Art Director Position Description

Correctly outlining the duties in the art director job description is pivotal to hiring the right person.
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Hiring the right art director makes your brand look polished. The person in this pivotal position keeps your brand looking visually unified, and finding the best candidate for the job begins with understanding and outlining the position's duties in the job description. Get a jump on hiring an art director to help your brand look polished with this job description.

Brand Strategy

    The art director helps determine and implement the visual component of brand strategy. To do this, she works with brand managers to plan the direction and goals for branding by brainstorming the overall vision for key messages and campaigns. After she establishes these messages, the art director presents ideas that visually capture and illustrate them to the brand managers.

    To keep costs manageable, the art director determines and works within budget parameters for each project. She oversees the visual components for the project and manages outcomes to ensure its success.

    Participating in strategy meetings helps the art director determine the visual direction for the brand.

Design Skills

    Applying graphic design skills to the branding strategies of a project allows the art director to design and produce materials that visually reflect branding. The art director may design several different types of materials for the project's needs that reflect strong design principles and meet the branding goals, including logos, advertisements, brochures, promotional mailers, articles, packaging, letterhead and business cards.

    Designing materials according to the brand goals and standards is a large part of the art director's job.

Staff Management

    The art director manages all production artists, graphic artists and photographers to produce visual materials for the brand. This includes the hiring, training and ongoing coaching of staff to ensure a talented, high-performing graphics team. Assigning work to each team member, the art director communicates branding and quality goals, setting clear expectations and managing outcomes. The art director also manages workflow to ensure that team members meet deadlines and have appropriate workloads.

    The art director hires, trains and coaches staff and freelancers.

Quality Assurance

    The art director must ensure the quality of all branding materials, which includes implementing and executing quality control measures that meet established brand standards. She oversees the production process for quality assurance, ensuring that deadlines are met and reviews each designed piece so that it reflects the branding standards, is error-free and is designed to the correct specifications.

    At the project's close, the art director ensures the files are archived for future reference and use. She also identifies any process holes and implements procedural fixes so that future projects are as efficient as possible.

    Reviewing all materials to proof for errors and ensure that they meet brand standards is a big part of the art director's job.

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