Art Director Formulate design concepts and presentation approaches for visual productions and media, such as print, broadcasting, video, and film. Direct workers engaged in artwork or layout design.
Art Director is Also Know as
In different settings, Art Director is titled as
- Art Director
- Art Supervisor
- Creative Director (CD Director)
- Creative Manager
- Creative Services Director
- Creative Services Manager
- Design Director
- Graphic Design and Art Production Manager
- Group Art Supervisor
- Presentation Director
Education and Training of Art Director
Art Director is categorized in Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Art Director
A considerable amount of work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, an accountant must complete four years of college and work for several years in accounting to be considered qualified.
Education Required for Art Director
Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.
Degrees Related to Art Director
- Bachelor in Digital Arts
- Associate Degree Courses in Digital Arts
- Masters Degree Courses in Digital Arts
- Bachelor in Graphic Design
- Associate Degree Courses in Graphic Design
- Masters Degree Courses in Graphic Design
- Bachelor in Intermedia/Multimedia
- Associate Degree Courses in Intermedia/Multimedia
- Masters Degree Courses in Intermedia/Multimedia
Training Required for Art Director
Employees in these occupations usually need several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational training.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Art Director in different industries are
- Graphic Designers
- Producers and Directors
- Special Effects Artists and Animators
- Project Management Specialists
- Public Relations Specialists
- Writers and Authors
- Information Technology Project Managers
- Media Programming Directors
- Media Technical Directors/Managers
- Set and Exhibit Designers
- First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services
- Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators
- Management Analysts
- Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers
- Instructional Coordinators
- Talent Directors
- Photographers
- Marketing Managers
- Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
- Music Directors and Composers
What Do Art Director 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.
- Review and approve art materials, copy materials, and proofs of printed copy developed by staff members.
- 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.
- Confer with clients to determine objectives, budget, background information, and presentation approaches, styles, and techniques.
- Hire, train, and direct staff members who develop design concepts into art layouts or who prepare layouts for printing.
- Work with creative directors to develop design solutions.
- Review illustrative material to determine if it conforms to standards and specifications.
- Attend photo shoots and printing sessions to ensure that the products needed are obtained.
- Create custom illustrations or other graphic elements.
- Mark up, paste, and complete layouts and write typography instructions to prepare materials for typesetting or printing.
- Negotiate with printers and estimators to determine what services will be performed.
- Conceptualize and help design interfaces for multimedia games, products, and devices.
- Prepare detailed storyboards showing sequence and timing of story development for television production.
- Research current trends and new technology, such as printing production techniques, computer software, and design trends.
Qualities of Good Art Director
- 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.
- 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.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- 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 that there is a problem.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- 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.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- 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).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
Tools Used by Art Director
- Desktop computers
- Digital still cameras
- Digital video cameras
- Laptop computers
- Personal computers
- Sketching pencils
- Tablet computers
Technology Skills required for Art Director
- Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe ActionScript
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Creative Cloud software
- Adobe Director
- Adobe Dreamweaver
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe ImageReady
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- AJAX
- Apache Flex
- Apple Final Cut Pro
- Apple iWork Keynote
- Apple Keynote
- Apple macOS
- Atlassian Confluence
- Atlassian JIRA
- Autodesk 3ds Max Design
- Autodesk Maya
- Cascading style sheets CSS
- Computer assisted design software
- Data visualization software
- Drupal
- Dynamic hypertext markup language DHTML
- Extensible hypertext markup language XHTML
- Figma
- Google Slides
- Hypertext markup language HTML
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Mag+
- Maxon Cinema 4D
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Word
- Mobile application software
- PHP
- Quark enterprise publishing software
- QuarkXPress
- Social media software
- Tablet application software
- User interface design software
- Web broswer software
- WeVideo
- WoodWing
- WordPress
- YouTube