On Thursday March 28, 2013, at Parsons School of Design, Debbie Millman hosted the discussion AIGA/NY In the House III: The Rise of In-House Design with a panelist of design leader: Julia Hoffman of MoMA, Johanna Langford of J.Crew and Ji Lee of Facebook.

Debbie Millman, principle of Sterling Brands and host of the Design Matters podcast, explained the differences and challenges between in-house design studios and agency studios as famous non in-house designers outweigh famous in-house designers; quoting Andy Epstein, Millman said, “in-house designers can suffer from an identity crisis.” Millman acknowledged that the in-house designer becomes a personal steward of the brand and to illustrate this point she played a video, Microsoft Designs iPod Packaging.

“One of the things about working in-house is that you don’t do anything alone!”
—Johanna Langford

First panelist to speak was Johanna Langford, VP of Brand Creative at J.Crew. Langford has held the position for 4 years. She leads a large team of designers, technologists and directors to shape the J.Crew brand. Langford played a short film summing up the history of J.Crew, their mission, process, product and their evolution. She explained that J.Crew is a unique company because it designs its products as well as the branding and marketing, “in-house designers have an emotional connection to the brand, they help shape the brand,” she said.

Langford explained that her team, Brand & Marketing and Creative, focuses is Brand Journalism, a term Langford coined to imply telling stories in a creative way. The team works on projects such as naming styles, redesigning the website, and creating an interactive style-guide iPad app that connects to consumers in-store as “a fun way to inspire the customer to take their clothes and make them their own,” she explained. Langford pointed out that in-house design at J.Crew is closely connected to business growth, the team explores new channels of packaging and social marketing that ultimately push sale. The last project Langford mentioned is J. Crew on Film,  which she described as “the essence of the company,” leading the vision of J.Crew’s direction.

“Move fast and break things.”
—Ji Lee

Next to speak was Ji Lee, Communications Designer at Facebook, and former in-house designer at Google. Lee, who has been employed at Facebook since 2011, said he wanted to make sure he was working for a brand he believed in, and the culture of hack at Facebook resonated with him. The culture of hack at Facebook is “not about stealing, [but is] about inspiring, taking what others have done, changing it a bit and making it your own,” said Lee. He drew parallels of hack and his famous personal work The Bubble Project.

“I help brands market their products better, in an interesting more human way,” Lee explained. He said that he doesn’t direct a team, but is encouraged to work as an individual collaborator. “The culture at Facebook is autonomous and flat, there is no hierarchy, people can just go up to ‘Zuck’ [Mark Zuckerberg] and ask him anything,” he said. Lee described an annual event at Facebook called the 24-Hour Hackathon where employees spend 24 hours developing and programming in a relaxed atmosphere with food and drinks, “having this deadline is a way to focus and not lose momentum,” he said. Helping brands such as Doritos to better publish themselves on Facebook is a new concept, “brands don’t really know how to use this space, it’s a new medium more of a dialogue far from the one-way broadcasting of before.” He shared  his new project, newsfeeder.com, a collection of the most creative Facebook posts from brands. Lee ended on an inspiring note saying, “all this is really empowering, I feel like I learn so much and it’s so rewarding. I have the power to do whatever I want.”

“We have to make it exciting and fun because the client won’t go away!”
—Julia Hoffman

Last to speak was Julia Hoffman, Creative Director of Marketing and Exhibition Design at MoMA. “The common perception of in-house design is that it’s not considered sexy, working with the same logo and the same typeface day in, day out. Here at the MoMA, we’re lucky because we have an exciting logo and typeface, and even some exciting artwork to use!,” said Hoffman. The MoMA design team visually communicate three main ideas of the museum: Collaboration, Education and Innovation. Hoffman’s team talked about recent projects.

Ingrid Chou, Assistant Creative Director, spoke about Artlab which engages children by involving them in content creation. The Artlab team created a child-friendly interactive experience in an app and thereby shifted their roles as designers to a more transformative creative role, “the design team became the co-authors of the program and the secret educators,” she said.

Greg Hathaway, Assistant Creative Director, discussed the design process for title walls in the Claes Oldenburg exhibition. “Curators are the visionaries of the show,” said Hathaway. The design objective was to generate buzz, unfortunately the client did not approve some buzz-creating ideas such as a collaboration with a burger shop to make temporary Claes-influenced paper packaging for burgers, or a roving ice-cream truck, but at least the team had fun with the ideas!

Designer Tony Lee also shared their experience of a title wall that is currently on show for the Applied Design exhibition saying, “we proposed to make icons of each product in the show to form the title, as an animated projection. We challenged ourselves and still made something new in the context of the show” and in the process, gained experience in animation.

Following the individual presentations, Debbie Millman led a panel discussion where she invited the audience to ask questions. Some questions included, “What is the difference between in-house and agency?” where Lee jumped to answer “Speed! In-house is slower in terms of getting approval.” Hoffman added, “as an in-house design team, you have one client that you get to know really well so you approach projects differently.”

Another question from the audience was “How do you gain credibility in-house?” Lee answered,”by building stuff,” while Hoffman disagreed and pointed out that the desire should be to contribute something meaningful to the table, rather than just making a noise to reach the table. Langford added that there must be a strong vision within the individual to gain credibility.

The talk concluded with the opportunity to network with the panelists in the lobby with drinks.

Additional Information:
Debbie Millman
J.Crew
MoMA Design Studio
Facebook Hackathon

Event Details:
AIGA/NY In the House III: The Rise of In-house Design presented by Parsons Lecture Series

Event Photos:
Click here to view all photos from AIGA/NY In the House III: The Rise of In-house Design presented by Parsons Lecture Series on Flickr. To view additional photos, or to contribute your photos, visit our AIGA New York Flickr group.

Special thanks to guest contributing writer Sarah-Grace Mankarious for the AIGA/NY In-the-House III The Rise of In-House Design with Parsons event recap and photos. Sarah-Grace works under the moniker Fun in Reno follow her @funinreno or on Facebook.