How Many Years of School to Become an Art Director

April 25, 2022 Post a Comment

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How to Become an Art Director

Get practical tips on how to abound your career every bit an art director. Explore the role of an art director, the skills you need to be an art director, and how the job differs from a creative director.

February 08, 2022

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It's natural for your career to progress as y'all gain new knowledge and design skills. If y'all have extensive feel in graphic design, photography, fine art, or some other creative occupation, condign an fine art director is just one way to advance through the ranks. This guide will explore what an art director does, the divergence between an fine art director and a creative director, and practical tips on how to become an art director or abound into the function.

"A neat art manager should be able to tackle two main aspects of a projection—the creative and the emotional." — Marco Cvijetic, Art Director @IKEA

Art Manager Chore Description

An art manager is responsible for developing and executing designs for advertisements, magazines, digital publications, newspapers, movies, television shows, product packaging, and other collaborative creative projects. The chore of an art manager often involves creating original designs and directing the work of artists, designers, and other individuals involved in the projection. Equally an art manager, yous must be able to employ design thinking to solve problems in a artistic way. You lot may besides be asked to perform the post-obit duties:

Select artistic elements needed for a project including photographs, illustrations, fonts, sound, etc.
Manage design staff, including graphic designers, illustrators, and set designers
Coordinate project activities with workers in other departments
Create timelines and budgets for design projects
Approve photographs, illustrations, and designs created by other professionals

Art manager Marco Cvijetic describes his role in a nutshell:

"I currently work as an Art Director at IKEA with a focus on Product Pictures & Films. That means that together with a actually diverse team of Photographers, 3D Artists, Interior Designers, and Retouch Artists, we produce content for IKEA'south global website but also for many other channels."

Career Opportunities for Art Directors

I of the most heady things most becoming an art director is that yous can work as an employee or as an independent contractor. As a total-time art director employee, you may work for a moving picture studio, a public relations firm, a newspaper or magazine publisher, or an advertizing agency. If y'all get the freelance route, you tin specialize in working with one type of company or offer your services to companies in a variety of industries.

Employment opportunities are most arable in highly populated areas. In the United States, for example, California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania are among the states with the almost opportunities for art directors. You can too observe many employment opportunities in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and other international cities.

Skills Needed to Become an Art Director

Just because you take design skills doesn't mean y'all'll succeed as an art managing director. You also need to have some specific personal characteristics. I of the about important is an even temperament. You lot need to exist able to inspire team members and motivate them to work difficult when a deadline is looming.

A good fine art director likewise knows when team members tin can work autonomously and when they demand a little more oversight, so you must be able to maintain a proficient residue between micromanaging people and leaving them without whatsoever support at all. If yous maintain this delicate balance, you lot're more likely to complete a projection successfully. You may likewise develop a reputation as a skilled leader, creating more opportunities to share your creativity with the world.

As an fine art director, you lot need to piece of work with many project stakeholders, from the clients paying for your services to the squad members responsible for performing the piece of work. To truly succeed in the role, you must be open up to constructive feedback from each person. Accepting feedback gracefully is the sign of a true professional who is more interested in completing the project successfully than in boosting their ain ego.

Fine art Director Average Salary

The bacon of an fine art director varies based on several factors, including employment status, industry, geographic location, task duties, and experience level. According to Salary.com, the average bacon for an fine art managing director in the United States is $127,411 per year. Salaries in the art direction field typically range from $107,714 to $151,867.

How to Become an Fine art Director

Art directors become to utilise their creativity and leadership skills to bring big visions to life. If this appeals to you, follow these steps to becoming an art managing director.

Get an didactics (or gain feel)

Many art directors accept some type of formal education, such as a bachelor'due south degree or master's degree in design or a closely related field. Depending on your interests and skills, y'all may want to pursue a caste in graphic design, fine fine art, or photography. It's also possible to get an art director with a degree in media technology or picture show production if yous're interested in working on movie and television sets.

While a caste can help you land an art director job much faster, years of relevant work experience tin can too lead to new art direction career opportunities.

"Art Direction should be a natural step after many years of working every bit a designer and not only knowing how you work just how the creative industry works as well." — Marco Cvijetic, Art Director @IKEA

Develop your skills

To succeed as an art director, you lot must take a specific combination of hard and soft skills. Difficult skills, as well known as technical skills, are professional person skills that chronicle straight to art direction, and soft skills are the skills you need to manage your responsibilities effectively. Depending on which manufacture you choose, you may demand to excel at graphic design, multimedia content development, desktop publishing, or creating illustrations with Adobe software. You can develop these skills in lower-level roles or piece of work equally a freelance creative professional to get the feel you lot need to utilize for art manager jobs in the future.

Soft skills make it easier to interact with other people and ensure every project is completed on time and to the client's exacting standards. Art directors must be able to communicate finer with everyone involved in the projection, from company executives to design interns. Y'all likewise demand to have management and leadership skills to ensure that everyone on your squad executes the artistic director'due south vision successfully. Art directors need to meet tight deadlines, adapt speedily to irresolute circumstances, and consul assignments to the people on your team.

"Existence a talented designer who is attracted to details and trends is corking, only the other one-half is being a people person who knows how to handle different clients and build bridges betwixt the expectation and the solution." — Marco Cvijetic, Art Managing director @IKEA

Build an art managing director portfolio

As you gain experience, add completed projects to your blueprint portfolio to show future clients how your skills have improved over the years. If you don't have a portfolio yet, follow these tips to create one that helps you country the art manager job of your dreams.

