Art direction or graphic design? What are their main differences

The world of design is very broad, the branches in which a person can specialize are increasingly in this world that today is totally visual. Keep reading and find out the differences between a graphic designer and an art designer!

Study Art Direction or Graphic Design

Students who enter the world of graphic design and art direction have a wide variety of professional opportunities. Graphic design, advertising, communication, and marketing agencies are some of the alternatives to enter this world.

What does the Art Direction career consist of?

Art direction is a department in charge of everything related to the image and the way in which the message is communicated, so it is necessary to have knowledge of cinematographic language and also sound language.

As a career, the art direction is responsible for coordinating the work of different professionals regarding the transmission of an idea or image, using at all times design techniques that give them a certain meaning.

What does the Graphic Design degree consist of?

Studying graphic design has become a trend in recent years. Graphic design is a professional career that consists of creating audiovisual content for social networks and web platforms.

Being a graphic designer allows students to master the creation of visual pieces and advertising campaigns for any digital environment. The graphic designer deals with corporate identity, so that a brand stands out among the competition present in the market, what is known as branding. The use of a good color palette for the packaging of a product or service and the design of fonts and calligraphy is one of the fundamental values that graphic design provides.

The graphic designer focuses his activity on visual language and digital language, mastering tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesigns and constantly update yourself on them.

What are the main differences between Art Direction and Graphic Design?

It is often said that all art directors are graphic designers, but not all graphic designers are art directors. The truth is that the mixture of both profiles often complements each other.

Digital tools for graphic design

The graphic designer masters design tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. In some large advertising agencies, some art directors have their own graphic design teams. Photoshop is the program par excellence for graphic designers, very useful for the composition of bitmap images, video graphics, photocomposition and web design.

Illustrator is another of the essential tools for a good graphic designer, used for tasks such as creating web graphics, designing logos and posters, illustrations, fonts, icons, etc.

The creative process of the art director

The art director thinks creatively and strategically and the graphic designer focuses merely on the production of the piece (previously thought out) to capture the art director's ideas. Qualities such as leadership, good communication, knowledge in certain areas, tendencies and self-criticism are some of the qualities that can be found in the figure of the art director, full of creativity.

Graphic design and art direction are an artistic mix

The art director, generally speaking, entrusts projects to creative collaborators, who are responsible for executing and carrying out the art director's ideas. Thus, in some agencies, the art director and copywriter form what is known as a creative couple.

The art director as visual manager of a campaign

The art director masters both visual and audiovisual language to convert ideas into graphic pieces such as brochures, flyers, into audiovisual pieces such as spots and videos, and into digital pieces such as applications or websites.

In this way, the person in charge of art direction must provoke emotions in the public and provoke in them the need to incorporate visual elements into what the narrative is.

He graphic designer is the person in charge of carrying out the art director's visual projects, and you must know in depth all the phases that are part of the graphic production process, from the design of the sketch to its printing.

Study a degree or an art direction course. What is better?

In a hierarchical manner, the graphic designer receives orders from the art director, since these are the leaders of the project, while the graphic designers are the executors of the visual part. On some occasions, graphic designers perform the functions of an art director, given their knowledge in communication and marketing.

For companies and companies in all types of sectors, graphic design and art direction are very essential branches, which support marketing, advertising, and communication actions and require experts and professionals trained in graphic design.

Why combine design and art direction in a single course

Companies, currently, not only choose to have a design department and professions that are dedicated to these tasks, but they also look for alternatives to form a larger department. Thus, many companies choose to profiles that can assume different responsibilities and roles, giving special importance to multitasking. The term multitasking has become fashionable in the professional and university fields.

He Miami Ad School Art Direction Course you will be able to work on a real project and present your ideas to the client. In just two years of training and 6 months of internship you will learn to work with the essential tools of a good graphic director combined with the transformation of creative concepts into visual and effective pieces for a brand. Do not you think it anymore! You will take two courses simultaneously so that you can take advantage of the close links between them.