You built a following as a designer — now what?
You post your work. You share your process. People start following. At first, it feels like validation, proof that what you’re doing matters. And before you notice, it starts shaping what you make.
Building a following as a designer has clear benefits. It opens doors. It builds trust with clients who assume, “If 50,000 people like their work, they must be good.”
It attracts opportunities: collaborations, sponsorships, talks, tool partnerships, podcasts. That’s the upside.
The downside is harder to spot.
At some point, you stop designing purely from instinct. You start designing for response, intentionally or not.
The illusion of credibility
Having an audience doesn’t make you a better designer. It just means you’ve learned how to hold attention.
And attention has gravity. Clients feel it.
They assume that someone with reach must be credible, because reach creates social proof. It’s not entirely wrong; showing up consistently, articulating ideas, and presenting work clearly is a skill.
But followers measure communication, not just craft.
The side quests
Once you have visibility, the side quests appear.
Tools want you to promote their product.
Startups ask you to consult.
People invite you to speak, share, tweet, post, react.
Each request feels flattering. Until you realize you’re spending more time managing your reach than creating new work.
Your attention becomes fragmented. Your voice starts to blur.
What built your following (curiosity, craft, clarity) gets replaced by output, optics, obligation.
The ‘influencer trap’
I’ve been there too. My work was performing well, but I wasn’t.
I had drifted from creative to creator, from expression to performance.
One builds from curiosity. The other builds for clicks.
Both are valid paths. But the latter wasn’t mine.
The cost of constant growth
Growth feels like progress. More followers, more projects, more everything.
But not all growth is good growth. At my peak of activity online, I had more momentum than ever — and less clarity than ever.
I felt like a broadcast channel, not a designer. I said yes to too many things, and almost burned out doing work that didn’t move me.
Scale without alignment burns you out faster than failure ever could.
Returning to center
The solution for me was recalibrating. I went back to what made me want to design in the first place: curiosity, experimentation, visual storytelling.
I started writing again. I worked with fewer, more intentional clients.
That was the real reward: depth, not reach.
Creative autonomy over momentum.
TLDR
Having an audience is a privilege.
But the real privilege is the freedom to ignore it when you need to.
You don’t need a bigger audience.
You need a clearer voice.
Keep designing,
— Fons
Thanks alot, I have started to make presence on social media as designer and these points will help me a lot to make the good intention toward the work and the audience.
I feel related to every topic you brought! I spend years creating content for the brazilian design community and then I felt that my own work was getting neglected. I decided to step away and it was one of my best decisions. Eventually I came back, but now I do things on my own pace, not to feed the audience.
Thanks for sharing Fons!