I work as something more than an Administrative Assistant in a closely linked subsidiary of a large corporation. Our creative work here focuses quite heavily on multi-page presentations, with some single-page advertising. The in-house creative and design tasks are taken on by those AAs with the interest and, in a few cases like myself, the training to take on such work. We still use professional designers for some presentation work but a lot of what used to go outside has now come in-house. As time has passed the overall amount of that type of in-house work has increased.

20+ years ago, all your print work and creative graphics work was turned over to professionals. Text reports and presentations for wide distribution were primarily offset printed so you sent that job out of house. Color brochures and other types of fancy presentations were handled in the same way, as these were also jobs beyond the abilities of the people and the tools available in-house. There was a mystique, if you will, to the process, that gave the outside designer some clout, especially when it came down to deadlines because of the costs incurred when deadlines were missed. People closely proofed their work before it went to print because of the cost and corporate embarrassment of not getting it right the first time.

Now the tools for such work have come in-house and the attitude has shifted. The mystique is gone because some head honcho's Administrative Assistant can turn out a color presentation in minutes with the help of the commercial word processing programs. If an AA can do a "good looking" presentation last minute then professionals should be able to do it at least as fast. The increase in the pace of the entire office workflow, made possible by ever more "convenient" office software, has people not taking time to think things through and the costs of doing things last minute and haphazardly are now seen as unavoidable. If someone finds something wrong just as the presentation is being packed for shipment you just have the old presentations tossed and have the corrected ones printed on your nearby laser printer, just like the first set. Your only unavoidable deadline is that of your overnight delivery service. When a major client conference approaches no consideration is given to better ways to get the same points across more effectively as there just isn't the time for anything other than a kitchen sink approach to the process, where you throw a bunch of previous presentations into a binder.

Progress has advantages, I'd never be able to do the stuff I'm doing now in the old environment because of a lack of a degree in design. I entered the world of computer graphics with the help of design professionals while I was doing temporary work, so I'm aware that it takes more than tools to put out a quality product. What has become obvious to me in the trenches here is that professional designers need to figure out a way reacquaint their clients with the value of truly good design at all levels, including the journeyman reports that are primarily text and graphs, probably the bulk of the work brought in-house. (Typography is still a necessary art.) If professional designers don't educate their clients on the value of truly good design then the overwhelming presence of the "good enough" output of products like the Microsoft Office suite will make that output the standard by which most of the professional work will be judged.

I am the in-house graphic designer for a billion-dollar industrial manufacturing company. Every single point Eric made in this article is SO true: from minute-short deadlines, to presenting proposals with dollar-savings explanations: it is amazingly true! One point I wanted to add: it seems that there is quite a bit of burn out and "ladder climbing" -- so even though you may be courting a decision maker today, be REALLY nice to those contacts that are not necessarily making decisions today, because you NEVER know when they will be! We have a mantra in our marketing department: be nice to EVERYONE, you never know, they just may be your boss tomorrow!