Design team structure: when and how to plan its growth
Hi, I’m Elizaveta Bobkova. For the past two years, I’ve been the lead of communication design at QIC digital hub. I’ve been working in design for over 8 years, 5 of those in managerial roles. I used to work in small teams of 3–4 designers as well as large teams with design departments of up to 50 people. One thing I’ve learnt is that at a certain stage of any product’s growth, resource allocation becomes a key challenge for a team lead. This usually happens when the team grows beyond five people, and it becomes impossible to manage tasks solely through vertical or horizontal distribution.
Waiting to hire until the team is overloaded is a bad idea. If the workload keeps rising, you’ll face constant crises; if it fluctuates, the team may end up under-utilised. You’ll need to decide whether to outsource or hire in-house. What size and scope should you aim for? How can you develop designers and manage tasks to avoid burnout? Finding answers to these questions is easier if you have a growth strategy and a clear vision of the long-term structure of the team.
QIC digital hub has recently gone through a significant growth phase, and I’d like to share my experience and the structural decisions I’ve considered.
When I joined a year ago, there were four designers working on the marketing for one product. Each of them had a different skill level (we later introduced the grading system) and completely separate areas of work — graphic design, 3D and motion design. There was also a strong focus on 3D motion, even though most of the work was related to graphic design and branding. The first thing I did was to address this imbalance.
We hired another graphic designer, helped existing team members improve their skills, and I even took on some design work myself. We ended up with the following structure:
Digital Hub has grown rapidly, with an increased volume of communications for the main product, the addition of another product and an HR brand to manage. Our current team has tripled the workload compared to two years ago, largely due to long-term planning and effective negotiation with task owners for better task distribution.
However, as the workload increased, combining the roles of traffic manager and art director became less effective, necessitating a tiered team structure. In addition, with another product soon to be added under our support, we needed to recruit more team members with the right skills. A solid strategy was needed.
I sketched out some options for structure and interaction, taking into account not only the immediate need for 1–2 new candidates, but also the potential growth of the team over the next 2–3 years in line with the business plans.
I identified three approaches: assigning a designer to a specific product, assigning them to communication channels, and a tiered structure without such strict assignments. I’d seen these types of structures in previous companies, both as a designer and as a manager. Based on this experience, I have highlighted the key features of each approach, which can be either a strength or a weakness depending on the specific business needs.
Let’s take a closer look at each structure:
Option 1: Separate teams for each product
In this structure, each brand has its own dedicated teams of product and marketing designers. The only team that’s separate is the 3D/Motion team, which handles the needs of all products. In our teams, we usually include a 3D Motion Lead because there’s a lot of demand for certain types of production, but this role isn’t essential and can be removed if needed.
The Brand Design Lead and Product Design Lead are more focused on strategic tasks and art direction, while the designers take on more responsibility for managing the task process and communicating with stakeholders.
In larger teams, traffic managers handle incoming tasks and allocate them to designers based on the brand. When coordination across multiple functional teams is needed, the traffic managers are responsible for roadmapping and validating the work.
Pros of this scheme:
- It’s easy for task setters and product designers to know who to approach, as they often work with the same designers. This makes it easier to communicate, even in a larger company with a traffic manager, as a stable working group is formed.
- Designers get really involved in the product and act as the “guardians” of its branding, which means they can quickly start and make changes.
- Designers have lots of chances to grow in different ways. They can also move between products to keep things fresh and to avoid burnout.
- It’s easier to add new brands and teams without disrupting the existing structure or workload of current teams.
Cons of this approach:
- A lot of the interaction in this structure depends on both the task setters and the designers taking personal responsibility. In a small team, this approach only really works if all the team members are at least middle-level and have strong soft skills. Otherwise, the Brand Design Lead will still need to approve all tasks.
- There’s no guarantee of 100% workload balance across all products, which could lead to one team being overloaded while another has downtime. This can be managed through communication between brand designers and by having them pick up tasks from one another, but it still requires oversight from the lead or traffic managers.
