Basic roles that make up a design agency

Art Director
The Art director is the person responsible for creating ad visuals, the person who comes up with the concepts. Graphic designers may create the piece but the Art director is the person in charge of the design and is the person who tells them what to create. Usually Art directors have a bachelor or masters degree in fine art and are highly trained in graphic design. The Art director is the person in charge of the visual look of the message that the client wants to portray. To be specific the Art director makes the decisions on whether to use art or photography in print, film or animation in television and what type of artistic style to use. The main duties of an Art director are to talk to clients throughout the creation stage to gain their approval, provide leadership, motivation and mentoring to other creative staff, manage and drive the creative development of advertising, promotional and communication projects and to manage and direct outside creative resources as needed. An art director works indoors, usually in modern offices. The hours they work are highly irregular and will depend on their current assignments. The personal requirements that you need to poses to be an Art director are to have artistic ability, creativity, to be energetic and highly motivated, have good written and oral communication skills, be able to work under pressure, to have good organization skills and to have problem solving skills. The Art director is also the highest paid person in the studio. The average wage for an Art director is around $80,000 a year how ever they can earn up to $150,000 depending on the company, area and their skills. Some famous or well known Art directors are John Kosh (creative director for the Beatles Abbey road album), Neville Brody (A well known Art director for many magazines and album covers) and Claude Marchand (Art director for film).


Creative Director
A Creative director is a position usually found in the advertising, media or entertainment industries, but can also be useful in web development and software development. The duties of this job are overseeing the design of branding and advertising for a client and making sure it fits with the client’s requirements and the image they wish to portray for their company or product. To be more specific the main aspects are a client’s wants and needs and then develop a creative approach that fits with the specified wants and needs. Another role of the Creative director is to initiate creative ideas and motivate the other designers involved in the creative process to produce their own creative ideas. Creative directors normally oversee creative service agencies or departments within a corporation. Ultimately the Creative designer is responsible for the quality of the final work. This means that the Creative director gets the most appraisal for a successful job but on the flip side they also shoulder the brunt of the blame for a failed one. There is no real qualification that a creative director needs, but there are specific things you need to posses to be a successful Creative director. A main skill needed is to have a good handle on and knowledge of the technical aspects of the business because this helps to solve problems that many prevent the product from being completed. The average salary for a Creative director is around $90,000 per year but can be considerably more depending on the company, are and skills possessed. Some famous or well known Creative directors are Peter Saville (Creative director of Manchester) and Roger Paul Mosconi (an award winning Creative director).
Senior Graphic Designer
A senior Graphic designer is the next position down from the Creative Director. As the title suggests they are in charge of the designing and handling of the junior designers under them. To become a senior graphic designer you need to have several years experience in the design industry, expert knowledge of the programs used in design specifically the Adobe master suite and you need to have excellent leader skills. Senior Graphic designers should be adept at taking briefs and will more than likely have some client liaison experience. As a Senior Graphic designer you need to have excellent problem solving skills as you are in charge of the design team. The roles of a Senior Graphic designer tend to include being the main illustrator for the concept, work closely with the Creative and Art director during the design process and being responsible for the team meeting its deadline. The average wage for a Senior Graphic designer is $50,000 to $60,000 per year. Most Creative and Art directors would have more than likely been Senior Graphic designers at some point in their career.
Junior Graphic Designer
A junior graphic designer is the first position you will get when finished studying. Everybody knows that when you begin a career you need to start at the bottom and for the design industry junior graphic designer is that place. In essence a junior graphic designer is the bottom of the food chain and the position that will require you to have the least amount of experience. Sometimes companies may offer junior graphic designer positions to people who are still studying to give them industry experience while they’re learning. The average length of time for a person to remain a junior graphic designer is around two year but it varies from person to person. The roles of the Junior Graphic designer are to layout pages, draw logos, redraw logos, do text corrections and generally all the stuff that the senior graphic designer doesn’t want to do. In a way you could say that junior graphic designers are apprentices and therefore get the wage and jobs in accordance. The average wage for a junior graphic designer is around $35,000 to $42,000 a year depending mostly on location.
Web Designer/developer
Most design studios now a days offer websites as part of their services. A web designer or developer is sometimes referred to in the industry as a “code monkey” because they work with code to build the sites. A web designer or developers role is as the title suggests to design and or develop websites. Almost all companies and businesses have websites these days and it’s the code monkey’s job to make these sites. The type of general skill you would need to be a web designer/developer would be a strong knowledge of html code because you can’t always rely on the programs to be right, the knowledge of what style of design would suit what website because certain sites will have different looks, for example a bank website wouldn’t need to be fancy and contain flash content where as a animation companies site would instead of the plain and simple that would fit the bank. Web designers and developers also need to have a creative flair given that they are still designers even though it’s a bit different from the type of design a graphic designer would prominently do. The average wage for a web designer/ developer depends on many different things, firstly their experience and level of productivity and secondly if they charge per project, by the hour or are hired by an agency for a set amount. Given the other wages you can expect to receive in the deign industry a rough estimation of around between $50,000 to $100,000 would be a fair assumption.