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Career Description

Formulate design concepts and presentation approaches for visual communications media, such as print, broadcasting and advertising. Direct workers engaged in art work or layout design.

What Job Titles Art Directors Might Have

• Art Director
• Creative Director
• Production Manager
• Senior Art Director

What Art Directors Do

• Formulate basic layout design or presentation approach and specify material details, such as style and size of type, photographs, graphics, animation, video, and sound.
• Manage own accounts and projects, working within budget and scheduling requirements.
• Confer with creative, art, copywriting, or production department heads to discuss client requirements and presentation concepts and to coordinate creative activities.
• Present final layouts to clients for approval.
• Review and approve art materials, copy materials, and proofs of printed copy developed by staff members.
• Work with creative directors to develop design solutions.
• Create custom illustrations or other graphic elements.
• Confer with clients to determine objectives, budget, background information, and presentation approaches, styles, and techniques.
• Review illustrative material to determine if it conforms to standards and specifications.
• Negotiate with printers and estimators to determine what services will be performed.
• Attend photo shoots and printing sessions to ensure that the products needed are obtained.
• Research current trends and new technology, such as printing production techniques, computer software, and design trends.
• Hire, train, and direct staff members who develop design concepts into art layouts or who prepare layouts for printing.
• Mark up, paste, and complete layouts and write typography instructions to prepare materials for typesetting or printing.
• Conceptualize and help design interfaces for multimedia games, products, and devices.
• Prepare detailed storyboards showing sequence and timing of story development for television production.

What Art Directors Should Be Good At

• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Originality - The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Visualization - The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.

What Art Directors Should Be Interested In

• Artistic - Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
• Enterprising - Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

What Art Directors Need to Learn

• Sales and Marketing - Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Communications and Media - Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.
• Computers and Electronics - Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Design - Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
• Fine Arts - Knowledge of the theory and techniques required to compose, produce, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Sociology and Anthropology - Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures and their history and origins.