A simple guide to designing in an agency, in-house, in film, or freelance
Becoming a designer isn’t exactly a “decision” a person makes, as making a decision tends to require prior knowledge of what you’re actually deciding. Instead, as you stare at the mute colouring on the walls at your school, house, or place of work, a bolt of furious irritation will strike you, and you’ll realise that what you’ve needed to do all along was change stuff. Ideally with some artistic skill, and preferably for money.
From there, it’s a simple hop, skip, and Google before you find yourself suddenly aware that people do get paid to design things, and that landing that kind of work should neither be daunting nor surprising and so maybe now you want ‘in’. I have a feeling this is the sort of stuff they cover if you actually go and, I dunno, study design at University or something. But if like me you took the less explored (read: less useful and completely contrived) path to design via Archaeology, you might be wondering quite what that ‘in’ entails.
Having lived off design work for a good few years, I now know there are roughly four main channels designers might find themselves down: Agency, In-House, Film, or Freelance. In this post, I wanted to briefly introduce what these generally look like, and via internet-friendly bullet points, impart some idea of what it’s like to work at each (because I have, and I have thoughts about it).
Agency
This will be the option most designers are aware of — the kind of job Anne Hathaway is likely to have in a movie about metropolitan living that you’ve now cast in your head, even though she has technically never played that part before, you just picture she’d be good at it because you’ve watched The Devil Wears Prada at least three times and there are far fewer films about metropolitan living than you first thought.
Here are some key things to note about working in an agency alongside Anne Hathaway and a crack team of other talented artists:
Working with talented people is great
There’s no faster (safer!) way to learn and grow than alongside other designers, and at an agency, you’ll be exposed to the full range of experiences, from junior to midweight and senior. It helps you get a sense of what’s expected at each level and how to tackle your own briefs if you choose to go freelance later.
Good for growth
Having briefs arranged by the agency allows you to focus on developing your talents, and if you happen to sign up somewhere with a varied roster of clients, you can try out different styles so long as you’re not overpromising.
Varied briefs
Having a number of different clients operating through the same agency means variety in your work, which can stop you going crazy. Just make sure to check the agency’s roster of clients and who they tend to work with before signing up — you don’t want to end up branding office spaces if you have a penchant for working with arts organisations.*
Be wary about Agency size
Some designers have no problem getting cosy in a global agency with hundreds of staff handling hundreds of briefs, and if this is you, know that you have my deepest, pettiest envy. Personally, I find myself more comfortable on the 20-people max side of things, but it helps to have tried both. If you have any doubts, just pick one and see how it goes.
PAYE, holiday pay, sick pay, Christmas off, the whole shebang
Relative security of downtime is an understated benefit.
They’re a little more flexible in the post-COVID world
No longer always expected to work the full 9pm-5pm regardless of workload — which would be bad enough but it’s always seemingly 9pm-5.30pm (a total con of a song by Dolly Parton there). I’ve also heard tell of WFH days, and every other Friday off, which I think probably holds far more value than the pre-COVID bonuses of ping pong in the break room and pizza Thursdays.
*(this may or may not have happened to me)
Freelance
Anne Hathaway left the agency a year ago and now it’s time for you to follow suit. You’ve been working with the same clients for a while now, and now you’ve got more people outside of work interested because of your growing connections, so it’s time to run your own schedule.
…That or you never met Anne Hathaway because you never went to that agency interview, you just got work through mutual connections and went from there. Anything’s technically possible with Freelance — which is partially why it can be a little terrifying.
Excellent if you’re self-motivated
You’ll need to procure your own work and then do that work, which means a lot of putting pressure on yourself. If you can do that without tempting yourself away or stressing yourself out by leaving everything last minute, you might thrive with freelance.
Choose what you work on
Plus you can follow them through from beginning to end, so you actually get to feel the satisfaction of having completed your own briefs. Incredible.
Pro: as much annual leave as you want
Con: you don’t get paid for days off
Tax can be a nightmare
Self-employed means sorting your own tax, which can be hell to get your head around. That said, you do get money off on the things you need to buy for work, which is something.
You can also get around this point by hiring an accountant, a real treat that not only comes with not having to do your own tax return but also lets you say things like ‘I’ll need to ask my accountant.’ This makes you feel a little giddy with power, but also repulses everyone around you. Win, win.
Pro: Work to your own schedule, even if that’s 11pm-6am
Con: Work to your own schedule, even if that’s 9am-midnight because you have no personal boundaries
Work anywhere!
Work on a boat! On a train! On a boat! In Corfu! Or, like me, curled up on your sofa giving yourself lifelong back problems, wondering why am I not on a boat?
In-House
It turns out Anne Hathaway started her own business, and guess what: she wants you to help her establish the branding. As ridiculous as this is starting to sound, and it started off pretty ridiculous, this actually happens more than people are aware. Lots of businesses hire In-House designers for merchandising, messaging, marketing, etc — you don’t even need to know an Anne Hathaway to get in. You can even apply for it like it’s a normal job, and sometimes it might even be a normal job.
Work with one client, usually in their office
One client means very little can throw you off balance or into the deep end — this is as normal as it gets, babyyy. You even get to work in an office sometimes, if you miss that sort of thing. The working with people thing. I don’t know, maybe you do.
