Agency vs. In-house pt. 2

What does this mean for the individual practitioner?

With the industry changing towards well built internal departments, what will happen to the individual practitioner? Do these sea changes threaten the small studio?

For the most part, I’m going to say no. I think it’s a matter of the scale of clients. Smaller businesses and institutions who can’t support a design staff will always have design needs. Needs that can be met by smaller studios and individuals.

Here, I’d like to take a slight turn and sound out a notion that I have started to explore. In this essay in the Graphic Design: Now in Production catalogue, James Goggin explains why so many “independent” designers work within the arts and cultural world. He explains why more “daring” and “experimental” work is found here by simply having more culturally versed clients. But in addition to this cultural literacy there’s an economic reason. Arts clients have smaller budgets therefore there’s a trade between designer and client; less fee for more creative freedom.

This made me think. Could the startup world engage with design in this way? Currently, the design recipe in the startup world is to make a quick and useable branding solution to help get their company or product to market. This results in a lot of watered down, web 2.0, 3.0, bouncy, and meaningless design. Now consider me naive, but when it comes to launching a new service, I would want to stand out. For the sake of argument, let’s talk about public facing businesses only. What if Instagram had a more daring, dynamic, and abstract logo? A logo that talked about the potential of Instagram and not just the utility? (This type of brand thinking within the app environment is a whole other topic).

So, could a designer engage with startup companies in a manner similar to arts clients? Here’s the deal I propose: startups don’t have a ton of money and they need solutions fast, the designer agrees to work with them for a small fee or future equity in trade of full creative freedom. As an early “investor” and “adopter” the designer can really act upon the DNA of the company and experiment with the speculative impact of a new product. The designer can push these principles to their most creative extreme in the work.

There’s a problem with this scenario and it’s summed up in two words: venture capital. The real people who are calling the shots aren’t the young founders. Rather it’s, like in the agency world, the people with the real purse strings. When it comes to money, design is always second. So, again we return to the power of “clients” which is just a synonym for money. And I think this is the central issue in the Agency vs. In-house debate. In-house signifies a financial investment into the company. Agency signifies a financial co-dependency that establishes an inherent and potentially problematic power realtionship.

When John Maeda joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers there was a lot of controversy. However, in a recent conversation with a colleague, it was made clear to me that the move could create a great impact on the design world. Having a strong design voice in the investment community can really push design to the fore of the product building process. And someone like Maeda can push for that level of thinking on all levels and not just on branding.

This is all to say that we live in exciting times. I encourage designers to engage with the startup world in a classic manner and not feel coerced to be cheap labor or pseudo product designers. There’s a ton of creative insight to be offered and a lot of bargaining power that can yield great work.