In-House in the House!

A while ago I looked for articles, blogs...anything, about being an in-house designer. I found very little. While there are probably a lot more in-house designers than those working for an agency or firm, you rarely hear anything about them.

My college education had a strong lean toward agency work. There was an assumption that we would all go work for agencies where we would be able to bring our dog to work, and yet fur would never mar the polished concrete floors of our pristine workspace. We'd wear black rimmed glasses and jam out to our favorite song while working on a new line of tea packaging. It was always something cool like packaging for wine or beer, not packaging for screw drivers or adhesive tape. And yes, at this agency, the sky was the limit. If you wanted a wine bottle that was pointed on the bottom and had to come with its own hand-carved wooden stand, hell yes there was enough money in the budget to develop that.

Crazy fantasies aside, I've found something similar. One catch. I don't work for an agency. I work as part of an in-house team for a financial institution. I haven't had a chance to work my wine bottle designs into it yet, but I have been able to develop several things from the ground up. Some silly sketches of weird looking characters have been turned into a childrens' site. A kiosk that will hopefully be spread state-wide bears the name and logo that I created.

I think there are some obvious overlaps among freelance, agency, and in-house designers. I say, "I think" since I've never done two of those things. Sure there were a couple failed experiments into the world of freelance. But not enough to qualify me as a freelance designer. More like an eager kid who thought she could do design after her 9-5 job.

It may be that there is no need to make a distinction among the different types of graphic designers. I just don't know since I've never heard or read anything saying otherwise.

I'm not sure if designers working at an agency get little random requests from coworkers, like I do. Probably. It's the nature of our work. We make stuff. A freelance designer, if working at home, can likely avoid that.

For designers, there is an assumption that what we do is fast, and perhaps easy. I know I certainly don't go up to my non-design coworkers and ask them to start a little program or coordinate a few people for one of my pet projects that is due in a couple of days. It's laughable, and yet I get these requests all of the time. Sometimes these projects are a lot of fun. Even when they are, most times I can't justify dropping my other projects for a few hours to work on them.

This is just another day in the life of an in-house designer.