Video Script
Are you a Graphic Designer that’s looking to take your career to the next level by becoming an Art Director? If so, then today’s video is for you.
Speaking from my own experience as someone who worked in a variety of graphic design roles for nearly a decade before I made the jump to Art Director, today I’ll be breaking down the exact steps I took to become a design leader.
Look, moving up the career ladder can be challenging as a designer. Unlike some other careers, creatives don’t always have a clear path to the next level. Most Art Director positions require experience leading teams and developing 360 campaigns from start to finish, but most design positions don’t offer that kind of experience.
So, how do you bridge the gap? Are there resources out there that can help?
I’ll be breaking all of that and more down in today’s video. Let’s get into it.
Similarities and Differences
Okay so today we’re talking about how to become an Art Director, but before we dive into the details let’s start by talking about the similarities and differences between Art Directors and Graphic Designers at a high level.
Differences
Granular vs. Big Picture
The first key difference that I want to talk about is that as graphic designers we tend to have a more granular focus on design itself. We’re making sure everything is pixel perfect, double checking that the colors are on brand, the text is perfectly kerned, incorporating design feedback, and getting our assets delivered on-brief and on time.
Art Directors, on the other hand, spend less time locked in on the granular details and more time focused on the big picture. In order for designers to know what assets are needed and when, Art Directors need to work with stakeholders to put together creative briefs, deliverable lists, timelines, and a cohesive visual direction.
How Success is Measured
Another big difference between Art Direction and Graphic Design is how success is measured.
As graphic designers, our success is often measured by how good our designs look, how quickly we’re able to produce deliverables, and how well we’re able to solve a creative brief.
As an Art Director, the visuals are still important, but your goals become more focused on business KPIs like click through rates, social engagements, and product sales.
This is a significant mindset shift that requires an understanding of campaign strategy and business metrics on top of creative best practices.
Role in the Team
The last difference I’ll talk about is each position’s role within a creative team. As a member of the team you’re executing deliverables, collaborating with other team members, and making sure everything is completed on time.
As a design leader, you become responsible for establishing the creative vision, mentoring your direct reports, and communicating with stakeholders to ensure each project is successful.
I’ll be doing a deeper dive on creative leadership and the skillset needed for Art Direction later on in the video, so stick around for that.
Similarities
As far as similarities go, luckily there’s plenty of overlap between the two roles as well.
Mastery of Design Fundamentals
The first thing the two roles have in common is the need to master design fundamentals. Both graphic designers and art directors should strive to become experts in the areas of typography, grid, layout, hierarchy, color theory, and composition – so I highly recommend putting in the time to practice and master the basics while you’re working as a Graphic Designer.
Staying Up-To-Date on Industry Trends
The next common thread between designers and art directors is the need to stay up to date with industry trends. Knowing where the creative field is heading, what your competitors are doing, and learning about the latest design tools are all important ways to stay relevant as either a designer or a director.
Connecting and Collaborating with Other Creatives
Whether it’s expanding your professional network or collaborating within your team, connecting with other creatives is another important activity for both graphic designers and art directors.
As a designer, connecting with other designers is a great way to learn new skills, hone your creative vocabulary, and become aware of new job openings.
As an Art Director, it’s important to maintain a network of creatives that you can draw on when you need to hire freelancers for a big project, or recruit when a position opens up on your team.
Must-Have Skills for Art Directors
Next up, let’s do a deep dive on the skills you need to become an Art Director.
Creative Vision
The first skill I want to talk about is creative vision. As an AD, you’ll be responsible for formulating the entire look and feel of a campaign.
This means you’ll have to think through all aspects of a project to put together key artwork and creative briefs that give your designers the ability to successfully create a cohesive set of visuals.
In order to do this, you’ll need to become a creative vacuum – studying art history, current trends, your own brand, competitors, and the world around you. As I’m putting together an art direction for a campaign I often find myself drawing inspiration from unforeseen or unrelated places – a label on a drink, a movie trailer, or a book I recently read.
It’s your job to be able to synthesize these different ideas into a succinct creative vision in the forms of briefs, mood boards, and pitches that can be clearly understood by your designers as well as stakeholders.
A really easy but effective way to build a library of ideas that you can draw on is to create a Swipe folder on your computer. Any time you come across an ad that has great copywriting, an interesting rebrand, or an awesome album cover – just take a quick screenshot and drag it into the folder. Your swipe folder will quickly become a great repository of inspiration where you can reliably go to spark new ideas.
Books are another great resource to help you hone your creative vision. Some of my favorite books on creativity are: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
Coffee table books heavy with design work like Logo Modernism by Jens Muller, Pretty Much Everything by Aaron Draplin, and A Smile in the Mind by Beryl McAlhone are great to have on hand as well.
Leadership
The next skill you’ll need as an Art Director is the ability to lead. Obviously this applies most directly to your team of designers, copywriters, and/or video editors. You’ll need to be able to inspire them to do their best work while feeling empowered, motivated, and excited to come to work each day. In the creative world of tight turnarounds, fire drills, and head scratching edits from clients, this can be easier said than done.
At a high level, my best advice is to gain a real understanding of each team member and find out what drives them, how they like to be managed, and what they need to be successful.
For example, some designers are self starters that like to be left to their own devices and can run with a brief without much back and forth, whereas others benefit from regular check-ins throughout a project to bounce ideas and ensure things are heading in the right direction. As a leader, it’s your job to gain an understanding of each team member and find out how to get the best out of them each day.
