How to transition your career from graphic designer to art director

Have you been feeling uninspired at work? Are you scouring LinkedIn for new design jobs or looking for ways to level up your creative practice? Whether you’re fresh out of school or sensing a mid-career slump, you’ll be well on your way to exciting advertising art direction work if you follow these five tips!

Fall in love with big ideas

• Beyond the use of colour, layouts, typography and visuals (that all designers love!), delve into creative concepts and Big Ideas with an advertising strategy in mind.
• Use visuals to convey messages that drive an emotional response to cut through the noise and help brands and products become top-of-mind for consumers.

Be a media junkie–if you aren’t already!

• Work to understand trends and what’s trending.
• Hop on current events to contextually reach your target.
• Explore a variety of platforms—traditional, digital, social and experiential to
  deliver creative solutions.
• It’s not just how you say it (which matters); it’s also when and where.

Why fly solo?

• Collaborate, collaborate and collaborate!
• There is no “I” in “team,” and in advertising art direction, it’s about THE team.
• What’s better than your brain? Others. Learn to work with other brilliant minds–such as copywriters, illustrators, designers, production coordinators and account managers–to bring Big Ideas to life.
• A graduate program like Humber’s Advertising Art Direction certificate gives you this opportunity directly through courses shared with the Advertising Copywriting Graduate Certificate program.

Be a serial scrapbooker

• Creativity doesn’t happen in a bubble and an Art Director gets to immerse themselves in visual inspiration as part of their job.
• Hoard beautiful visuals by artists, illustrators, designers, writers, etc., Get inspired by them. Manifest future collaborations!
• Catalogue, collaborate and reinterpret work that is already out there. The world (literally) is your visual playground.

Have fun

• Learn to build audience connection through visuals by enjoying the messy, squiggly creative process in advertising. It may not offer predictability or even stability, but it’s far more interesting, innovative and certainly more fun.

Sample student campaign work

Spin Master — Paw Patrol “Let’s Grow Together” campaign

• Victoria Drobot (AD), Jamie Doyle (CW), An Trinh (CW) and Emily Judd (AM)