What does an Art Director do?

Art Director (also AD) is a profession within the advertising, media, and entertainment industries. The term Art Director can sometimes be synonymous with graphic designer, but in other contexts it refers to a person who primarily manages other graphic designers.

An AD often works in a team with a copywriter and is jointly responsible for the creative process behind communication, such as an advertising campaign. The difference between these professions is that the copywriter produces the textual content and the art director designs the graphic content. The AD is therefore responsible for the visual expression. You could say that both the AD and the copywriter use the pen as their tool: the copywriter writes with their pen, while the art director draws with theirs. Unlike a creative director, who is responsible for practical and strategic creativity, an AD is responsible for aesthetic creativity.

Key concepts for an Art Director are creativity, visualization, creation, and design. Art Directors often work on designing advertisements at an advertising agency, marketing agency, or communications agency. ADs work as creators, designing ideas, concepts, advertisements, and communications to create and maintain brands. More specifically, this involves working with image ideas, design, and sketching, as well as being responsible for the graphic process from production to the finished result. The art director is responsible for the creative idea, leading the creative process in advertising with a focus on images and design, and managing the visual aspects of what is created.

It is also important to know how the marketing process works and how a specific target group is reached. The media can vary and the work can be in both social and digital media, but also in traditional media such as newspapers, film, TV, radio, and outdoor advertising. In this way, the profession is very much about product and business development.

Working as an Art Director means leading a creative process in constant group work. In addition to images, color, and graphics, an Art Director can also highlight typography and suggest the design of products to be developed. This can be anything from a written report, an advertising film, or a digital campaign to web pages. The computer is an important tool in the profession, and the tools are various design, text, and processing programs such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The goal of graphic design, i.e. the product that an AD creates, is to apply techniques for arranging images and text in order to convey a message or make it easier for the recipient to understand the message.

Now you know a little more about what an Art Director does during the day!

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