Job descriptions for graphic designers

There are junior designers, middleweight designers, senior designers and bantam weight designers (we may be wrong about one of those). Then we get onto art directors and creative directors. All of this bunch are involved in the creative process somehow. So if you are looking for advice on graphic design careers, read on.

Junior Designers

Junior Designers are usually employed straight from college and will generally be considered ‘junior' for up to two years. Junior Designers will lay out pages, draw logos, redraw logos, do text corrections and generally all the stuff that the middleweight and senior designers don't want to do. Unless they are really lucky and they have the help of a Mac Operator.

Middleweight Designers

Middleweight Designers should usually already have some kind of professional portfolio. They will probably have mainly worked on parts of larger campaigns and a few smaller projects of their own. They will be able to take design briefs and implement them, but will still generally be overseen creatively by a Senior Designer or Art Director.

Senior Designers

It gets complicated here. Most Junior Designers don't mind being junior for a while. But many Middleweight Designers can't wait to become Senior Designers or Art Directors. There are graphic designers with two years professional experience, who have ‘Senior Designer' or even ‘Art Director' on their business cards.

But generally, it would seem sensible that three to five years working experience will have been clocked up, before a ‘senior' tag is applied. Senior Designers will ideally be adept at taking briefs and may well have a lot more client liaison experience. A senior designer should have developed those famous problem solving abilities to a degree where each design project is not seen in isolation. But rather, they will also be able to look at the ‘bigger picture' in a creative or advertising campaign.

Art Directors

Try Googling the phrase “What is an Art Director” and you can get some bizarrely differing results. But it is fair to say that an Art Director should, at the very least, direct some art. Although, it is also true that an Art Director in a graphic design agency, fulfills a very different role to that of one in an above the line advertising agency, which deals predominantly with television advertising.

The Art Directors role is to brainstorm and come up with ideas. Other than the Creative Director, an Art Director will generally be the most senior ‘hands-on' creative for a design project or creative campaign. They will understand branding and also oversee the correct briefing and supervision of the rest of the design team. Often this will be in conjunction with the Studio Manager. There is an interesting description of the role of an Art Director in a web environment here.

Creative Directors

Creative Directors will often have come through the same route as Art Directors. But, more and more they are coming in from a marketing background and certainly this would be beneficial in a corporate design environment. Often, this would not be a ‘hands-on' design position. Or rather, there are few Creative Directors that would sit down in front of a Macintosh and bash out concepts in Illustrator or QuarkXpress on a daily basis. although there are certainly some that do. Creative Directors will be concerned with the higher level issues of branding and marketing and would have a lot more direct contact with the client.

Web Designers

So where do Web Designers fit in with all of this? Once again, this varies from company to company. At one point the term ‘web designer' meant an HTML developer, or JavaScript coder who could use a bit of Photoshop. Currently, certainly amongst many graphic design agencies, web designers tend to have similar titles and roles to their colleagues in the print design industry. Some web designers are expected to be able to code as well, others are required to at least be able to use WYSIWYG web design software, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive. Others are only responsible for creating the concepts in Photoshop, before handing over the graphics to web developers to hand code.

Obviously, a close working relationship would be required between a creative graphic designer and a web developer. Moreover, a graphic designer, working on interactive design or web site design projects, should have a good understanding of interactive design principles, usability and online branding issues.

Some current relevant hot debates in the Design : Talkboard discussion forums include;

• Art Directors, are they still relevant? What is the role of an Art Director these days?
• Can a print designer, become a web designer? How easy is it for creatives to cross-over into interactive design?
• Should designers learn to code? Or should that be the domain of specialist web developer?