- Hey everybody.
This is Roberto Blake at robertoblake.com
helping you create something awesome today.
So, today's Monday and since it's a
graphic design video today
and I happen to still be in New York,
I decided to do a little video about my time in New York
working as a graphic designer at an ad agency.
And I just wanna tell you guys
what working at an ad agency is really like
and what you can expect if that's the kind of job
that you wanna do.
I think for me that working at an ad agency in New York
was simultaneously one of the best
and worst experiences of my entire career,
and there are a lot of reasons for that.
Let's start with the positive and upsides
of working at an ad agency.
For one thing I got a tremendous amount of experience
working at the ad agency
and I got to work on some of the coolest
projects that I've ever done,
and I did some of my best works there.
I got to learn from more experienced people,
I got to learn a lot about the industry
and I got to work with tremendous and amazing clients
including doing work that was like billboards
for HBO in Time Square
and book covers for Random House for Stephen Hawking.
These are experiences and highlights of my career
that I don't think I could have gotten any other way.
There is no substitute for real world experience
and from learning under people
who have been in their craft for over a decade.
There just really isn't.
I obviously learned things that I don't think
I could have even come close to learning
or rather that I didn't come close to learning
when I was in college for graphic design,
and even working as an in house designer
at a corporate company.
There were just a lot of very subtle things
that are completely different about working as a designer
or really doing any job at an ad agency.
Ad agencies have their own culture,
every work place has their own culture
but the world of advertising from an agency perspective
is very, very different.
Because you're working in what is called
a B to B environment,
a business to business environment,
instead of working directly with the end consumer in mind.
You have to really deal with the internal politics
of a whole other company entity and its culture
and its internal mechanics
in addition to the corporate culture that you have
at the company you're working for.
It's actually a very unique experience by itself.
Obviously, that comes with some downsides.
This won't be true at every place that you work.
In my particular case,
there were some personalities and some policies
that I just really did not enjoy and did not agree with
but it wasn't all bad.
And there's no real situation most of the time
that's gonna be wholly good or wholly bad
but one of the important things I would say is that
when you go to work somewhere,
make sure that you talk to people
who have worked there in the past,
not just people who are working there now
who are potentially afraid that you might,
something might get back to them
or you might go talk to somebody
or they don't know who you're connected to.
But find former employees that are willing to give you
information and an honest opinion
of the people who work there
and what the work culture
and what the work experience will be like
because it makes a real huge difference.
One of the other things I will say is
make sure that you have an understanding
of what the job actually entails and what it involves
so that you have the right expectations going in.
Because if you don't,
that could get overwhelming very quickly.
Advertising is very different
than your experience in college.
It's very different than your experience
even working as an in house designer.
The deadlines are very tight,
there's a lot of pressure.
It could be something that causes you a ton of anxiety.
And so, if you're not mentally and emotionally
prepared and equipped for that,
it could go very bad for you.
That was part of what my experience was a little bit.
I grew as a result of it.
I did get a much thicker skin,
I didn't have much of a choice.
But it was very hard on me initially for those reasons.
A lot of people are worried that
their talent or their creative ability
isn't gonna be up the stump and the thing is
when you work with great art directors,
that's not really the case.
They work within the abilities that you have
and more than anything, a lot of times
they might pick your brain for ideas
or they might want to be part of a brainstorming session.
But at least initially, mostly you're going to still be
a pair of hands when you're working within an agency
until you prove yourself.
So, you won't have to worry about that
and then even in terms of concepts,
the clients are gonna have their input.
So, the technical details, your craftsman and craftsmanship,
that's gonna actually be the real vital thing.
Having all of those things solid,
it's actually gonna be more important
than your artistic ability
and your creative range at the start.
But later that will become very important
as you try to work your way up
and as you try to prove yourself in the industry
and as you try to really earn the right
to call some of your own shots.
One of my personal strengths
and this may not be for everybody was the fact that
I was really good at the pitch part
of working at an ad agency.