Include only your all-time work. If you don't like the way a projection turned out, yous won't feel confident discussing it with a potential customer.
Put your near impressive project at the kickoff of your portfolio to capture the viewer'due south attending.
Add a diverseness of projects to your portfolio. You don't want potential clients to think you're a ane-trick pony, so add as many types of projects to your portfolio as possible to show off your skills and creative range.
Digitize your portfolio. Gone are the days when you had to drag a huge portfolio instance to every meeting. You still need to continue hard copies of completed projects, merely many potential clients would rather visit your website to larn more about your work. Make loftier-resolution scans or accept photos and then add together them to your online portfolio with short descriptions of the part you played in each project.
Include cocky-initiated projects if you can't share piece of work you completed for by employers or clients. You may accept to exercise this if you signed a nondisclosure understanding. Sharing self-initiated projects is also helpful if your paid work experience is in a rather narrow niche and yous want to be able to prove potential clients that you take a much broader range.

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Continuously learn

Just because you already completed your degree and accept some work experience under your chugalug doesn't mean it'southward okay to stop learning. If you want to know how to become an art managing director, one of the keys is to engage in continuous learning. As you build your portfolio, you should continue developing your skills and proactively stay up to date on the latest trends and happenings in your field. Every bit new styles and techniques emerge, knowing what'due south going on under the surface is more than important than ever to growing your art direction career.

Sites similar Udemy and LinkedIn Learning are ideal for learning new design methods, experimenting with manufacture-standard software, and gaining a better understanding of what an art manager does. Follow design blogs and publications to understand how your field is evolving.

Build your professional person network

Now that you have the noesis, skills, and experience needed to get an fine art managing director, it's fourth dimension to hit the networking circuit. Professional networking has a bad reputation in some circles, but it can be highly effective if you arroyo it the right way. Instead of attending a networking result for the sole purpose of landing a paid gig, make information technology a point to build relationships with the people you lot encounter. If you don't have a lot of networking experience, follow these tips to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Take business cards with y'all to make information technology piece of cake to exchange contact information with other attendees.
Write an elevator pitch and practice it before the event. An elevator pitch is a quick way to introduce yourself to someone else and requite them an overview of what you exercise.
Heed more than than yous talk. When yous do talk, try to say something of value to the other person. You may want to offer advice on solving a tough pattern problem, for example.
Stay in bear upon after the event is over. Instead of pitching your services, focus on helping your contacts in some way. An easy mode to do this is to send an email with a link to an commodity that offers additional insight on a topic y'all discussed during the networking event.

Concenter new clients

As a freelance art manager, your income depends solely on your ability to land new projects. Attending networking events is a good first step, merely it's not the merely way to go freelance work. If you're searching for your next opportunity, try some of these tactics:

Develop a comprehensive marketing plan to increase sensation of your services. Your marketing strategy may include print advertizement, digital ad, search engine optimization, and discussion-of-mouth marketing activities.
Ask previous clients for referrals.
Create profiles on Dribbble, LinkedIn, and other professional networking sites. Make sure you lot signal that y'all're open to new opportunities.
Start a web log or look for opportunities to contribute to magazines and digital publications. Sharing your expertise is a great manner to get potential clients interested in what you have to offer.
Position yourself every bit an good in the field by publishing an ebook or answering questions on sites similar Quora.
Establish a strong social media presence.
Volunteer to present at conferences for industry professionals.
Donate your services to a nonprofit organization. This is especially helpful if you need to branch out and add a new blazon of design project to your portfolio.

Marko Cvijetic

What's the Difference Between an Art Director and a Artistic Director?

The difference between an art director and a creative manager is quite subtle. A artistic director is responsible for coming up with the overall vision of a project, and an art director is responsible for executing that vision.

Art directors and creative directors need some of the same skills, such as team management and delegation, but an art manager is more involved in the details of project execution.

The job of a creative director typically involves:

Big-picture thinking
Coming up with interesting and innovative ideas
Delegating tasks to squad members
Ensuring finished designs encounter customer expectations

Creative directors are often charged with creating a make road map or developing a cohesive brand identity and creative vision, giving audience members — production buyers, magazine readers, picture show watchers, etc. — a consistent experience.

What are the about of import skills for a creative director?

If you're interested in becoming a creative director instead of an art director, you should have the most of import skills needed: leadership, facilitation, artistic center, squad-edifice skills, inspiration, and passion. It's also disquisitional to accept experience equally a designer or artist of some sort.

For case, someone with photography expertise may have the eye for item needed to develop unique artistic visions for a wide variety of projects. You may likewise exist well-suited for a creative director position if you lot excel at storytelling because a creative director must be able to develop designs that tell a compelling story.

What's the average salary of a Creative Director?

The salary of a creative director varies based on several factors, including employment status, industry, geographic location, job duties, and experience level. According to Salary.com, the average salary for a creative director in the United States is $134,055 per year. Salaries in this field typically range from $113,311 to $157,347.

Your New Career Awaits

Working as an fine art managing director or creative director is extremely rewarding, especially if you make up one's mind to become a freelancer. Every projection you complete is an opportunity for professional person growth and one that tin can assistance you advance your career as you larn new skills. To pursue this heady career, obtain a degree in a design or a media-related field, proceeds experience, and build a portfolio that captures attending.