The Only One in the Room
I don’t think anyone really warns you what it’s like to be the only creative in-house. It just… happens.
One day you’re surrounded by professors, classmates, and design mentors who are constantly giving you feedback and sharing work, and then suddenly, you’re in your first job, mid-pandemic, realizing the only person reviewing your designs is you. Surprise: you’re the creative department now. Cool, cool, cool… no pressure.
To be fair, I’ve always been up for a challenge. I freelanced through college, interned in full creative departments, and got a taste of the grind early on. But nothing quite prepared me for the loneliness of being the sole designer at a company. That lack of collaboration hits differently when there’s no one to bounce an idea off or challenge your concepts. And while I didn’t hate it, still don’t, it was a wake-up call that creativity, when siloed, can start to feel like an echo chamber.
Let’s explore a few key moments of the day-to-day of a one person creative team, shall we? My day starts with a walk to the fridge (lunch first, priorities), a few hellos, and checking emails, not that I get many. Honestly, most of the time, I’m sending more than I get. So no, I don’t dread my inbox. What I do dread is being out of the loop. Communication is everything when your team is you, yourself, and oh wait… you again.
After emails, it’s the sacred tradition of my To Do list. Every. Single. Thing. Goes on it. “Email Phil.” Check. “Proof PDF.” Check. “Lunch in the fridge” Check. It’s a psychological trick. Knock out the small stuff first to trick your brain into being productive. Or just get a Virtual Assistant, it is 2025. Then it’s on to bigger projects: a brand refresh, sales assets, internal client materials. Sometimes there’s no one reviewing the final designs before they hit print or get emailed out. It’s all me. Fact-checking, brand tone, photo assets. Seafood, EdTech, consulting. You name it.
And sure, there are wins. Like when I overhear someone on a sales call promising they’ll send a marketing piece and I already have it queued up on their desk before they hang up. That stuff? Feels good. Feels like value. Feels like maybe I’m psychic. Or maybe just very good at eavesdropping.
But let’s be real… it gets lonely. No one tells you how lonely it gets being the only one. There are days I second-guess everything. There’s no creative director to gut-check your layout, no teammate to say “yeah that’s fire.” It’s all internal. You become your own boss, critic, and mentor. And if you’re not careful, your inner voice becomes the daunting boss who never likes anything you produce and asks for another three options.
It’s not always about the work, though. It’s about the energy. The back-and-forth. The camaraderie. When you’re the only creative in the room, your ideas get stale, and not because they’re inherently bad, but because they’re not being stretched. It’s a dangerous place to sit in for too long.
I exist somewhere between the 30,000-foot strategic planner and the pixel-pushing production artist. That loop – plan it, create it, deploy it, and repeat can be exhausting when there’s no break between vision and execution. You’re stuck in both hemispheres of your brain all day.
Then comes the spiral. The imposter syndrome. The late-night mental review of the four things you forgot to do. And when you’re the only one, the accountability is all yours. There’s no creative buddy to stop you mid-spiral. You have to be that person and the one doing the work.
So it begs the question, why do it?
Because it makes you better. You learn how to self-direct, how to lead without a title, how to read a room, and how to push back. You start to see the quiet power you hold in shaping how your company looks, sounds, and communicates. You’re the visual voice. And the truth of it all? Most people can’t do what you do.
Sure, it would be nice to have a full team. But the autonomy, the trust, the ability to make decisions and move the brand forward? That’s something you earn. And it builds grit, even when it can chip away at you. Plus, when you’re in a meeting and someone says “let’s ask the creative team,” and you’re the only one looking around…yeah, it’s weirdly empowering.
The takeaway here is if you’re a one-person creative team, you know this dance. You’ve had the wins, the burnout, the silent victories. And if you’re about to take on one of those roles, here’s what I’ll say:
Take a step back every now and then to understand how much power you truly have in shaping the look, feel, personality, and tone of the company and moving the needle on an everyday basis because… no one else can do what you do. Your company saw that in you when they hired you. Or just start a blog at 28 as your creative outlet.
It’s not always going to be glamorous, it’s not always going to feel fulfilling. But it’s yours. And it matters.
written, out loud.