I was very good at meetings,
I was very good at relating to the clients
empathizing, asking very intelligent questions
and I was very tech savvy so it meant that
the things that they were wanting to do at the time
that they were a little intimidated by,
I was able to help them feel comfortable.
And that makes more of a difference
than you might imagine.
Your communication skills,
your ability to empathize with people
make them feel comfortable.
And to be able to present your ideas
in a clear and concise way,
huge overwhelming strength when it comes to
working in advertising especially from a design perspective.
And you'd be surprise how many non-creative people
you're really gonna have to work with
at the agency level,
both in terms of the client side
and even within the organization.
So, being able to present and communicate your ideas
and being able to actually be very good
in the meetings and in the pitch part of things
can be a huge advantage in terms of a salary bump,
in terms of recognition
and in terms of the value that you get to add to the team.
You've got to be more than a pair of hands
and your presentation skills
could definitely be a way to do it.
One of the reasons that I didn't stick
with the advertising part of my career,
even when I became a freelancer
and I was still doing that stuff and everything like that,
ultimately I moved away a lot from that,
from a career's perspective for me is because
I just personally didn't feel
enough of a sense of ownership over anything.
And as a creative, that could be a real challenge.
That could be very difficult
and it's often why a lot of people
do decide ultimately to freelance and grow their own way
because they want that sense of ownership.
They want the thing that they work so hard on
to be something that they feel
a sense of responsibility over
and that they can, it's not about the vanity
of taking credit for something,
it's about knowing that you control the process
and the experience of working on it,
and how it was presented.
When you work for somebody else,
a lot of your creative control goes out the window
and that's not something that everybody can live with,
and it's something that even now
I still in working with clients
or even with sponsors from the YouTube side
and everything like that,
creative control is something that I fight for all the time
and I personally just learned that sometimes
I can leave money on the table
in exchange for more creative control.
And if someone wants to take creative control from me,
the price is gonna be very high.
I make people bleed when it comes to
taking away my creative control.
But that's just how I roll,
that's just what I'm about though.
So, if you're thinking about
becoming someone who works at an ad agency
whether you're gonna be a graphic designer,
whether you wanna be an art director,
a production artist,
you wanna do anything creative working at the agency level.
Part of my advice would be
make sure you have an understanding
of what the agency is looking for,
who their clients are and definitely,
make sure you understand the culture of the agency
and the type of work that you want to do.
Make sure that it's in alignment.
If you want to work with certain types of clients
and you wanna do certain stuff
then really do your homework more than anything.
From an internal politics standpoint,
I would say just trying to find something
to like about everybody is going to be
the only way you survive in any job.
There's a reason that I'm a creative entrepreneur.
Sometimes I just get impatient or tired
of having to fight so hard to look for
the good in people.
That can be problematic depending on your personality.
So again, just depending on your personality,
you got to make sure that you find a work culture
and people that are a good fit for you.
And make sure that the kind of work you wanna do
aligns with what the agency is doing,
that's gonna be very important.
From a salary standpoint, expectations.
I would say that in general,
if you're gonna be an agency designer,
it will be entirely dependent
on where you are working in the country,
in the world and it will vary.
But I have this idea in my mind
where if you're gonna be a full time designer for an agency
and they're not like a small boutique agency
that you shouldn't be expecting less than maybe around
the ballpark of 50,000 depending on
your level of experience.
And again, like I said
it's dependent on your level of experience
but also understand that that could shift
just depending on what the economy is doing,
and also what the talent pool for candidates looks like
and what skills you bring to the table.
And just bear in mind that
full time positions as a whole
even creatively are going away in favor of freelancing.
So, take these numbers with a grain of salt.
It's not impossible for you to negotiate a higher salary
and again, it might depend on where you live.
I've known people to start at 65,000
but that's more New York, LA, metro areas.
