Q For In House Graphic Designers Only (mostly print)

thanks all for your help! :slight_smile:

OMG. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I had my least productive design day EVER. I would say 3.5 hours yesterday. That would depend on your company of course. A lot of people pass the buck here and I end up doing a lot of administrative jobs that someone else should be doing. Like purchase credit card reports and setting up a vendor contract for a paper supply company. I guess on a normal day it would probably be an average 5.

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I worked for a company that tracked everything designers were doing. It felt like working at a factory. But the agency was very productive. Not very good for fostering creativity. If he was “slacking” but was meeting his deadlines and doing great work, I don’t see that would be a problem. Some designers can be very fast and do good work. But if he is missing his deadlines, then it is a problem.

So in this agency I worked at for a brief period of time, they have a project management system called Robohead. It’s very sophisticated. They have multiple art directors that are in charge of overseeing the graphic designers, assigning tasks, reviewing their work, etc. Every project is broken down into tasks, and every task is assigned a number or hours to be completed. If you need more hours, you have to talk to your art director about it. So for example, a logo design project would be broken down into 30 mins for a quick get together to talk about the project, 4-10 hours for design work (which could include research, illustration, etc.), 1 hour for changes and file handling, etc. If the client didn’t like the designs and wanted more, then you would have a certain amount of hours added to the project. Basically, you would have to start estimating time for each task in a certain project and then track how that time is being used. Through time, you would get an average of many hours a logo takes, how much time a brochure takes, etc. Each project is different. You may need to add 1 or 2 hours to certain projects to curate photos for example, while other projects may not need photos. Hope that helps.

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definitely missing deadlines
big time! :frowning:

we are actually tracking time so that we can justify bringing on another designer, so we can all have more time for creativity, etc. (or at least that is the stated goal).

we use asana for project management and tracking our time (with add on everhour). we have new project managers and a new director so they aren’t up to speed on estimating time for projects. plus we just combined two different segments of our designers into one team, which is proving problematic (different work cultures and project types). even the designers right now wouldn’t be able to estimate time well given the variety in project types that some have not done before.

but we hopefully will get there. thanks!

Sure! the only other way I can think of to make him accountable would be to be checking on him daily and be asking him for an estimate time for each project/task he has. Junior designers wouldn’t be able to estimate very well, but more experience designers should. Otherwise, just talk to him about not meeting his deadlines, and how he thinks he could fix that situation. That way he can offer some solutions. Also you can mention that you would prefer him not to use his phone so much. You can suggest more productive tasks when the day is slow for him and he has already done all the work he is being assigned, like looking at behance for inspiration is okay, graphic design related tutorials, or organizing his files, or maybe company projects. You could also tell him to let you know whenever he is finished his projects and is in “overhead” time. That’s a more of a micro management approach though. He may need some motivation and direction. Although if he is building a side business, I would find that difficult. He is one foot in one foot out.

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“
one foot in one foot out.” 'zactly!!

oh, he’s been spoken to about time spent on his phone, his deadlines, etc. multiple times. he seems to always have a “good” excuse as to why (good in his mind). according to him, he doesn’t have any “overhead” time. he is one that needs a micro-manager for the process, not necessarily the design work itself.

it just doesn’t see the previous director could put on his big-boy pants to hold him accountable. i hope the new director will. :slight_smile: