- Hello and welcome back to my design job series.
In the previous video in this series
we went over the three main different types of design jobs,
in-house, agency, and freelance.
And now in this video, and the next two,
we're gonna dig into each one of those
in a little more detail.
I'm gonna start with in-house design
because that is what I do.
We're gonna cover what the job is
and what kind of work you'll do there,
some of the challenges that you might face
and also the skills that you need to be good at it.
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- First, a quick refresher.
If you're an in-house designer that means
that you're a designer based internally at a company
working on their brand and projects.
So rather than working with a bunch of different clients,
instead you're gonna get to know one brand and their app
or product, what it is, really well.
In-house design jobs can kind of be divided
into two categories.
There's the tech jobs, which are for software companies,
for apps, for websites.
And then there's the non-tech jobs,
which are more for traditional companies
like perhaps a retailer or magazine, things like that.
I would say that graphic design roles
are the ones that you're most likely to find
at a non-tech company working in-house,
mostly because the companies tend to be smaller
so they're looking for more of a generalist
rather than a specialist.
Although of course there are larger companies as well
in this non-tech space and in those ones you're more likely
to find the specialist roles like illustration for example.
My first role in the design industry actually
was being an in-house graphic designer at a distributor
that sold fridges and heat pumps,
those sort of home appliances and in my role
I handled things like branding, advertising,
posters, campaigns.
We had an internal print magazine that we did
so it was a lot of print work
with the odd digital thing here and there.
Although I would say that these days,
especially graphic design roles,
are getting more and more digital
because every business needs a website.
Like I said, you'll find these in-house design roles
at many different types of companies,
from small ones like retailers
or there's a lot of print shops hire graphic designers
and they go up to larger companies like magazines,
e-commerce stores, and in London especially there's a lot
of fashion brands that hire a lot of in-house designers
to work on their website
and do their advertising and things.
If it's a smaller company you're joining
as an in-house designer, first of all, like I said,
they're probably gonna be expecting you
to be more of a generalist and that also means
you won't be working on a design team most likely
and have a design manager
so that's something to keep in mind,
that you need to be really good at communicating
about design to people who aren't designers.
A huge portion of in-house design roles these days though
are in the tech industry, especially if you're living
in a major city and I separated these out
because the way design works at a tech company
is a bit different from the way it works
at a non-tech company.
Design roles at a tech company can be split
into one of two things usually,
either product design or marketing design.
Now they're both in-house roles because you're both working
for the company and not for other clients.
You're working on the same brand, same product,
but product design and marketing design
have very different tasks associated with them.
A product designer will work on the app, on the software,
whatever it is that the tech company makes and sells,
so they need to be really, really good at UX and UI design,
research and learning from the user's journey.
Unless you join a company in a very early stage,
usually being a product designer will mean
that you're making incremental changes and improvements
to an app that already exists
to make it better for the users.
Now UI and UX is also really important in marketing design
because one of the main tasks of a marketing designer
is to design the website that markets the tech product.
But usually a marketing designer will also work
on things like branding, advertising, marketing collateral,
whatever it is that the company needs
in order to market their product.
So while most tech company marketing design roles
will have digital website design focus,
you also need some classic graphic design skills in there
to apply to all of those other tasks.
One of the main challenges that I've come across
being an in-house designer over the years
is that because design is generally just a part
of the organization rather than the focus of it,
like it would be at a design agency for example,
you often find yourself having to fight
for the value of design and explain it to people
so I've had to get really good at communicating
why design is important over the years.
You have to kind of learn a spiel that you can just spit out
explaining why design isn't just making things pretty,
but is instead a vital part of building a brand
that people trust
and making information really easy to understand and digest
so people are more likely to be educated and stick around.
Another challenge with in-house design
is that you are working with the same brand day in, day out
and of course there's room for creativity and changes,
but you can't go wild and do a completely different style
for every single new project
because things would get very fragmented
and especially if you're part of a design team
you need to make sure that any huge shifts in style,
even small ones really, need to be discussed
within the group so that everyone is aware of it
and on board because that's the style
that they're gonna need to incorporate
into their designs going forward.
So there are probably more constraints with in-house design
than there would be at, say an agency
where you can essentially start fresh with each new project.
I would say that in-house design is more about
incremental changes to improve the way
that information is displayed, the way something works
in a way that still fits with the brand.
I mean, I personally enjoy those constraints
and I enjoy the personal connection that comes
with working in-house for one brand,
but I'm aware that not everyone might feel that way.
To be a good in-house designer you definitely need
to be good at communication and, like I said before,
communicating with people who aren't in the design world
and might not understand all these strange design terms
that you're using.
You also have to be good with communicating with your team
because this is not your project in a silo,
but is actually a project that affects the whole team.
For example, if you wanted to tweak the shade of blue
that you used slightly, you've gotta tell
the rest of your team because they've got to update it
across all of their designs as well,
so you've gotta be mindful of things like that.
You also need the ability to step back from your work
to critique it
because you do feel quite a personal connection to it
so it can be really easy to be too close
and harder to be objective.
You should also be good at keeping things cohesive,
so the ability to zoom in and really perfect one small piece
that you're working on, but then also zoom out
and look how that fits within the wider picture
of the designs that all the rest of your team
and company are creating.
As you heard, there's slightly different
technical skill sets depending on what type
of in-house design you wanna do.
So to be a marketing designer at a tech company
or design in general at a non-tech company,
you do need to be more of a generalist
and I would say with more of a focus on web design
because this is 2017 and everyone lives on the internet.
And then if you wanted to be a product designer
your UI and UX skills would have to be absolutely topnotch
because that's what you'll be spending
most of your time doing.
To round this whole look at an in-house design job off,
I would say that it would really suit someone who firstly,
doesn't mind working with the same brand
and having some constraints to work on things
in an incremental process, to create something,
learn from it and improve on it next time.
If you like trying new styles all the time
and doing something completely new,
then it's probably not gonna be for you,
but if you do wanna feel more of a personal connection
to your brand, then in-house might be ideal.
So that my friends is a more in depth look at what
an in-house design role is and I hope you enjoyed it.
Hope you got some value from it.
If you've got any questions about it though,
please leave them down below in the comments
because I will definitely be keen to answer those.
If you didn't hear yet, I started a Patreon,
which is really exciting.
I'm basically using it as a membership site
where you pay a monthly fee and you get
a bunch of different content to learn from,
so there's things like assets to do with my videos,
behind the scenes content.
Even one tier has a monthly Google Hangout call
where you can discuss anything that you're working,
get critique, whatever it is you need.
I'm pretty excited about it
and there's a bunch of really great people in there already
so if you wanna join, it'll be on a card,
it'll be linked in the description and what do you know,
the link's on the screen as well.
So, hopefully see you in there.
Thanks for watching this video.
Give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
and I will see you in the next one.
Bye.
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