A few posts ago, I gave some hints to help you decide if you were best suited to freelance or inhouse work. It’s now time to take a peak into the working lives of designers whose office is a creative agency.

There are a few different kinds of agencies – advertising, marketing, website design and graphic design, to name a few. For the purposes of this article, we will lump them altogether, although each can be slightly different.

Let’s look at some pros and cons of agency life.

1/ The workload.

Agency designers work reasonably hard. The hours are long and somewhat inflexible (no skiving off to go to the beach!) and clients can be demanding. The upside is, however, that designers who work at an agency can concentrate on designing. Someone else is marketing the business/balancing the books/stocking the tea room. And compared with inhouse desgners in such workplaces as Government agencies or large corporations, the work can be far more varied. After all, once a corporation has a “style” there’s not much room for creativity.

2/ The way you work.

In an agency, designers and others tend to work in small teams, led by a project manager. When the team “gels” it can be fantastic. Like-minded people bouncing creative ideas off each other can be pretty inspiring. Sounds good compared with the solo life of freelancing, which can get lonely at times. But what if the team does not gel? This does happen and if you work in an agency, you need to be prepared to take the good with the bad.

3/ The rewards

A good freelancer will most likely earn more money and have more freedom than someone at an agency. But he or she would have worked damn hard to get there. On the other hand, such things like job security and paid leave is not to be sneezed at.

Some freelancers, however, can find their “thing” and get stuck in a rut, rarely moving forward. In house designers have a neat career trajectory – maybe even to freelance work AFTER they have the established networks to make it work.

One big perk that agency (and inhouse) designers have over freelancing is that someone else is paying for the resources. And we all know some of those (especially the high-end software) can get pretty expensive).

4/ The challenges

Any job is challenging. Be it the difficult client, or boss; or the unreasonable deadlines. Agencies tend to have one of two “personalities” – corporate or creative. If the one you are working at suits your personality, that great. If not, let’s call it a “challenge” (or maybe a stepping stone – agency work is excellent for building a portfolio!).

As a freelancer, you have the freedom to make your own decisions. At an agency, it is the Managing Director (or sometimes even a Board of Directors) that makes the ultimate decisions. This can be frustrating.

5/ The fun stuff

As mentioned above, freelancing can get lonely at times, but it does have more flexibility. What this basically means is that the at work stuff might be a bit boring, but you get more opportunity to do the fun social stuff

Agency work can be fun too – how can they not be with all that hot-housed creativity? Some even have staff Wiis or pinball machines. And the coffee in the work cafe is always top notch.

So, for different reasons, either can be fun (and both are probably more fun than working inhouse)

We’d love to know more about experiences working at a design agency. Especially if you have also worked inhouse or freelance. How do they compare?