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Is it essential to have a partner early-on? I’m looking at an offer at an agency but wouldn’t have a writer to work with. I definitely want to get to the point where I’m at a medium-sized agency and can work with a partner/partners while I work my way up, but this company seems like it could be cool despite not having traditional agency models. Could not having a writer for the first couple years hinder my career?
My experience with small agencies is that I’ve been fired from all of them. Your call!
In my experience, if you have a partner usually that helps distinguish you from a straight designer rather than an AD. But I’ve worked places without set partners, just a pile of creatives everyone switches around. Pick the place with better clients/a better range of work. A big agency might look better on your resume when you’re ready to leave.
My experience with small agencies: good as a senior, bad as a junior. They’ll say you have more opportunities. What they don’t say is they’ll pit you against the more senior teams for them. And when you do get a win, guess who gets to go to the shoot.
I started at a small agency and, yes, my partner and I sometimes went up against senior and CD teams—but we were given good projects on our own, also. And when our idea beat the senior and CD teams’ ideas to win a pitch, no one even considered sending anyone but us the shoot. I think it really just depends on the agency.
It all depends on the people you'll work with. If you respect the people and their work at the smaller agency, then do it. You'll have more of a chance to be their contemporary. And say yes to everything that comes your way.
There are a lot of pros and cons to both sizes. But, for what it’s worth, OP, I worked with five different partners during a year at a small agency (around 80 people) and worked with the same partner on all but one project in a year at a much larger agency (around 300 maybe?). If the ability to work with multiple partners is an important factor in your search, I would ask about it specifically rather than guessing based on the size of the agency. Many smaller agencies use more agile resources models that lend themselves to project-based partnerships while at some larger agencies with more resources the models are more traditional. But it varies from shop to shop.
The agency you have an offer from where you wouldn’t have a writer to work with—do they not have writers period? Or would you just be going solo for the most part and there are writers there? Would you need to do any writing yourself? If so, how much and how do you feel about doing the writing?
I think that most recruiters will work off an assumption that you had a writer whether you did or not, unless you tell them otherwise. But if you already have some experience working with partners, I don’t think it will be an issue. A lot of designers get hired into art director roles without having had experience working with a copywriter partner.
Not if you learn to write
I chose a small agency for my first gig out of school and have no regrets at all thus far. I’m making quite a bit of work compared to other folks at big places.
But as others have said, it’s all about the people. I feel fortunate in that I work very talented, nice, and hungry people.
It’s a double-edge sword. Being a studied Graphic Designer I came out of school doing t-shittbdesigns. I didn’t want to be stuck in that industry so I took an internship at a local small agency.
I enjoyed working my way up to being the only AD on staff and we worked on some small national accounts. I was able to grow and learn quickly.
However, all it took for things to go south was our biggest client to move all their work to a bigger agency. It was perfect timing I went to my boss and put in my two weeks notice as he was thinking of how to tell me he’d have to let me go. Now I look for mid-size to large agencies. You may touch more things in a smaller agency but where I am at now I can use a greater network and more creative influences.
The job is technically a design job but I would also be responsible for campaign conception so it sounds like I’ll get a lot of authority over creative.
You don’t have to stay in your lane