Advice from an Anonymous Corporate Designer

Every so often I get people who ask me if I have advice for new college grads, younger designers, even designer peers entering this illusive jungle. There's a lot of generational lines you get with the typical tips of designers, from the dying breed of those who started out in the pre 00's print-or-ad-agency focused world... There's the new breed of fancy digital designers chasing the latest trends and FAANG jobs...

And then there's the desigers in between - surprisingly talented but quiet corporate designers that have figured out the whole work-life-thing (the ones not on twitter), agency designers that may skillfully dance between entire chasms of mediums in the same project, freelancers who have a natural apitude for sales and find their calling in being focused in their chosen medium and style ...

Yours truly has seen them all, and worn all of the hats mentioned above by this point. Here's a few words for your reading time. All opinions are my own, and have been lived.

Three Buckets of Design Workplaces

There's roughly three buckets of design workplaces that do a lot to describe how you'll be doing your work.

- Independent / Consultant / Freelancer: PROS: no Workin' For the Man, you have absolute freedom in scheduling, and much more aesthetic and art direction freedom other than what you're paid to do. CONS: boatload of overhead (you'll have to write your contracts, figure out health insurance, be good at negotiating, and ten thousand other tasks that would normally be outsourced to whole departments in a corporation). Easily the worst pay, nonexistent mentoring and/or camaraderie unless if networking is a top skill of yours. Shit stability. You get most of your bang for the buck for experienced pros who already have a network, not so much for newbies.

- Agency (~2-50 people): PROS: slightly more stability than freelancing, opportunity to find cool aesthetic niches among like-minded folks without being left out to hang by your lonesome. These dears are usually doing the cutting edge aesthetically cool "portfolio" work because corporate suits hate "cool" design (note that I purposefully don't say good design). CONS: typically in recessions these are the first places to collapse, and collapse fast. Agencies can be shittily clique-y and trendy if you're not aggressively good at fitting in or the top 1-2 in college; there is also minimal to no promotion paths or HR. In my experience, they're excellent for internships if you're still shy and skittish and want to try a lot of different things in a really short time period, or if you got lucky right out of college.

- Corporate (50-50k+ people): PROS: the most stability (insurance / benefits / salary), lots of brains to pick if you're stuck on something, great free equipment, most recession-proof in certain industries. Actual promotion paths and HR and other departments exist if you need to exit a shitty team or situation but don't want to loose the whole stability of it all. There's an opportunity to make good design in the sense it makes many other people's lives easier, and opportunity to start amassing your network. CONS: dear lord the politics. Suits and managers often veto / ask for ugly-ass designs that are impossible. You might get siloed into 'your local powerpoint generator' if you don't push back, likewise there's potential corporate cubicle inanity. Possibly best for ambitious newbies to come into their own skin and learn about the overall process of what works long-term, imo.

One last point: agencies and corporations care about the bottom line, not you, and not the design. You make the bottom line happy (and/or their work easier), you make them happy, and you'll inadvertently make them more lenient about more autonomy/flexibility that you have. The faster you realize the kumbaya 'make a better world with design' line is bullshit, the happier (ironically) you'll be.

On Getting Your Foot in the Door...

- For art students: Draw more than what you're currently drawing. Do deep dives into art and design history. Ignore anyone that dismisses your interests right out of hand. Make projects for yourself and see how well you can execute them. Take internships as soon as you can, with the mindset that you're trying to eliminate what you *don't* want to do for the rest of your life. Be kind, be professional, show up on time.

In general: Creative employment agencies are excellent for lots of temporary and short contract jobs to figure out what you do / don’t like in a workplace. Do you like remote work? Being in office? What kind of manager style do you mesh well with? Do you like packaging, print, digital work? Riskier agency life or a bigger corporation? You also start to form real-world connections which are invaluable for your future - people notice who they work well with.

- Before your first ten years... you don't know jack shit. full stop. You simply don't have the life and design experience to make the judgement calls you would later on; this is the time to absorb everything (aesthetics, tips, philosophies, etc) to the point you can start tracing patterns and systems as to why people (suits vs art directors vs your peers) do what they do. Some designers swear by grid systems as their God, some by instinct, some by kissing boots. Find yours by trying out all the things to learn what you don't like. You will start to realize you're beginning to know stuff when you're having to delegate the "small stuff" to somebody else.

