I've worked as a graphic designer in a rather large company (500+) who handled several shopping websites. There was no design team, just a marketing team of whi

I've worked as a graphic designer in a rather large company (500+) who handled several shopping websites. There was no design team, just a marketing team of which I was a part. It seemed logical considering my work was meant to sell things, not to just make the website look good. But I was frustrated because most design decisions require some indepedence and instinct, and it's difficult to argue with marketing-focused people who solely rely on figures, charts and basic strategies. The real problem was that graphic designers were only subordinates, meant to execute the design decisions the marketing team made. Each team in a large company has a different goal. Marketing needs to sell, developers need to make it work, designers to make it beautiful and usable. When 2 of these goals are assigned to the same team, there is a purpose conflict. You can not refine one aspect of your work without the fear of damaging the other. So you end up in a gray area where none of your 2 goals is completely fulfilled. The Apple design team probably worked on the new iOS 7 interactions which turned out to be great. But seeing how the icons turned out, you understand how frustrated designers across the web have become because they know designers wouldn't have let that happen.