In-House Design and Production Structure

[Cre8ivTyp]

I am looking to hear from others who might supervise or work in an In-House Design Department situation. I am working to present a restructuring plan for the Design department. As things are now, we have two separate departments, Design and then Production. When I came on board 7 years ago, I was told that these two departments needed help, but the Director of the division didn't address the suggested changes then. As time moved forward, the work has grown greatly, leaning more toward design (books, magazines, marketing, branding) and the production is less, so no need for a fully staffed production department. Besides, aren't most designers doing their own production?

I would like to hear from others to see if people still have separate fully staffed production departments or is it all under the design department. Also, what is the structure? Is the Art Director or Creative Director over the entire department, including the Production/Print Director?
Any feedback will greatly be appreciated.
Thanks!

[b_wil]

Can you give any more details on your department? If it's a small team and the workload is manageable, then the two departments aren't necessary. But if you're like most internal art/creative/design teams then there very well could be a good purpose for the design/production setup.

One big question is how do you differentiate between the two?

[Cre8ivTyp]

b_will, thanks for your response. As for more details on the two departments. The design department, which I am the art director of, has two designers, a senior and mid-level. We design all things for the *** such as 4 journals, books (about 20-30 a season), marketing/advertisement, various brochures, flyers and visual support for 4 conferences a year. The production department has 3 people-Production/Print Director who gets print bids and *** that all things are sent properly to the printer, circulates bluelines and so on. The production tech, *** the design department in flowing copy into InDesign templates for us to design, making corrections and preparing journal files to go to printer and circulating bluelines for journals. *** Production director handles the monthly newspaper. All editors for books, journals and newspapers, as of 6 months ago are now using InCopy, so things like the newspaper and journals don't use production as much for correction changes.

As for the workload, it is getting overwhelming. More and more people are requesting design work. We need another designer but powers that be will not budge on hiring a 7th person, they would like to keep it 6 people. It would be great if one of the production people could help with design, but unfortunately, they are not really good with detail or patience to think things through. It would be great if we could have a design/production *** that would work between the two departments. I do realize that our situation is very different than most as far as the type of work we are doing. I actually have never worked where the one department is doing everything AND book design. Anyway, hope this sheds some light on the situation.

[Ets80]

Sounds like you are doing your part. The owner needs to come off more money and hire more designers.

[Cre8ivTyp]

LOL, thanks Ets80. Wish you were my boss