An Unfortunate Waste of Potential - Graphic Designer Pixel Parlor Employee Review

Thank you for the feedback, and we are sorry that you feel this way. While we would have appreciated learning about these feelings directly from you, it is enlightening to see your comments and criticisms in a less personal arena. As a result, we've had some studio-wide conversations and are working on solutions to address your concerns as they apply to the team as a whole. We are really proud of the team that we’ve created for our studio and deeply understand their value. Our studio continues to grow and our client engagements evolve in scope and complexity. Processes that worked for our team a year ago, may not apply to our workflow today. It is essential that our team does their best to remain nimble and responsive to client needs and demands. We pride ourselves on providing our team with an excellent work/life balance. Work weeks rarely extend beyond 40 hours and we provide over two weeks of PTO and 10 paid holidays per year. At times, when larger projects make work days extend beyond the standard work week, we are happy to provide our team with compensatory time to offset these hours. Sometimes we need to dig in and stay late to get the work done. We support our team through big projects. Our management team works alongside our creative team on the occasional late night to help get our hands dirty, order dinner, and provide the resources necessary to persevere through project completion. We respect our team members by giving them the benefits and flexibility to live happy lives in and out of the studio. This comes in the form of a well balanced work week, social outings, happy hours, lots of time to laugh, volunteer events, and opportunities to engage with friends and the community. Design is a service based industry. From the perspective of the founders who have had previous experience working in numerous other studios, we know that a designer’s work day is likely to consists of a mix of both long term projects, small client needs, and general client maintenance. We pride ourselves in nurturing long term relationships with clients which means that we are there for them through thick and thin. This includes both creatively engaging redesign projects, and bug fixes on their website. This makes our team a reliable resource for design, and support and builds trust in our team, demonstrates our depth of knowledge and exhibits our diverse skill set. We are sorry that you see this as a negative because we think this level of client care sets us apart from our peers. Although some of these tasks can be interpreted as “production” we see them as opportunities for learning, growth, and relationship building. These tasks build stronger, more experienced designers who are more independent workers who have a better understanding of time management and the design industry both at a high-level view all the way down to the details. We have a long list of happy clients whom we’ve been collaborating with for years, many of which are built on years of personal friendship. Design relies on constructive criticism to get the message across, make edits, work through tough discussions, and to push design to a higher level. We are sorry if your feelings have been hurt by any unintended actions in the studio. We wish you would have come to us to talk things through, we honestly believe that most anything can be resolved when given the opportunity to talk. We continue to take management classes and read books about how to make things better. All members of the management team are designers by trade and build our management style through the courses we take, those whom we admire that we model ourselves after and previous experiences. We always strive to do the best job we can and realize that we can always be better. Learning is a lifelong activity that is essential for growth and happiness and we intend to continue to incorporate this level of learning and self-awareness in our approach to our studio throughout the course of its existence. Sincerely, Andrew Nicholas & Jenn Richey Nicholas