Trials and Tribulations of In-House Design

I’ve been working in the Graphic Design Industry for about 4 years now, with 4 years of Education. During this time I have been going to Design and Design Technology Conferences for all of those years. I am fortunate, through these experiences, to have met an array of different types of designers and developers.

Let’s begin with a definition for each of the more general types of  designers:

  • Agency Designer – a person who works as a designer in either a general or specialized role under a Creative Director providing a design service for clients.

    Agency Designer Illustration © KilianWalker.com

    I actually once visited an agency that had a 'cubicle' that was a Chinese Lantern and had a chandelier for its light source.

  • Freelance Designer – a person who works as a writer, designer, performer, or the like, selling work or services by the hour, day, job, etc., rather than working on a regular salary basis for one employer. (Source: dictionary.com)

    Freelance Designer Illustration © KilianWalker.com

    Make sure you hide the kid's toys before meeting with the client!

  • In-House Designer – a person who works as a designer in either a general or specialized role for a company that does not provide design as its main service; e.g. a software company, or a company that builds children toys.

    Freelance Designer Illustration © KilianWalker.com

    Am I being a too subtle here?

Now that we know the difference, let’s focus on the In-House Designer:

Pros and Cons of being an In-House Designer

I was recently inspired by this article to write this, using my experience for a reference.

Pros

Cons
  • Job Security – No searching for clients, you work for your client.
  • Fixed Income – You’ll have a set rate or salary and know that, that money is coming in this month.
  • Benefits – Health Benefits, Insurance, etc.
  • Other Benefits – Some companies will pay for you to attend conferences, or to further your education.
  • In-House Knowledge – Working for your clients directly in-house gives you more intimate knowledge of how they work, what the product does, and what image they really want to portray.
  • Room for Growth – Depending on the size of the company there are multiple positions available within your department, you can move from Jr. Graphic Designer to the Creative Director, or Manager of the Design Department; you could even branch out into related department.
  • Wearing Many Hats – In smaller companies you may share the responsibilities of print, digital and interactive design.
  • Creative Freedom – Not as much wiggle room from the corporate identity.
  • General Freedom – One word: Micromanagement, it varies from company to company
  • Everyone’s an Expert – Never mind whether you’ve had 2+ years of education or whether you have worked in the industry for a week or 10+ years everyone has an opinion on design.
  • Job Title – Even though you’re a Graphic Designer/Web Designer/Rich Media Designer, or whatever they’ve called you, management and others may not really know what you do. They either have extremely low or extremely high expectations.
  • Tedious Work – While you will for the most part have stable work, some of it gets quite tedious creating the same brochure with slightly different pictures and text can get boring pretty quickly.
  • Productive Feedback – “That’s Nice”, “Looks Good”, “Needs more Oomph” or “Pizzazz” just some of the constructive criticism you can look forward to in a non-design environment.
  • Wearing Many Hats – In smaller companies you may share the responsibilities of print, digital and interactive design. You could even be pushed into a field you aren’t happy or comfortable doing.

These are just a few that came to me while writing this, there are many more for both sides of the list. You’ll also notice that “Wearing Many Hats” is placed as both a Pro and Con; depending on your skills being required to do many aspects of the design process can be a lot of fun, but when it comes to doing things you aren’t strong with, or have no business doing (Audio/Video work and Development in my case) it does get frustrating.

So, where do I stand?

I’m not a risk-taker by nature so my biggest enticement on becoming an In-House Designer was the Job Security. I’m also not comfortable dealing with all the behind the scenes stuff that a freelancer or agency designer may have to deal with; dealing with multiple demanding clients also doesn’t sound like too fun for me.

While I do enjoy being an In-House Designer, I have had many of the trials that come with the territory.

The main thing that may be of concern to most people is the “Everyone’s an expert” mentality… Don’t get me wrong I appreciate feedback, and being in a very small company (I am the entire design department) I often have to fish for feedback to make sure I’m on the right track.

This is a bit of an exaggeration but here’s my example of what I mean:

I’ve just created some printed piece to be reviewed before sending to the printers; Joe from accounting walks past my desk and sees the samples for the boss to look over and says something like this: “Wouldn’t that look better in a Comic Sans?”

Again, I’m pulling this example out of thin air, we don’t have a Joe from accounting, and I’ve yet to be asked to put anything in (shiver) Comic Sans. But that’s the kind of things that do happen, where they ask questions like “Why isn’t everything centre-aligned?” or general comments about the colours used – when I’m sticking to our corporate colours. Another common question is “Why isn’t this package in Word Format?”.

It’s for the same reason I don’t tell Joe how to do his jobs, there are just certain things that have an internal standard, an industry standard. There are some things that may seem obvious to someone not involved in the project but that would affect the result, decreasing both the efficiency of the project as well as the quality, prevent future revisions. In some cases I’ve had to redo entire projects because a co-worker set the file up in such a way that it was nearly impossible to edit easily and the files were corrupted in a way that we could not compress the files for sending via e-mail (which was the end purpose of those files).

I also find some frustration with my limited creative freedom and a handful of instances involving micromanagement that prevented me from getting work done efficiently or with any standard of quality.

In Conclusion

I am happy with my decision to be, and stay an In-House Designer, I feel secure in my job, and see a lot of potential for growth in my career. I also do enjoy being ‘forced’ to work on all aspects of the design process for multiple forms of design.

I do recommend considering In-House Design as a career choice, every company needs a designer.

What are Your Thoughts?

Are you a designer, or planning to become one? What are your thoughts on In-House Design, or recommendations for someone looking into Agency or Freelance design?