- "Artists" do whatever they want. "designers" (and paid illustrators) earn money via projects (aka other people who pay you). You enter a contract (whether it's written or not) whenever you accept money - knowing the power dynamics can go a long way to being able to work with clients/stakeholders easily and know when to back away from a battle. (project managers count as clients).

- Being trendy will get you in the door (with agencies specifically) and popular in college. being above-competent with people, presentations, and processes will get you reliably hired. Being above-competent with *politics* and self-promoting yourself will get the promotions.

- The first time being hired is the hardest. You're flying blind with your portfolio, you don't have networks, you don't have the innate confidence. Internships can help with all three. If you're not hired there's a high chance it's not you, the interviewers are working off of an incredibly specific checklist that you can't know in advance (for example, the company needs a specific style for x project, needs an easy-go-lucky designer because I quote one interview word-for-word: "Your boss can be a really ... intense.... character at times." (If it isn't obvious, this is a such a blood-red flag in an interview that I would now walk away from due to that line alone, as it signals a highly abusive boss. Interestingly, I had that suspicion confirmed years later from another ex-coworker).

Applying for Jobs is literally a DnD Check Roll

(AKA my persistent theory of the application and interview process. Skip this section if you haven't played Dungeons and Dragons as it will likely be gibberish).

The idea is that whenever you apply for a job, you're doing a DnD check roll every time. Your first entry level position roll puts you at a disadvantage (lowest # of two rolls), wheras if you’re rolling for a senior/manager level you get advantage given how much previous experience you have plus a decent network.

You’ve got your various stat modifiers, too; “specialist” but boring industries (IT/designer/sales/etc vs admin/retail) puts you at, mmmhh I would say +2 to your modifier given it weeds out some of the competition, but not as much as you’d think. Hot industries (animation, storyboarding, etc) add negative modifiers. Likewise having a friend at the company adds another advantage roll. More likely to help, but not necessarily a guarantee that some think.

You could go a little morbid, and say that various discriminations adds an a automatic if invisible negative; from personal experience I’d say it’s a -10 for visible disabilities with a 5% skill chance of landing a nat18+. (I say that because the vast majority of people (coughtrendystartupscough) politely try to ghost you if they’ve seen you, but the truly good companies with functioning benefits/HR who actively do not give a shit about health woes are the kind of companies you *want* to join and self-select themselves if you grind for it. Silver lining.)

Lastly: the actually nice part to jobs-as-check-rolls is that all of this resets after 9 months or so. Projects change and people get fired and some bosses prefer the balls of repeated applications. (I haven't mentioned resumes/interviews once here because to a certian degree, they don't matter. You really do have to take the emotion out of it. Some days fate just hands you bad rolls. Here's to the good ones.)

Avoiding Burnout

For context: I've survived three, four, five and counting corporate design teams as far as all of my coworkers being burnt out / pushing themselves too hard. I believe in the concept of being proud in your work, making your boss look good by going above and beyond to a point -and not halfassing your work- but also, being incredibly resilient and resistant to deliberate overwork.

- My golden rule: Three times out of the year, I will do whatever it takes to get a big project to the finish line, no questions asked. ~8 hours of a weekend, that amount of overtime over a week, for example, this isn't just "oh i'll take an hour extra' push. (I am also very much a stickler for the exact 9-5 clock-in-and-clock-out). And yet conversely: after those three strikes up, any future tire fires are the company's problem, not my problem. full stop, no compromise.

- Interestingly, even the most micro-managery/controlling of my managers was very amendable to this rule. If I had to guess, they genuinely liked the fact that I put an explicit "number" as far as what they could eke out of me with extra work. There were no guessing games as far as when we needed to hire a contractor or push the bullshit back up to the VP and say 'this is unrealistic and not going to happen'. An added bonus to the manager: I never went AWOL or quit in terms of slipping up when the actual shit was on the line, Unfortunately, many of the the dears with big hearts who were consistently guilt-ed into doing "just one more fridays" work ended up not showing up to work some days. Sometimes you have to be cold to the process in order to be warm to the people within.

General Corporate Advice...

- Do not load any "live" corporate projects, apps, or programs on your personal laptop or personal phone. If HR or IT tries fuzzing this boundary, politely make them buy a separate work laptop/phone or leave. It's good IT practice, and it keeps a sacred boundary between what they can control legally vs you. You never want to be in a position where should things go sour, they have the legal right to take your phone away from you because "IP secrets".