Option 2: Based on communication channels
In this structure, each designer is assigned to a specific direction or communication channel (or 2–3 channels for smaller volumes) regardless of the product. The Brand Design Lead is there to help with strategy and to lend a hand with admin when things are quiet. As the workload gets heavier, we move to a similar setup to the first model, with a traffic manager taking over task management.
In our setup, the creative designer handles campaigns, while the brand designer works on styles and guidelines. These designers are at a higher grade than communication designers, so art direction for smaller tasks within communication channels can be delegated to senior designers, depending on whether the task is for a campaign or standard branding.
As the team gets bigger, you can also set up a hierarchy within channels based on grades. In this structure, teams stay separate, so the Design Director or Communication Design Lead is in charge of making sure that marketing and product design strategies are aligned.
Pros of this approach:
- In this structure, designers become experts in specific channels and can quickly run experiments and tests because they understand the task background and are up to speed with channel analytics.
- It’s easier to share tasks and communicate with one another, as designers and channel owners work together in dedicated teams. It’s simple to predict what skills you’ll need and when you’ll need them. The skills you need can vary depending on the channel. For example, designers working in SMM and digital advertising often need to know a bit about motion, but this isn’t as important in offline channels, as the production team usually handles large-scale event videos.
- Another advantage is that it’s easy to outsource routine tasks or even entire channels, as senior designers develop strong art direction skills.
Cons:
- It’s becoming trickier to keep branding and design systems in sync across marketing channels and between marketing and product teams. In a big team, how well the leads work together affects the quality of the sync, but the Design Director is the main person responsible.
- At this stage, it’s trickier to switch things up to prevent burnout. Working with a single channel continuously can get pretty monotonous. One way to tackle this is to switch roles regularly or encourage designers to develop other skills (like 3D, motion graphics or illustration).
Option 3: A vertical model with cross-team collaboration
This structure is similar to the channel-based one, but it’s set up vertically. Tasks are mainly distributed according to each designer’s grade. Senior designers take care of creative concepts and branding tasks, while communication designers handle the day-to-day, smaller tasks. In a big team, there’s also space for junior designers, who can help out different design teams.
Senior designers have more responsibility for communication and getting things done. They might give some junior designers a bit of art direction, but they need to be really involved in the big business plans and objectives. The Brand Design Lead’s job is to get designers up to speed with the business context and to work with product and production teams on big tasks. This structure also means there’s a greater focus on designer development than in the previous schemes.
Pros of this approach:
- There are lots of different roles in the structure, and designers at the same grade can pick up tasks from each other. It’s a flexible distribution system.
- Designers have lots of opportunities for growth and less routine work. They can try very different tasks or focus on what works best.
- It’s easy to delegate routine tasks not only to junior designers, but also to outsourced ones. Senior designers are developing their art-directing skills.
Cons:
- When someone leaves the role of Senior Designer, it really affects the team’s workload. It’s always more difficult and takes longer to find a specialist for this position.
- It takes longer to transfer knowledge and train junior designers. They end up with a lot on their plate, which makes it hard for them to focus.
- It’s more difficult to prioritise tasks and keep everyone on the same page. You need someone who can step in and manage the process.
As I mentioned before, weighing up the pros and cons is down to personal opinion and based on my experience. How important each point is depends on what resources your team has and what your future plans are. To figure out the best structure for you, you should answer the following questions: What tasks are you working on now, and what will you be working on in the future? What will help your team to grow and what are the business’ expectations? Which tasks are you thinking of outsourcing? How are the teams you work with set up?
We went with the second structure because some of our designers have already built up a lot of experience in specific channels, and they’re still developing their expertise. The business wants the team to come up with creative solutions, and this structure allows us to outsource whole channels if we need to. That way, we can focus our in-house work on ideas and guidelines. The third structure might have worked, but we’re growing fast and it’s tough to build a vertical structure with junior specialists, who need a lot of investment. We might change our minds later, though, because flexibility is key when it comes to team dynamics.