What Does An Art Director Do?

WHAT DOES AN ART DIRECTOR DO?

Published: May 15, 2025 – The Art Director oversees the visual execution of brand identity across all channels, ensuring consistency in print, digital, social, and experiential platforms. This position leads the development and production of creative assets, collaborating with cross-functional teams and external vendors to support marketing, sales, and product initiatives. The director also manages design team operations, budgets, and timelines to ensure strategic alignment and timely project delivery.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Art Director

1. Art Director Roles and Responsibilities

Creative Strategy: Contribute to the creative output on competitive pitches and present to prospective clients in a way that influences, inspires, and delivers results.
Brand Compliance: Ensure that all work meets clients’ standards and brand guidelines.
Client-Specific Ideation: Ensure that ideas presented are unique to the client and are achievable within the client’s brief, timescale, and budget.
Production Support: Support the planning and delivery of photography/film shoots on location.
Client Collaboration: Work closely with Client Services teams to create impactful ideas that solve client challenges.
Creative Excellence: Deliver on expected creative standards and challenge briefs appropriately, to ensure the company delivers ideas that engage and deliver on results.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work in collaboration with creative teams across the wider business to utilise other specialisms and skills to deliver the best possible outcome for clients.

2. Art Director Duties and Roles

Brand Guidelines: Deliver the brand’s complete style guide
Visual Identity Leadership: Lead the brand’s visual identity initiatives across all touchpoints, internal and external
Creative Asset Development: Develop creative assets to be used online across the entire brand ecosystem (campaigns, title treatments, packaging, blog content, posters, newsletters, collateral, lookbooks, social posts, web pages, collateral)
Campaign Concepting: Concept advertising campaign and develop mood boards for shoots
Photo Retouching Management: Manage the photo asset retouching process from start to finish
Creative Collaboration: Source and onboard new creative collaborators from photographers to illustrators
Vendor Management: Work directly with vendors to cost and produce one-off projects from merch to experiential graphics
Team Leadership: Lead Creative Interns in projects and development

3. Art Director Responsibilities and Key Tasks

Art and Graphic Execution: Execute against the Art and Graphic design strategy
Graphic Development Management: Manage the graphic development of products and projects
Creative Process Execution: Execute the creative processes
Tool Proficiency: Utilize systems, tools, and resources with the intent to develop mastery and proficiency
Touchpoint Consistency: Support consistency across all customer touchpoints, with a unified commerce view on how customers interact with key touchpoints.
Brand Asset Strategy: Collaborate with the digital and visual team to create quarterly channels brand asset strategy overview references.
Storytelling Orchestration: Collaborate with the Social media, Digital, and in-store team to create a unified but channel-distinctive orchestration of storytelling delight.
Narrative Collaboration: Support the Photo and Video team in concept and collaboration for full funnel emotional and product narratives.
Motion Direction: Provide animation, motion direction or video direction.

4. Art Director Roles and Details

Creative Concepting: Concept multiple creative solutions for any given project
End-to-End Project Execution: Take projects from concept to production
Brand Consistency: Ensure branding is consistent and prominent
Idea Presentation: Clearly articulate ideas and present with confidence to the team
Independent and Team Collaboration: Bring flexibility to function independently or as a team

5. Art Director Key Accountabilities

Team Management: Manage and mentor Design team members
Brand Direction: Own brand aesthetic direction and style guide, and ensure it's captured across all consumer touchpoints.
Design Projects: Conceptualize, design, and organize promotional and editorial design projects, including seasonal and launch-focused e-mails, website features, digital advertising, organic social, print, and in-store signage.
Editorial Storytelling: Create cross-channel, merchandise-driven editorial storytelling with a focus on customer delight.
Art Direction: Create high-level art direction decks and partner with the CMO on execution.
Mockup Creation: Produce mockups, storyboards, etc., to visualize ideas with a luxury high-end look and feel
Display Collaboration: Support and collaborate with the visual display team to make unified 360 channel-aligned design systems.
Project Management: Manage projects and meet deadlines.
Production Delivery: Deliver optimized production-ready files and work closely with creative services.
Team Coordination: Liaise with internal partners (e.g., photographers, video, marketing, social, copywriters, and PR) to deliver high-quality final assets.
Design Research: Research appropriate trends, technologies, and methods to help ensure designs incorporate the leading practice of customer-centric experience.

6. Art Director General Responsibilities

Creative Collaboration: Works with a Copywriter to create big ideas based on strategic briefs.
Media Execution: Executes in all media forms.
Client Presentation: Participates in client presentations.
Artist Selection: Selects artists and photographers for projects and oversees their work.
Art Preparation: Prepares final art for production, including light photo retouching and color correcting
Production Coordination: Works closely with the Production Manager to ensure the best quality product.
Presentation Prep: Prepares creative elements for client presentations and new business pitches.
Agency Support: Supports agency marketing initiatives, including the development of graphics for the agency website, creating branded collateral, and posting an occasional blog.

7. Art Director Role Purpose

Visual Direction: Set the visual tone and direction of campaigns, and bring them to life across Uber Eats’ owned channels, including CRM, social, in-app, push, and website landing pages
Digital and Print Design: Design digital and print communications for a brand platform where ideas can work globally and scale locally
Guideline Development: Develop resources, guidelines, and templates that empower the global marketing team to create beautiful and thoughtful brand expressions
Team Collaboration: Collaborate and ideate with a multidisciplinary team, including copywriters, communication designers, illustrators, environment designers, brand strategists, marketing managers, and creative directors, to build and maintain visual brand excellence for a wide range of design needs
Quality Control: Ensure quality is high in all aspects of execution
Design Specifications: Develop detailed design specs for creative guidelines and production
Process Improvement: Identify blockers before they happen, suggest solutions to the work process and systems
Presentation Skills: Present work to creative peers and creative leadership, selling the idea with excellent presentation skills

8. Art Director Essential Functions

Creative Strategy: Work closely with marketing teams to drive brand love and achieve business objectives by formulating creative concepts/solutions around marketing opportunities/problems.
Idea Development: Conceptualise and generate impactful creative ideas and executions that deliver and adhere to Grab’s brand vision and standards from initial concept to final output.
Brand Consistency: Ensure consistency of brand and marketing communications across multiple brands over a wide range of executions (sometimes supervising them), ensuring high-quality outputs are delivered on time.
Multiplatform Design: Provide design and creative solutions for multiple platforms, including videos, digital, print, and outdoors, across multiple campaigns.
Vendor Coordination: Liaise and coordinate with creative vendors and other external production resources for all marketing initiatives.

9. Art Director Additional Details

Idea Generation: Generate innovative ideas and execute them in client engagement programs.
Creative Leadership: Lead the creative development process from brief to production.
Project Direction: Direct various creative projects, from weekly content to larger events.
Team Support: Provide guidance and support to the creative team to achieve success in concept development and production.
Team Collaboration: Report to the Creative Director and collaborate with a team of Art Directors, Designers, Motion Graphics, and Production Managers.