It'due south natural for your career to progress as you gain new noesis and design skills. If you have extensive experience in graphic design, photography, fine art, or another artistic occupation, becoming an art director is just one way to advance through the ranks. This guide will explore what an art director does, the divergence between an art director and a creative director, and practical tips on how to become an art director or grow into the part.

"A keen fine art director should be able to tackle two main aspects of a project—the creative and the emotional." — Marco Cvijetic, Art Director @IKEA

Art Director Job Description

An art managing director is responsible for developing and executing designs for advertisements, magazines, digital publications, newspapers, movies, tv set shows, product packaging, and other collaborative creative projects. The job of an fine art managing director often involves creating original designs and directing the work of artists, designers, and other individuals involved in the projection. Every bit an art director, you must be able to utilise design thinking to solve bug in a creative way. Y'all may also be asked to perform the following duties:

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

Fine art manager Marco Cvijetic describes his role in a nutshell:

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

Career Opportunities for Art Directors

One of the virtually exciting things about becoming an art director is that you can piece of work equally an employee or as an independent contractor. As a full-time art managing director employee, you may work for a moving-picture show studio, a public relations firm, a newspaper or mag publisher, or an advertising agency. If you get the freelance route, y'all can specialize in working with 1 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 us with the about opportunities for art directors. You can also find many employment opportunities in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and other international cities.

Skills Needed to Become an Fine art Manager

Just because you have design skills doesn't hateful you'll succeed as an fine art manager. Yous besides need to have some specific personal characteristics. Ane of the most important is an even temperament. You lot need to exist able to inspire squad members and motivate them to work hard when a deadline is looming.

A skillful art manager also knows when squad members can work apart and when they need a picayune more than oversight, so you must be able to maintain a practiced residue between micromanaging people and leaving them without any support at all. If you maintain this fragile balance, you're more than probable to consummate a project successfully. You may likewise develop a reputation as a skilled leader, creating more opportunities to share your creativity with the world.

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

Fine art Manager Average Salary

The bacon of an art managing director varies based on several factors, including employment status, industry, geographic location, job duties, and experience level. According to Bacon.com, the average bacon for an art 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 get to utilise their inventiveness and leadership skills to bring big visions to life. If this appeals to you, follow these steps to becoming an art managing director.

Go an education (or gain feel)

Many fine art directors have some blazon of formal education, such as a bachelor's caste or chief's degree in pattern or a closely related field. Depending on your interests and skills, y'all may desire to pursue a degree in graphic design, fine art, or photography. It's besides possible to become an art director with a degree in media technology or moving-picture show product if y'all're interested in working on movie and television sets.

While a degree can assistance you land an art director task much faster, years of relevant piece of work experience can as well pb to new art direction career opportunities.

"Art Direction should exist a natural step after many years of working as a designer and not simply knowing how you lot work just how the creative industry works too." — Marco Cvijetic, Art Manager @IKEA

Develop your skills

To succeed as an art director, you must have a specific combination of hard and soft skills. Hard skills, also known as technical skills, are professional skills that relate directly to fine art direction, and soft skills are the skills yous need to manage your responsibilities effectively. Depending on which manufacture yous choose, y'all may need to excel at graphic design, multimedia content development, desktop publishing, or creating illustrations with Adobe software. Yous can develop these skills in lower-level roles or piece of work as a freelance artistic professional to get the experience you need to apply for art director jobs in the hereafter.

Soft skills make it easier to interact with other people and ensure every projection is completed on time and to the customer's exacting standards. Art directors must be able to communicate finer with everyone involved in the project, from company executives to design interns. Y'all as well demand to have management and leadership skills to ensure that everyone on your squad executes the creative director'southward vision successfully. Fine art directors need to encounter tight deadlines, adapt rapidly to changing circumstances, and delegate assignments to the people on your squad.

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

Build an fine art director portfolio

Equally you gain experience, add completed projects to your design 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 lot state the fine art director job of your dreams.

