Pros
The location (Adams Morgan) is a nice area filled with great restaurants, shops, and bars for anyone to enjoy. The workplace is very open (no cubicles), which encourages everyone to be collaborative and offer a sense of community. It also comes equipped with conference rooms, private phone rooms, couches, and dens to work in. You receive your own laptop and given many paid subscriptions such as: Adobe Creative Cloud, Lynda, iStock, and much more. Many great benefits; healthcare, vision, dental, 401K, health and wellness The company has a great grasp on design strategy and how to use it in order to move a brand/company forward. They understand through visual communication, a clients complex vision can be simplified to be more comprehensible.
Cons
NO WORKFLOW PROCESS: There isn’t a structured process for projects which causes a lot of confusion, miscommunication, and dysfunction. They have a setup (Explore, Envision, Execute) they use as a selling point to clients but it isn’t enforced in the workplace. Creative briefs are non-existent. No one knows who is working on what or the status of projects. You’ll often be dropped into the middle of a project without much background and given a short timeline. Files are not organized in a way that can be searched and opened up. It often requires falling into a rabbit hole and having to contact 4-5 people to find one file. NO QUALITY CONTROL: There are a few great designs and there are some very questionable designs - which isn’t indicative of the design talent. The quality of the design varies on who is working on the project and how much leadway is given to the designer. When the designer’s input is pushed off to the side, it’s taken over by someone who, quite frankly, does not have that “Design Eye” or understand the basic design principles. Once the design is developed and created, there isn’t an extra set of eyes that can review the quality of the design. You’re always pushed to pump out "quick prototypes" which produces real low-quality work. "Quantity > Quality" EXCLUSION: As a designer, you are not included in the initial conversations with the client. You'll have to rely on the bits and pieces of notes from a secondary source to develop a design that fits the clients needs. It turns into a game of “Telephone” and creates a vast amount of ambiguity. Designers do not often get a chance to apply their strategic thinking or go through their creative process. The relationship between the Strategist and Designer is not as collaborative as it should be. Our opinions are not always valued. We're expected to be told what to do and just create something out of it. There isn't much opportunity to apply your own creativity. "Made-to-Order Design"
