You and your business had decided on a new advertising campaign. You’ve done your research and you have decided to go with an advertising campaign using a printed medium. You have ideas but you need some to bring all this together. One way forward is to find an art director, who specialises in advertising.
Some people question why you need an art director. Many companies and businesses fell that they may have someone who is artistic, creating and developing specific parts of an art piece of scene. It isn’t difficult, after all, for anyone to take a photo. And with a bit of knowledge and software, a fairly ordinary looking photo can be transformed to something that is very far removed from the original.
If it was simple, we’d all be doing it, right?
An art director is the person who takes ‘charge’ of all this art and creativity by unifying it to make the vision that the business is aiming for. A creative art director will take overall responsibility of the visual appearance and how it visually communicates, how it stimulates mood, contrasts and appeals to the intended target audience. They know what artistic style that should be used for a particular campaign and when to add other elements such as motion – or not.
Advertising art director – an unenviable job?
An art director when creating and supervising an advertising campaign has incredibly difficult tasks – they need to ‘translate’ and create a campaign from underdeveloped and incomplete ideas. They also need to create the mood they think is desired, the messages that need to be conveyed along with the desired concept.
An art director working within advertising looks to solidify all these ideas and elements to make a ‘collective imagination’, while balancing input from various individuals, resolving inconsistencies, meeting objectives and agendas set.
Working in tandem
An advertising art director need to work with several people, but needs to work in tandem with the copywriter. A copywriter is the person who works with the words, creating them, adding words and taken them away. This contributes to the overall concept – sometimes known as the brand creative or the big idea).
The copywriter is responsible for the written content whilst the art director looks after the visual aspect and impact of the project. These two people need to work together in an objective creative environment where they bounce ideas off each other to get the ‘right’ look, to create the advertising campaign that fits is objectives – and sells the product or service.
Many people expect art directors to complete all aspects of the advertising campaign such as the graphic design element. This in itself is a technical area, and most art directors will prefer the use of a graphic designer as these artists have the technical ability with various software.
Creating an advertising campaign is more than just taking a photo, adding a few lines of text and your website address, buying a spot in a magazine and waiting for the phone to ring. It is an essential element to the ‘brand creative’ of your product or service.
A well constructed and executed advertising campaign will pay dividends, but you will need to invest in the right skills and abilities to bring it to fruition.
