Another issue for me is that I’ve never worked “in-house”. I have, however, worked with several in-house design groups throughout my career – Shell, Dell, Tenaris, Marathon Oil, etc. As a matter of fact, I just recently had an experience with an internal team that helped shape the topic I’d choose to discuss. At Herring, we worked on an identity for an internal initiative. The items and artwork had been approved by our contact at the company but the CEO later asked if it could be changed to be a little more like one of their other internal initiatives. Their in-house design team was asked to look into it and when I was invited to review the logos developed by the in-house team and I was really impressed with them. I kind of wondered why we were brought into the process in the first place (I’ll probably get fired for saying that). I also felt it important to share my admiration (and a bit of jealousy) with the in-house designer.
And I think that’s where I felt I may be on to something worth talking about. If we’re truly supposed to be partners with our clients we have to be willing to put aside any ego or pre-conceived ideas about who does something “better” and think about the client together – as a team. What will work best for the client? How can we collaborate towards a common goal? Sounds hokey, I know.
So I wouldn’t have the burden of talking the entire time I thought I could “distribute the pain” a bit and have people from both sides come together and we could share some stories and we can learn from each, maybe identify a few pain points and come up with some answers. I rounded up experts for a panel that work for either an internal team or are an outside consultancy. Having both sides represented was key to having a balanced dialogue. The panel was made up of: Michael Ratcliff (Senior Art Director at Schlumberger), Wendy Burke (Director of Brand at Hoar Construction), Will Cunningham (Associate Creative Director at Brand Extract) and Marie Dort (Designer at Inventure Design).
