How to design social media posts: 9 rules from brands on X

To design social media posts, choose one thing to show and take the rest out; most of social media graphic design is that choice. A feature gets a screen, a milestone gets a number, and a logo gets one moving part.

1. Show the product

If the news is a feature, the feature is the image. Linear's post about nested sub-issues is a crop of the list itself, with each sub-issue indented under its parent. Granola shows its People and Companies views as they look in the app, and Notion posts the "Connect your calendar to Notion" dialog with the cursor on a button. A reader sees what changed before reading a word, so crop tight on the part that is new and leave the rest of the interface out.

2. One headline per card

When there is no screen to show, write one line and give it the whole card. Obsidian's card for the Web Clipper icon says "Highlight and save the web." beside the new icon, on a cream ground with a yellow highlight on the first word. Raycast's says "Your Mac just got even smarter" next to a glowing logo and a GPT-4 tag. Both hold the brand's name, one sentence and one object. Keep the headline short enough to read in the feed without opening the image.

3. Let type carry it

Some announcements have no picture: a speed tier, a date, a privacy setting. OpenAI Developers announced Ultrafast with words on black and the line "Try it in Codex, ChatGPT Work, and the API today." Razer's teaser is "COMING SOON" and then "OCTOBER 15, 2026" in its green on black. Tempo opens its privacy launch on "$0", swaps the figure for dots and a padlock, then shows "Your balance, your business." Pick one typeface, one colour and a plain ground, and put one phrase on screen at a time.

4. One hero number

A milestone reads fastest as a number set larger than everything around it. Next.js set "1,000,000" across a black card with "Monthly Active Next.js Developers" underneath. Pons put "$756M" in the middle of a green square under the label "24 hour volume". a16z did it with a chart: the title reads "Zero-Days-To-Exploit, Almost 90% Of The Time", and the line climbs to its last point at 86.7%. Choose the one number, label it in a few words and let nothing else on the card compete with its size.

5. Nail the first frame

In the feed a video starts without sound, and its opening frame is all a scrolling reader gets. Tesla's clip opens on a phone held in two hands with the car on its screen. Suno's opens on a chat box with a Suno prompt being typed, and Uniswap's on a wall of pink ticker text: BONDS, STOCKS, YIELD. Each first frame says what the video is about without motion or audio. Start on the product or the words, not on a fade from black, and put any spoken line on screen as text.

6. Animate the logo

A logo post needs one moving part. Solana holds its three-bar mark still at the centre while lime shapes blur past behind it. Polygon keeps its icon in a rounded tile and lets a red glow drift behind it. Sam Hox's logo animation for Sixfold moves the wordmark itself, trailing blue light on black. Decide which single thing moves, the mark or the ground behind it, and keep the rest of the frame fixed.

7. Use real photos

When the subject exists in the world, photograph it. Apple Music's film about its logo shows glass, liquid and light on a set, and the caption says it was "captured entirely in camera". Cognition introduced its team with instant-print portraits that land one by one until "Meet the Team" appears over them. Shoot the object or the person, and keep the retouching light.

8. Carousels for steps

One image holds one point. When the message has an order, give each step its own slide. MetaMask explains a token in four slides: the data problem, the token's job, the wallet-to-AI workflow and compute onchain, all on the same peach ground. Prada's "Drawing Prada" post goes from a title card to the film and then to the pencil sketches behind it. Keep one layout across the slides so a swipe changes the content and nothing else.

9. Design for the size

Link previews and profile headers are cropped and shrunk before anyone sees them. Keep text large, keep it away from the edges, and check the image at the size it will appear, not the size you drew it. The OG image size guide and the X header size guide have the measurements.

Keep a swipe file

Each week, save the strongest posts in your niche to a swipe file and note three things for each: the hook, the format and the visual. posts.design already works as that file: the library is searchable, and Saves and collections keep your own picks together.