There are people for art director positions
that I've known to get 70
but that really comes down to how you negotiate,
where you live, what the market's doing,
what you bring to the table.
There are just too many variables
for me to give you straight up numbers.
I know a lot of you would feel
more comfortable with straight up numbers
but there aren't any that are reliable
and that's just honest.
This is where talking to somebody who's worked
at the place that you're wanting to work
really would come in handy.
If you just ask them
and you trust them to be honest with you
about how much they were making,
what you should ask for, what you should get
then I think that that's fine.
There are some situations
where depending on what you're going to do
and if it's a small enough agency
where you might be able to do a rev share.
You might be able to do a rev share
and you know, some people it's referred to as profit sharing
where you might take a lesser upfront salary
but if you contribute to the bigger projects
you might get a cut.
This is where stuff like being part of the pitch team
could actually help you
and you could get either a salary bump
or you could get a cut of the deal
if you're helping close the deal.
But this really just depends on who you're working with
and what the situation is,
and how comfortable you are
negotiating those kinds of things.
From a project management and stress standpoint
what I would say is
always find something to work on
and put yourself in a position to work ahead
even if there's not a deadline
or a project or something like that.
Making presets, making templates,
sharpening your skills, refining your process,
getting faster.
All of those things are just gonna make your life easier,
you're gonna have less anxiety,
you're gonna feel much more in control
doing mock ups and concepts
for the type of work you know needs to get done.
Means that later you're just
rearranging certain things or you are a,
you're not experimenting.
You've explored and done some concepts and mock ups.
I mean those things just are so helpful to do
everyday, day in and day out
even though it might feel like busy work.
Because when you're under the gut
and something comes through last minute
and you've got to get three concepts out
in the next two hours, you won't feel so overwhelmed
because that's real and that's happened to me.
So, I would say just try and do as much as you can there.
It could be really important.
Final thoughts.
Agency life isn't for everybody
but I think that it'd be great for you as a designer
in your career as a creative,
in your career to do it for six months to a year
if you ever get the opportunity
so that you have an understanding of the industry.
I learned much more about the industry
and I think it set me up for success
in my own business as a result.
Learning the ins and outs,
working under a self made businessman and entrepreneur
in the creative services industry.
That really I think informed a lot of my decisions
both about what to do as a boss and a business owner,
what not to do.
And I love that throughout my career,
I've worked for so many different entrepreneurs
in the corporate side and then also as a freelancer
and as a consultant.
And what it has given me is a tremendous amount
of respect and empathy for what it actually takes.
Working the client services side
gives me empathy for what the clients go through.
Working in house and then having to
negotiate with agencies both before and after the fact
of having agency experience,
I learned a lot there and I learned to actually
advocate for the company better as a result of knowing
how agencies work internally.
Made me much better as an in house person
when we had to work with agencies on things.
I'd say having a very diverse experience in your career,
working in house, working at an agency,
working as a freelancer and going back and forth
could have tremendous value to you
and to future employers just because
you'll know how everybody is thinking
because you sat in their chair.
There's something to be said for being able to see
all the angles from a position of experience.
And I think that's one of the key things
that I think overall throughout my life
has made me so successful
where other people have gotten very, very narrow niche
and it's still not terrible advice to niche down.
I really owe a lot of my success
to the empathy I gained for everybody else
having walked a mile in their shoes.
And creatively, I would say that that could be
a very valuable asset and experience.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
This is shot on my Sony RX100 Mark V,
it is the new vlogging style camera.
I will be back to my traditional set up after I travel
but while I'm on the go
I'm gonna try not to miss updates
by using different gear and things that I think
just are a lot more helpful.
So if you guys like this style of video
and if you guys like hearing more stories
about my experiences in the industry,
let me know in the comment section
so I know what to do about that.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome stuff on the channel.
Remember graphic design videos are usually on Mondays
even when I'm on the go.
As always you guys, thanks so much for watching
and don't forget, create something awesome today
hopefully working for someone who doesn't suck.