A couple weeks ago I attended AIGA Houston’s Inside Job conference. It’s a one-day conference that targets the creative community working at in-house departments within other companies – as opposed to working at external independent design, branding, or advertising agencies – and shares insights on how we can all work together more efficiently and creatively.
The keynote speakers are here to share experiences that many in-house departments go through. The speakers can help answer questions or provide inspiration to these departments. One of the most common differences between an external firm and an in-house department is that the in-house department deals with only one client – their parent company. The speakers talk about a variety of topics, such as: how to navigate inner office politics, how to stay inspired when you work with the same client every day, how to initiate new programs within the company, what a day-in-the-life of an in-house department may look like, etc.
As a board member of the AIGA, I am there to help out in whatever way I can, but I also benefit from listening to the keynote speakers and sitting in on a few of the break-out sessions between the keynotes. There were so many takeaways but I’m only going to mention a few here.