- (On this note, I know of too many designers who start answering webex messages at 2am in the morning and can't force themselves not to respond because it's on their personal phone). That being said: an acceptable compromise to the above two points is having your boss' cell phone number in your contacts list, as long as they truly do not call unless if it is an emergency. This is a privlage for them, not a right.

- Having autonomy (in choosing projects, how you spend your time, and respect in your opinions) is surprisingly a near 1:1 with happiness.

- Green flags in bosses: They are your shield against corporate political bullshit, encourage you to take time off (and take off time themselves), mention your accomplishments and fights *for you* to be promoted. Encourages healthy ambition in people. They exist (I've had a few), but they tend to get burnt out easily in bad corporate cultures because they care too much. Tend to them, and don't forget they need praise too.

- Red flags in bosses: Manipulative. Says one thing and then "grades" you differently. Backtalks people. Creates cliques and coups. Tries to keep you from talking to other departments/isolation techniques. Acts like an abusive partner. Some are more subtle than others; start a privately-reccorded paper trail of sketchy behavior if you start getting weird vibes from them. Best case scenario, you'll be able to toss that paper away a few years later. Worst case scenario: it can quite literally save your life.

- The line between good informative gossip and shittalking people is fuzzy, but as a rule, do not say things that you would not say to the person (you're discussing) outright. True things are one thing, hurtful things are another. Assume the person being talked about will know at some point.

- Gossip is a corporation's lifeblood. It can be valueable for knowing layoffs in advance. It is also a double edged sword in that knowing Too Much is a pointless excersise in nihilism. Focus on knowing the basic financials first; is the company in the red or black? Keep a pulse there, and you should be able to anticipate layoffs. (Tangentially: Corporations removing small random perks like daily fruit bowls in the cafeteria can be a yellow -but not red- flag for impending financial trouble.)

- Find allies on all levels of the food chain. Sometimes going above and beyond in a favor to a SVP or a Director can net you good karma later on.

- On the Corporate Project Management Conveyer Belt... There's a life cycle/food chain as far as big corporate projects go (espcially when they ship their own "goods"). You want to be as close to the 'ideation' end of the food chain than 'production' as far as autonomy goes - production is often a red-flag work for assembly-line type of design. (on the flip side of the coin, the one almost guaranteed open position open is packaging production folks who know their shit.)

- On the Corporate Mask: "We are Family" buzzwords (tech is especially bad at this) tends to be red flags for places that guilt-trip employees into working harder. That being said, all corporations these days are guilty to some degree of forced indoctrination (unironically labeled by HR as "work culture"). Some designers are able to be believers. Some are able to fake being believers when necessary and are "real" in their side gig. Some cannot. There is no right answer.

- If your creative hobbies or side gig is NSFW)..: Separate your dayjob creative persona from other creative hobbies and keep them separate no matter what. Do not tell your boss about them, as it can affect the power tilt - you never want to be in a position where your boss is handed blackmailable material, even if they're friendly.

Indie Comics Industry ...

- Comics are an endurance marathon, not a sprint. Start with zines or sub-50pg fandom comics if you actually intend on stretching those muscles. See the process to the very end (a printed finished package), and it'll teach you a lot about printing and pacing too. Bonus: finishing previous self-directed projects are a tremendous asset in a portfolio.

- Be really good at navigating around a fleet of narcissistic insecure egos. Not all of your indie comic peers are like that - there are some people I'd protect with my life and I don't say that lightly - but there's a large crew you're better off avoiding. Stick with individuals who've earned your trust. Relatedly: there are a lot of deeply unhappy people making comics as a form of bad performative therapy. Treat yourself with kindness and try to find / disconnect happiness from this slice of the world. Take time away from this even if you are happy.

- Do a cold calculation if you really want to do comics for full time money or if you'd be content churning out 1/3 the output, but have it be your dream output + have a steady job and not worry about financial instability. It is not a deep shame to admit that the latter is permanently worth it for some./p>

- Porn comics still don't pay like a dayjob will, but everyone remembers them fondly except the prudes. And you don't care about the prudes.

created 05/12/21. modified 6/28/24 for layout tweaks. do not repost without credit or a link back.