Side note; I started off with CRM students, and had to throw out all sorts of stuff from leaflets to hoarding panels to lanyards - working with old InDesign and Illustrator files put together by much better designers than myself. Massively helpful if you’re trying to learn the correct way to format and lay out all sorts of bits and pieces.
Get to grips with marketing teams, their plans, and how design fits into that
This can be useful even if at a later point you go freelance because you would now know what’s expected of these kinds of campaigns, so you don’t have to play it all by ear. Maybe even learn some of the lingo. Save yourself frantically googling buzzwordy concepts when a client’s on the phone, that kind of thing.
Stable and often good income with little mandatory overtime
It’s a normal job, babyyy — go home, see your pets once in a while, have their small faces form memories of your potentially bigger face.
Often better income than agencies
I honestly don’t know why this is, and the only reason I can think of is that it’s because In-House is boring. Probably unfair, but…
Boring
Yeah, definitely probably unfair to say. If you work somewhere with very interesting plans, maybe? Designers who just know what they want, and that’s to do the same sort of thing fairly regularly and get paid, this is probably more your speed. It’s still a design job after all! It just very often means you’re trading creative fulfilment for something vaguely creativity shaped, and sometimes that proximity to actual expression in your work can lead you to occasionally getting twitchy and restless and prone to overdoing things, which puts your boss in a position of having to very politely tell you to tone down something that at that point has started to show hints of the human being behind the tablet, and you might end up very politely screaming into your jumper sleeve and wishing you had just learned Excel and got a job doing admin or something with Excel, even if you’re afraid sometimes of what might happen if they really let you off the leash with Excel, like what would happen if society just let you go wild on Excel? Let’s move on.
Film
In a shock twist, Anne Hathaway — or, we should say, the metatextually-contorted version of a character who the real-life actor Anne Hathaway might play in this film starring you as you make your way through all the various design jobs — is actually the Anne Hathaway. That’s right, the real-life actor Anne Hathaway. You’ve been working with her for years, and it turns out, it was all method acting — she spent these years pretending to be a character she herself might play in a film that people would expect her to play because she wanted to get into the mindset, at long last, of the kind of character people expect Anne Hathaway to play, and finally, she’s ready. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is happening, and she wants you to work with her.
Not as an actor, obviously — you’re a designer, Anne Hathaway is the actor what aren’t you getting about this. Anne has advised you read up a little on getting your start in the industry, perhaps a brief introduction to graphic design to get your head around the differences in the day-to-day, and now you’re jumping in, you and Anne Hathaway, although mostly far apart as she will be acting and, to be clear, you will be an office-working graphic designer. Spiritually, however, this is happening. Here’s what you need to know:
This might be PAYE or Self-Employed, depending on your role
Look, they’re probably not going to say, “hey, you’re pretty senior and you’re coming onto this as a full-blown art director, so we can’t hire you until you’re self-employed” — this is mostly just good to know on the off-chance you are already self-employed, that much of the time graphic designers and a bunch of other roles have to go PAYE due to arbitrary film rules too boring to explain. What roles are they? That’s way out of the scope of this sometimes-breezy listicle
The hours are mad
I’m talking 8am-6.30pm and every-so-often it can be worse. It’s real live-to-work stuff. BUT you get long (unpaid) breaks in-between roles
The pay is also mad
The trade-off is the money is good. BUT you won’t be able to spend any of it while you’re working, which… is almost a good thing, because then you do better saving it up for those long (unpaid) breaks
A little bit of everything all of the time
The people you work with change constantly, often from job to job, especially if you travel somewhere for the next one
Your scenery can change quite a bit if you travel to the next job
The place you’re working from, the quality of the facilities, the frequency of the coffee, the proximity to shops — all of this fluctuates
The work changes too — you can really find yourself with some very unique challenges even in graphic design on film jobs
All of this is not to dissuade you — frankly, if things shifting around often sounds like it makes work fun, chances are it quite literally will be fun to you. It’s fun to me, I like it a lot, and when you end up working with someone twice after surviving a job, it’s like working with your best friends (with an unstable reliance on the quality of sandwiches in the canteen)
Even if it does sound much too much for you, it’s worth trying just once to see if you can hack it — chances are you’re a lot more resilient to change than you give yourself credit for
Water cooler bragging rights
You’ve just met the real Anne Hathaway for the first time after working with her method character for years, and it turns out she’s lovely, and you had a good laugh at the wrap party, and you each have a picture together which is terrible, but you show your mom, who’s Anne Hathaway’s biggest fan, and she’s gobsmacked. This is the semi-realistic thing that can happen in film work, and so long as it doesn’t become your personality or something pestering people with a lot more clout and money than you have, it can be a good laugh and make for entertaining icebreakers among awkward first meetings with people for years and years
That’s quite the adventure you and Anne Hathaway have been on — I’m so sorry, I’ll stop with this weird Anne Hathaway thing, I know it hasn’t made sense for ages now. If all of this is starting to shape in your mind the kind of design work you would like to do, but has also raised concerns about whether you can keep a job that demands that kind of creativity — don’t panic. As I illustrate in this other post: you can find design inspiration everywhere, and that applies to all of the jobs above.
If you want to make a smaller start than any of the above, consider taking on design work for something like the Edinburgh Film Festival to build your portfolio and gain some experience first, then figure it out. And if you want more detail on all of the above: Take a look at my dailies and personal projects page for some insight into my early work and I’ll have more insights and advice coming on all of the above in the near future.
