to design, you can share it with the correct flair and honest framing, since the promotion rule allows that narrow case. If someone else's design inspired your work, use the Inspiration flair and credit them properly.

Hiring designers, asking for unpaid work, or promoting your services, which the rules say can get you banned instantly. Pushing a paid tool, course, or service in any form. Surveys, polls, and social media accounts. AI-generated content of any kind, including generated descriptions of your work. Low effort or low quality posts that add nothing. Memes or shitposts on any day other than Fridays. Repeated questions the wiki or a subreddit search would answer, doom-posting about AI destroying the industry or the job market, and font identification requests. Using the sub to get others to do your job for you. Hostile or antagonistic feedback, personal attacks, and off-topic political arguments. Claiming someone else's work as your own or skipping credit. Discussion of pirated software or sharing subscriptions. Posting without a flair, or sharing work without context. Complaining about moderation in a post or messaging a mod personally instead of using modmail.

The line in the first rule, that it is okay to be a Reddit account with a website but not a website with a Reddit account, is the whole game of respectful Reddit marketing in one sentence. I also like that the AI rule reaches past images and covers generated descriptions of your work, because that detail trips up far more founders than they would expect. This is a room full of working designers, so thin pitches get seen for exactly what they are.