  • Include only your best work. If you don't like the style a projection turned out, you won't feel confident discussing it with a potential client.
  • Put your almost impressive project at the first of your portfolio to capture the viewer's attention.
  • Add a variety of projects to your portfolio. You lot don't want potential clients to think yous're a one-pull a fast one on pony, so add as many types of projects to your portfolio as possible to show off your skills and artistic range.
  • Digitize your portfolio. Gone are the days when you lot had to drag a huge portfolio example to every meeting. You still need to keep hard copies of completed projects, merely many potential clients would rather visit your website to learn more about your work. Make high-resolution scans or accept photos and then add them to your online portfolio with short descriptions of the role yous played in each project.
  • Include cocky-initiated projects if y'all can't share work you completed for past employers or clients. You may have to do this if y'all signed a nondisclosure agreement. Sharing cocky-initiated projects is also helpful if your paid work experience is in a rather narrow niche and you want to be able to show potential clients that you have a much broader range.

Build your portfolio & unlock new 
opportunities on Dribbble.

Get Started Today

Continuously larn

Just considering you already completed your degree and have some work feel under your belt doesn't mean information technology'due south okay to stop learning. If you want to know how to become an art director, 1 of the keys is to engage in continuous learning. Equally 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. As new styles and techniques emerge, knowing what's going on under the surface is more of import than ever to growing your art direction career.

Sites like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning are ideal for learning new design methods, experimenting with manufacture-standard software, and gaining a meliorate agreement of what an fine art director does. ​​Follow pattern blogs and publications to understand how your field is evolving.

Build your professional network

Now that you have the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to get an art manager, it's time to hit the networking excursion. Professional networking has a bad reputation in some circles, but it can be highly effective if you approach it the right way. Instead of attending a networking upshot for the sole purpose of landing a paid gig, make it a betoken to build relationships with the people you meet. If you don't have a lot of networking experience, follow these tips to ensure everything goes smoothly.

  • Have business cards with you lot to make it easy to exchange contact information with other attendees.
  • Write an elevator pitch and exercise it before the event. An elevator pitch is a quick manner to introduce yourself to someone else and give them an overview of what you practise.
  • Heed more than than you talk. When you practice talk, try to say something of value to the other person. You may desire to offer communication on solving a tough design problem, for example.
  • Stay in touch later on the consequence is over. Instead of pitching your services, focus on helping your contacts in some style. An easy mode to practice this is to send an email with a link to an article that offers additional insight on a topic you discussed during the networking consequence.

Concenter new clients

As a freelance art managing director, your income depends solely on your power to land new projects. Attending networking events is a good offset stride, only it's not the only way to get freelance work. If you're searching for your side by side opportunity, try some of these tactics:

  • Develop a comprehensive marketing programme to increment awareness of your services. Your marketing strategy may include impress advertising, digital advertising, search engine optimization, and word-of-rima oris marketing activities.
  • Ask previous clients for referrals.
  • Create profiles on Dribbble, LinkedIn, and other professional person networking sites. Brand sure you indicate that y'all're open up to new opportunities.
  • Start a blog or expect for opportunities to contribute to magazines and digital publications. Sharing your expertise is a great way to get potential clients interested in what y'all have to offer.
  • Position yourself as an good in the field past publishing an ebook or answering questions on sites like Quora.
  • Found a strong social media presence.
  • Volunteer to nowadays at conferences for manufacture professionals.
  • Donate your services to a nonprofit organisation. This is especially helpful if you need to branch out and add a new blazon of design project to your portfolio.

Marko Cvijetic

What'due south the Departure Betwixt an Fine art Managing director and a Artistic Director?

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

Fine art directors and creative directors need some of the aforementioned skills, such as team management and delegation, but an art director 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 team members
  • Ensuring finished designs meet customer expectations

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

What are the most important skills for a artistic director?

If you're interested in condign a creative managing director instead of an art manager, you should have the near important skills needed: leadership, facilitation, artistic eye, team-edifice skills, inspiration, and passion. It's also critical to have feel equally a designer or artist of some sort.

For instance, someone with photography expertise may have the eye for detail needed to develop unique creative visions for a wide variety of projects. You may also be well-suited for a artistic managing 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 Managing director?

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

Your New Career Awaits

Working as an fine art director or creative manager is extremely rewarding, specially if you decide to become a freelancer. Every project you complete is an opportunity for professional growth and one that can assistance you advance your career as you acquire new skills. To pursue this exciting career, obtain a degree in a design or a media-related field, gain experience, and build a portfolio that captures attending.