Outside of your own team, you’ll also need to be a leader within your organization. You’ll need to be an evangelist for your team to executives as well as leading meetings, client pitches, and presentations. Leadership takes many forms and is integral to becoming an effective Art Director.
One of the best ways to gain skills as a leader when you’re starting out is to find a leader you respect and pay attention to what they do day to day. How do they speak to people? What sort of systems do they have in place? What sort of things are they doing to get the best out of their team?
If you have the opportunity, it can be incredibly helpful to reach out to them and see if they’d be open to having a meeting where you can pick their brain about their approach to leadership, or better yet see if they’d be open to taking you on as a mentee.
If you’re looking to read up on leadership, some of my favorite books on the topic are: Leaders Eat Last and Start with Why – both by Simon Sinek, as well as Turn This Ship Around by David Marquet.
Communication
The last, and arguably most important, skill you’ll need to master is communication. This is something I wish I had spent more time refining earlier in my career as it’s fundamental to all aspects of being an Art Director, but isn’t a focal point of the typical graphic design degree.
One of the areas where communication is key for ADs is when providing design critiques to your team. This can be challenging as you’ll need to artfully communicate areas of improvement for the current design while ensuring the designer doesn’t take the feedback personally.
You’ll also need to have a mastery of design vocabulary in order to verbally describe visual concepts. This sounds simple, but is something I struggled with quite a bit as a new Art Director. I found myself creating a lot of diagrams and marked-up documents to visually show what I was trying to say because I didn’t have the vocabulary to clearly communicate the edits.
Another area where effective communication is essential is when presenting design decisions to stakeholders, executives, and clients. This can be challenging as designers tend to have our own language, talking about kerning, color theory, and typography – all things that most stakeholders have no understanding of or interest in learning about. This means that Art Directors need to be able to translate complex design decisions into laymen’s terms while also tying them back to business metrics.
Finally, Art Directors need to have an understanding of how to communicate with users. If we’re effectively communicating with our teams and stakeholders, but don’t know how to speak to end users, then everything will fall apart in the end.
Being leaders of the creative vision for their projects, Art Directors need to have a deep understanding of their users and need to be able to ideate campaigns that speak to them directly. This might mean actually writing the marketing copy for a billboard or email, or directing photography that deeply resonates with the audience on an emotional level.
In my mind, all of these forms of communication stem from a common place of empathy. Whether communicating with a designer, a CEO, or a potential customer – it’s an Art Director’s job to put themselves into the other person’s shoes and understand the message, visuals, and tone that’s going to resonate with them most effectively.
At this point you might be saying, that’s all fine and good, but how do I actually get better at communication? Practice, practice, practice [We talkin bout practice? clip]. Seek out opportunities to present projects to leadership, share work with other designers at your local AIGA meetings, or mentor a junior designer.
There are also lots of great books on communication that I’d recommend picking up, with some of my favorites being: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and Design is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton.
Steps to Take to Become an Art Director
Okay so now that we’ve talked about the differences between designers and ADs and the skills you need to be effective in the role, let’s look at how to actually land a job as an Art Director.
Talk to Your Manager
My first recommendation to work towards landing a job as an Art Director would be to share your goals with your manager. A good manager will be excited to see that you’re driven to grow and will start finding opportunities for you to expand your skillset.
You can come up with a plan together that will allow you to dip your toes into things like concept creation, leadership, and pitching – even just starting to sit in on these meetings will be a big help in gaining some real world experience. While it may be tempting to try to gain all of the necessary skills on your own on nights and weekends, it’s a lot easier if your manager is on board and putting you in positions to advance your career.
Find Opportunities to Practice
That leads me to my second recommendation, which is getting as much experience as possible practicing the skills you’ll need as an Art Director.
For example to gain leadership experience, you can volunteer to take on more responsibility in team projects, mentor other designers at your local AIGA chapter, or convince your company to hire an intern. I actually did all three of these myself when I was a designer and was able to quickly start growing my management skills.
To gain experience thinking strategically, ask to sit in on project planning meetings, request access to wrap reports, and ask to be a part of campaign debriefs. These are low stakes ways for you to start learning the vocabulary, understanding what’s driving successful projects, and seeing what sort of metrics are getting tracked.
Another great way to gain experience and grow your skillset is to start freelancing. Working directly with clients allows you to lead a project from start to finish from kick off calls, to goal setting, to forming the full creative vision. Freelance projects will help you grow, get you out of your comfort zone, and earn some extra money to boot.
Update Your Portfolio
Finally, once you start getting experience leading the creative vision for campaigns, tracking metrics, and leading others, you’ll want to start showcasing those things in your design portfolio.
Be sure to speak to your role in each project, highlight KPIs, and tell a story with each portfolio piece. At the end of the day, the goal of your portfolio is to show people that you can be successful in the role, so be sure to keep that in mind at every step of the way.
I’ve done a couple of videos that highlight tons of design portfolio best practices that I’ll link up above, so be sure to check those out if you want to do a deeper dive there.
Wrapping Up
Okay everyone, I hope you found this overview of how to level up from Graphic Designer to Art Director helpful. The info I shared in the this video outlines the exact steps I personally took to make the jump in my own career along with the books that I found most helpful along the way – so I hope you find them valuable as well.
Thanks so much for tuning in, now go out there and make a ruckus!