Hire your next star art director to scale your business.

What makes an Art Director a star?

What is an art director and what does an art director do? An art director creates stand-out imagery for your brand. They head your creative projects, manage design teams, and get the internal stakeholders on board with campaigns. An art director is also responsible for guiding audiences through ideas, creating layouts, reviewing and approving designs, and communicating with clients. As you search for a great art director, look for someone with the following traits:

They can communicate their design knowledge

You want someone with creative talent. That’s a given. But, art directors work with many people by trade, so talent alone isn’t enough. Make sure they can relay their expertise to others. Communication is important because they’ll be responsible for getting your teams up to speed (and on board) with your creative projects.

They’re good with people

They need to have the right personality and temperament for the job. art directors should have strong people skills. After all, they’ll be training others, assigning tasks, getting client approval, and keeping stakeholders informed every step of the way.

They’re true to themselves

Every art director has forged their own path and has their own definition of what an art director does. Find talent that understands and supports your own ideas, while introducing their own approach. You’ll make the best impression with your clients and customers this way.

What’s trending in art direction?

Art directors are different from designers, so naturally there are different trends to follow. Designers focus on the execution of design, while art directors lead the strategy and accomplish business objectives with their creativity. Here are a few trends to watch.

Creating design standards

Many brands spend hours performing work that could otherwise be avoided if company design standards had been put in place. Even for a small organization, a unique visual language can help designers understand which visuals can (and cannot) be used for communication.

Managing expectations with remote teams

Art directors are largely responsible for helping to delegate tasks to their designers. A solid art Director will understand the role strong communication plays in a remote team, and adapt their strategy accordingly.

More overlap with UX and Marketing

As art directors help to achieve the business goals through visual communication, their input on both the UX and marketing teams is even more important. Art diirectors need to offer their expertise not only to their internal teams, but to other verticals of the business as well.