r/graphic_design

AI can generate convincing brand assets, but it struggles with what matters most in design: reduction. Abstraction is not about adding possibilities, but about deciding what must remain. Without judgment, there is no clarity. And without clarity, there is no brand.

im gonna milk this subscription as long as I can. I want to know what assets you'd recommend downloading that I can carry on in my future jobs!

Started the morning with an email summarized by the following:

I submitted a design for a website landing page and the client fed it to chat GPT to suggest “improvements” and the client and my boss (owner of agency) are just blindly agreeing to it like Chat GPT is some holy figure to be spoon fed by and immediately trust everything it says instead of trusting my judgement shaped from 6 years of schooling with a design degree & masters + my HUMAN experience.

The email, from my boss (owner of agency), quoted exactly as seen from my inbox:

“Hi (my name), I thought you would find this interesting… As you see, the CLIENT put this design through chat and this is what came back. They agreed spot on with what chat suggest please take NOTE as I know you are designing new home page etc and what they are calling out as differentiating them. Thank you”

Below is forwarded from the client, quoted exactly as its written

“Chat GBT review of her work..just an FYI. The feedback is solid if you ask me. [link to chat gpt convo]”

I opened the link to the chat GPT convo sent to me and it starts off with “Got it, you want feedback on **her work**, not the email. I looked at the landing page as a potential customer would, and also a business owner paying for lead generation

Overall Grade: B+ / A-

It looks professional and legitimate. Nothing jumps out as amateur. But I think it **undersells who [client business name] actually is**…”blah blah

And it makes a bunch of shit suggestions by starting them off with “I’d like to see…” and lists shit that the client never fucking provided like specific photography showing their operations and such, metric data like “X product sold”. and pointless things that bloat the effectiveness of a PPC landing page.

I feel so insulted. How do I respond? Do i take it like a good little doggy and do as they are exactly asking, or do I respond with something tactful?

Edit:

Forgot to mention this but it also hallucinated headline copy improvements for a section that didn’t even exist in the design I sent

Update:

Lead developer is on my side and he is going to have a call with my boss about this because at least she listens to him 🥲 he helps with web design work occasionally, but mostly develops and handles the building & management of client websites. The design I made is specifically meant to fit in a template he built, meaning, can’t add random sections that arent in the template. So we have that as leverage to explain why the chat gpt suggestions arent great.

https://preview.redd.it/gbkfwc3bpe2h1.png?width=4500&format=png&auto=webp&s=3324d0d1fdd176b4b8198156ed1a1be0bf4cb0fd

https://preview.redd.it/s7g9wc3bpe2h1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f91e91d8d6d429d4d80075e47d47e5c6ed0c5e1

Making a streetwear graphic inspired by the Undercover cassette tee. I am trying to do a 1950s painted schoolboy skating over a grayscale DJ controller sketch. Assets are ready but the two styles clash when composited. Looking for tips on blending them cohesively with color grading and grain. References attached. I have looked online and have not been able to find anything, please help. Thanks

I used it once to mockup a website for a friend as a means of testing it out, and it was fine but I didn’t go back. However, I see so many job postings asking for Figma knowledge or even a Figma-heavy portfolio, it’s becoming clear I need to give it another shot. 😬😫 I’m curious though if there are any other holdouts or those who used it but don’t care for it here? 👀 What are your feelings on it becoming an industry go-to? And then with not just Figma but software/tech in general, what can we do to get over this anxiety of having to keep up and adapt with the times?

What is the best way to handle a retainer? I work in sales design, branding, and marketing mainly in the health tech space.

I was laid off in February and since then I’ve established a contract with an old boss of mine doing 20 hours of design work a month at $100/hr. I recently started another contract with a different old co worker. Originally we were working at the same agency together, and one client asked to hire me for 20 hours a month at $100/hr. They ended up saying that it would be “no cap” to hours. However, every project with this colleague is a fire drill. It’s always next day turnaround, or a week turnaround gets cut down to 5 days etc.

This colleague is working full time for this client now as head of marketing. It seems to be due to lack of time management and planning on her part, because even two years ago at the company we first worked for together in house, all of her requests were rushed. And all of her requests at the agency were rushed.

She asked me to format an 80 page RFP today in 5 or 6 hours, which I did. I realize some of this is my fault for not establishing revisions etc, but typically work with my other retainer is not rushed and there are no issues at all. This is the first project for this new retainer with her and of course it was a rush, but I would like to actually write the contract and send it to her.

After I sent the word document to her, she shared it with her team and everyone began editing it. She called me at 6pm asking to hop on a call right then and there, so help her fix it and that all of my styles had gotten messed up.

I don’t mind working odd hours, however a previous project with the agency was a 45 slide investor deck with heavy graphics and I had about 10 days to complete it. She called me 3 days in to say they needed it in 2 days. I had already signed the agreement with the company and her and the agency ceo said that they really wanted this client so it was for the “greater good.” So they basically signed me up to work for 2 days straight, almost overnight both days to finish it. The client was paying me directly, however I did bill the agency for over time hours.

I have other clients and I cannot drop everything to pull all nighters for her on a moments notice. It’s unrealistic for her to think that I will be able to drop everything in my life for days without warning.

Right now I’m pausing everything with her after I invoice for this project and I’m going to write up a formal contract before I do anymore work but I don’t know how to handle this situation.

Hey everyone!

I‘ve noticed an extreme decline in graphic design job listings. At the end of 2025 I lost my job at a digital advertising agency and started sending out applications. To my surprise there were quite a lot of job listings in december.

(I actually got a job pretty quickly and ended up not even being unemployed between jobs, however since this job isn’t what I want to be doing with my life I‘ve continued searching.)

Ever since 2026 started the amount of job listings decreased rapidly. There are little to no new jobs each week and the ones that show up often aren’t actually graphic design jobs. Most people are looking for someone to do their video content…which is what I‘m doing right now and actively trying to get away from.

Has anybody else noticed this? What‘s the situation like in other countries? (i‘m from Austria)
Obviously the country going through…a bit of an economic crisis is a big contributing factor, however there are plenty of job listings for other creative fields such as copy writing/ concepts.

Do you think AI plays a big factor in this? What do you think the future looks like? Will you try to pivot away from graphic design?

(Honestly as for me…right now would be a bad time to switch careers since I want to buy a house and have a child within the next 5-6 years so I can’t afford not to have a stable full time income…however once my life has calmed down a bit I might try to learn something entirely different.)

Hi, everyone! Does anyone know of a website that offers all-over prints? I emailed a few places in my country, but they all said they couldn't do that.

I'm a UX/product designer and software engineer, I'm the only "design" person in my entire org and I frequently have to also support marketing for example, every single time without fail I have to manually adjust layouts, create or find matching visuals and graphics, and sometimes create custom icons etc. While I have been able to utilise AI in some of UX and UI work as well as some software engineering I just don't see anything that can generate an editable graphic representation of what I need. Is there some secret product that's doing it?