[sand007]

I have a questions for web designers who work in a web design firm or advertising agency. I work at the advertising agency as web designer, and my boss always ask 3 designers to make a mockup for each in single project. Is this normal? How about your company? When I worked for a graphic design company before, single designer made 3 mockup...

[steveb]

Different companies follow different policies. I guess bigger agencies can "afford" to put more teams to work on a pitch. That was the case at Lintas:Helsinki before it disappeared.

[HB_Pencil]

Within the company i work for, im the 'head' designer, what i do is ask all the designers to have 1 idea, then we put them all together and create the design of the website/logo etc.

That way all the designers within the company have had some input in the design, and also everyone is happy with the design because we all have what we like in it.

and almost 9 times out of 10 the finished article is really nice too

[sand007]

HB_Pencil,

I think that is very clever. I like the way everybody contribute own idea into a project and make it to one. In the way we process, I don't even feel any team work but only competition or some sort...

[Snowshiro]

It's a nice "communal" approach, but it couldn't possibly work without fairly rigid guidelines or some kind of overall control. If every designer went away and came back with a single idea, you'd get a mishmash of totally unrelated concepts which would look dreadful.

I used to work for an ad agency, although they didn't take the multiple designers route. Generally the design team would be brought together for an initial brainstorm meeting, and then would meet on a regular basis to review the work of a single designer who would update the design incorporating comments made during each revision meeting. Sometimes this would be nothing more than a "we like it, keep going down that track" meeting. Sometimes there would be stronger disagreement with the chosen direction and bigger changes would need to be made. Everyone got to comment, but the majority of the actual hands-on work was done by a single person.

I have seen multiple design teams on single projects though. It's supposed to produce a wider range of approaches, and the competitive element is supposed to foster a higher quality of work, because you want your design to win out over the other pitch teams.

[Veggie1232]

all mock ups are dumb... find a designer with an amazing portfolio and just hier them ont he spot its NOT that hard... You know they will do a good job none the less....

[Snowshiro]

Unfortunately with web design being a relatively new industry (and one in which every man and his dog thinks they're an expert) I've seen too many examples of 'fake' portfolios -passing of someone elses site as your own work- to take it on entirely on trust.

[HB_Pencil]

Originally Posted by Snowshiro

It's a nice "communal" approach, but it couldn't possibly work without fairly rigid guidelines or some kind of overall control. If every designer went away and came back with a single idea, you'd get a mishmash of totally unrelated concepts which would look dreadful.

Hmm..maybe, but so far so good, we haven't had a deadline missed or client unhappy for around 5 years now since the company started

[Dusteh]

I have to say I like the idea of three designers making a mock-up for a job. Its a bit heartless but the competition keeps the quality level up - and lets be honest, if one of the three doesn't get his design used ten times in a row, show him the door.