Huddle Stories, Episode 033: Design Highlights and Forecasts
Shining a spotlight on top Huddle designers and sharing future of work trends with Refresh Miami.
Hey there! In today’s edition, we’re excited to highlight great designers on Huddle and share some trends we’re observing.
One of the trends we’ll dig into is that the most talented designers on the planet are going fractional – becoming Fractional Heads of Design, starting studios and micro-agencies, or stacking freelance gigs on top of their W-2s.
Many of top designers following this path are Huddle members. We’re excited to start featuring them here in this newsletter! The first is a brand designer who’s helped create top beauty and CPG brands like Biossance and Lion Pose.
Read on to hear what’s being created inside Huddle this week – including more on our highlighted designer and trends in fractional work and hiring.
More soon,
Mike & Steph
Founders at Huddle
Huddler Highlight: Carolina
Meet Huddle member Carolina Pistone! ✨
Carolina is a brand designer, art director, packaging expert, web designer, and person who likes to make good things with good people. She's on a Huddle project right now, helping a B2B SaaS company design their brand.
Stay tuned and follow us to see more great design work from Huddle members.
👉 Are you a founder or hiring manager? Get a design team or expert by Friday and start working together within a week. You can always book a free design scoping call with us to get started.
Dig in: Huddle’s 2024 predictions
At Huddle, we hear from companies all the time on how hiring is changing, how they’re allocating resources and thinking about growth. At the same time, we’re very close to our design community – seeing first-hand what top talent is interested in and how they’re building their careers.
As a result, we get to stay close to the pulse on future of work trends. This past week we shared some thoughts:
On the company building and hiring side, we spoke with Refresh Miami to give our perspective:
“...our prediction is that more startups will stay small longer (5 or less people full-time), will strive for profitability earlier, and rely less venture capital. The most successful will do so by capitalizing on a new, growing fractional workforce that’s available... and scaling their time with AI and other novel tools.”
On the talent side, we shared our observations from within our own community:
“The top designers in the world are going fractional… With these kinds of macro shifts, there’s always a Push and Pull.
The Push…
1. 80-hour/week hustle at agencies to get a sliver of the profits
2. Unfulfilling roles at big tech companies
3. Layoffs so prevalent that job security doesn’t really exist
The Pull…
1. Flexibility: Going fractional means deciding on the projects, working hours, and teammates you collaborate with.
2. Variety: Engaging with different industries, functions, companies, and challenges keeps things fresh and ideas flowing.
3. Compensation: By working with more than one company at the same time, fractional designers can boost their earnings. Read more…
ICYMI: Huddle’s 2023 Wrap-up
Last time we shared a report on what got done in 2023 – including our most popular requests, YoY growth and launches like our podcast, Lone Geniuses.
Over half the projects completed on Huddle last year were with companies “huddling” for the second time or third time. Plus, we saw 20% of companies on Huddle embed huddlers in their team for >6 months. This is the power of Huddle as a flexible design department for companies. It’s exciting to see more plugging into it.
Check out the highlights on LinkedIn or read the full report here.
Huddle Love
Huddle member, Alana Matos
“Absolutely love the Huddle community! It really feels like you're a part of something bigger, and it's great to network with such talented people.”
In case you’re new here…
Huddle is an expert fractional design community. We help companies launch, grow and create beautiful products.
Join and get a pop-up design team or a fractional design expert from places like Airbnb, Snapchat and Red Antler.
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Gift a founder an invite to Huddle so they can move quicker and get better design. They’ll get expedited access to an expert designer or team and you’ll get a 2.5% cash bounty as a thank you from the Huddle community.