Edit: Some people suggested I compile my comment into an article... so I published it here: https://news.layervault.com/stories/30825

I helped build the design team at Disqus and now I'm helping build the design team at Teespring.

Always make sure you're hiring exceptional people (that applies to all departments, not just design). People who have a passion to create and build will be your smartest employees. It's better to hire someone who has a problem solver's mindset but lacks a specific skill than to hire someone who has that skill but lacks a problem solver's mindset.

Ask yourself, "what does this person do better than I can?" Make sure each designer brings a unique skill to the team. When everyone is good at something different, everyone settles into projects that fit their strengths and they won't run into ego battles.

"Unicorns" can be great, especially when the company is small. Unicorns can code and design, but don't forget the more designers are coding the less they're designing.

As a company grows, you want hire more specialists. Unicorns who are "T" shaped (i.e. they have a broad skill set but are still very good at one thing) will experience fewer growing pains.

With a few exceptions, I have often found Unicorns to be slightly less skilled in the artistic and visual department (myself included). Sometimes it's useful to have one person who is just really good at branding, visuals and interaction design without knowing how to code.

Don't make exceptions. Even if you're extremely desperate for help, a bad employee will cost you more time and money than what they temporarily saved you.

“Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.”

This leads me to my conclusion for how to structure your team. You've hired the best possible employees you could find. Everyone brings unique skills to the table. Do you really need to structure the company like a traditional agency? A flat organization structure keeps egos in check and shows your employees you value them equally. If you really did hire the best, let them know they can use whatever external title they want (Senior, Lead, etc...) after they move on from the company.

Last, don't be intimidated. Building a strong team is time-consuming, tedious work. But let me tell you, it's some of the most satisfying work you'll ever have.

A lot of the suggestions that I would offer, Joshua already gave. I think one thing to remember is that a lot of people are struggling with finding solid talent. There are a lot of people who call themselves designers, by finding talented "A-level problem-solvers" is difficult.

The design team at Stack Overflow is only 4 people. We maintain over 120+ communities as well as design a developer-focused careers product. Needless to say, we have a ton of stuff to work on.

Another wrinkle for us is that we're a completely distributed design team, stretched from Indiana to France. When we look for designers, we look for a few things:

Can you design?

It seems like a really simple question, but given that we're Stack Overflow, we get a lot of people who apply that have stronger developer backgrounds and design occasionally. While having a development background helps, you're first and foremost a designer — so can you do that well?

Are you a problem-solver?

A lot of the stuff we work isn't generating templates or knocking out marketing collateral (though we do that). We tend to work on bigger projects that require a lot of thinking. Can you create not only beautiful interfaces, but beautifully intuitive interfaces and workflows? Sometimes the best workflows have minimal visual design, but they're presented in a really logical manner so they work.

Can you hold your own when it comes to front-end development?

We're not talking about being an expert here. We're looking for some experience though. Having some experience shows you're open to doing. It also helps you to better understand the medium you're designing in every day. At Stack, we don't have a single front-end developer on staff. Our reasons are many, but basically any developer or designer we hire needs to be able to work within code.

Can you get stuff done without having co-workers or your boss nearby?

Almost every designer on staff comes from a background where they were the sole designer on staff, worked in a remote situation, or were an independent contractor. We've all shown the ability to get things done, even if we aren't in a sweet office environment. Being all in the same office has its benefits, but being remote allows us access to a lot more designers who for one reason or another can't or won't live in a major metro area.

Considering all these items, it's hard for us to find talent. But as Joshua said earlier, better to take your time to find the right person than hire the wrong person too quickly.

I think Joshua nailed most about the skillsets, but I can speak to the "agency" aspect. My team functions inside the Product team alongside Development, both reporting to the CPO. We organize our work as if we are a standalone agency.

Obviously the development team is a "client" with a pretty regular task list (staying ahead of their AGILE development for a new set of products currently under construction), but we're also assisting/leading Marketing in a large website redesign and brand refinement project, collateral, event branding, etc. While we ramp up our bandwidth and resources, that will spread to Sales, Training, etc.

The team is still really new (hence our dated website & products) and we're currently juggling a lot of things, but once all the new stuff is released we will be the gatekeepers of anything design- or brand-related within the company. My rule is that if a customer or potential customer's eyes will be on it, Design needs to approve it. As the company grows we will likely expand that rule for internal items as well.

I think this is the best way to function, but it required having an executive team that truly sees the value of design in order to allow them to have some final go/no-go say on big projects that lots of people work on. If that can be part of the company culture, I think you will be very successful.

There are few things greater than pairing a UX designer with a front-end developer.

With your set-up, you could possibly oversee the work of the other two marketing-focused designers, who I'm sure would love to dip their foot in all-things-UX, while you and your new-hire developer concentrate on the finer details.