What is a Creative/Art Director?

A creative/art director is an individual who provides actionable ideas behind a plan and implements the plan details. Your duties entail overseeing the group artists and formulating budgets and timelines. You are expected to handle and implement creative/design administration for group merchandising of goods and make sure there is succession and development of the company identity.

Furthermore, you should be able to stir up and take charge of new business brand marks comprising symbols, web pages, print, and social media, and as well create introductory HTML code, and CSS modeling improvement endorsed design. This job commands that you attentively work with merchandising and photography directors to attain remarkable results.

The important skills required for this role include good analytical, communication, leadership, and technical skills. You must be creative as well to adjust to your team. Along with this, you must possess vast knowledge in graphics design, design, and pictorial interaction, or fine arts, alongside a bachelor's degree at best or an associate degree. With this, a creative/ art director earns an average of $115,873 per year or $55.71 per hour.

What Does a Creative/Art Director Do

There are certain skills that many creative/art directors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, creativity and leadership skills.

Learn more about what a Creative/Art Director does

How To Become a Creative/Art Director

If you're interested in becoming a creative/art director, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 73.5% of creative/art directors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 6.2% of creative/art directors have master's degrees. Even though most creative/art directors have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become a Creative/Art Director

Top Creative/Art Director Jobs Near You

Creative/Art Director Career Paths

As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a creative/art director can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as creative director, progress to a title such as vice president and then eventually end up with the title vice president.

Creative/Art Director

Senior Creative Director

8 Years

Senior Art Director

6 Years

Freelance Art Director

Top Careers Before Creative/Art Director

Art Director (11,472 Jobs)

27.7 %

Graphic Designer (45,625 Jobs)

12.6 %

Senior Art Director (9,098 Jobs)

10.7 %

Top Careers After Creative/Art Director

Creative Director (11,610 Jobs)

19.8 %

Art Director (11,472 Jobs)

18.2 %

Graphic Designer (45,625 Jobs)

13.4 %

Recent Job Searches

Average Salary for a Creative/Art Director

Creative/Art Directors in America make an average salary of $125,743 per year or $60 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $202,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $78,000 per year.

Average Creative/Art Director Salary

$125,743 Yearly

$60.45 hourly

$78,00010%

$125,000Median

$202,00090%

See More Salary Information

What Am I Worth?

Roles and Types of Creative/Art Director

The role of a creative/art director includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general creative/art director responsibilities:

Art direction/graphic design personally work on the graphic development of finished product. Interact with creative director
Money is changing. And the way we think about it is evolving. As the digital payments leader, paypal is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this transformation
Collaborate with head of creative, senior creative directors, creative team, brand strategists, social strategists, synergy & promotions team, project managers, development executives

There are several types of creative/art director, including:

Director

Role:

Directors report to board members regarding what's going on with the company as a whole. Then together, they work to develop new marketing and business strategies to help the company grow and expand.

Typically, directors have the ultimate, hands-down decision making capability, which is a lot of responsibility for one person, especially considering the type of decisions you'll be making. Any top-level decisions will come to you. You may also be responsible for approving a final budget and making sure company policies are being followed.

Some directors have long work hours, it depends on your employer and industry. Some directors will work longer than the typical 40-hour work week and many have erratic schedules that are determined by meetings, which are usually held after normal business hours.

Average Salary: $113,489
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Art Director

Role:

An art director's duties basically revolve around the handling of artistic trends and decisions in plans and campaigns. Several times, it is up to you to think up strategies and ensure the accomplishments of the goals and take charge in harmonizing with different artists and productive workers. In addition, as an art director, you must keep an eye on the improvement of workflow and the labor force, create ideas and strategies, and validate or give opinions on every ingenious achievement by workers.

You must exhibit good communication, project management, coordination, leadership skills, and aesthetic assessment. Additionally, you must have a bachelor's degree. Being an apprentice in an art-related industry can help as well. You will earn an average salary of $74,672 or $35.90 per hour.

Average Salary: $88,367
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Creative Director

Role:

Creative directors are key personnel in marketing and advertising agencies. They design media strategies and monitor communication campaigns for brands and products. They oversee the work of copywriters and graphic designers, revise presentations and coordinate the work of the creative team, making the final calls in creating advertisements.

The job of creative directors is essentially to whittle down the creative chaos their team generates into the most efficient, witty, and spot-on ad solutions. A good creative director will know how to motivate and inspire his/her or her team, bring the best out of the people they work with, and give space for great ideas to grow.

Advertising is a highly competitive and lucrative business for anyone involved, and creative directors are certainly not the ones to miss out on the financial perks. There are a lot of opportunities to show your worth, and as a creative director, you can make anything between $87,869 to $169,072 a year, depending on your location, the size and reputation of your agency, your experience in the field, and the results your work brings.

Average Salary: $137,779
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

States With The Most Creative/Art Director Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active creative/art director jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where creative/art directors earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Creative/Art Director Jobs By State

Rank	State	Number of Jobs	Average Salary
1	California	735	$148,398
2	South Carolina	690	$69,891
3	Alabama	522	$94,873
4	Louisiana	459	$102,143
5	New York	457	$133,391
6	Oklahoma	412	$81,472
7	Mississippi	280	$103,944
8	West Virginia	260	$84,485
9	Illinois	199	$119,146
10	Texas	183	$84,670
11	South Dakota	175	$96,746
12	Florida	158	$77,766
13	Massachusetts	118	$121,432
14	Washington	114	$123,487
15	Pennsylvania	104	$86,826
16	New Jersey	100	$120,158
17	Virginia	99	$99,766
18	Oregon	93	$128,956
19	Georgia	83	$94,107
20	North Carolina	80	$101,955
21	Minnesota	78	$112,662
22	Ohio	73	$95,208
23	Maryland	66	$83,091
24	Colorado	64	$89,938
25	Arizona	58	$81,991
26	Michigan	52	$109,692
27	Connecticut	49	$105,183
28	Utah	45	$121,217
29	Missouri	42	$87,983
30	Tennessee	39	$86,092
31	Wisconsin	36	$89,573
32	Nevada	24	$110,469
33	Kansas	22	$132,938
34	New Hampshire	22	$105,571
35	Indiana	21	$82,208
36	Vermont	20	$121,108
37	Kentucky	20	$78,272
38	Nebraska	18	$80,903
39	Iowa	17	$137,300
40	Arkansas	16	$67,205
41	Rhode Island	15	$98,975
42	Idaho	14	$122,801
43	New Mexico	14	$92,576
44	Montana	12	$103,780
45	North Dakota	11	$109,408
46	Maine	10	$128,231
47	Hawaii	9	$89,684
48	Wyoming	7	$111,240
49	Delaware	6	$96,471
50	Alaska	5	$112,334

Creative/Art Director Education

Creative/Art Director Majors

Graphic Design

37.3 %

Fine Arts

10.3 %

Design And Visual Communication

8.2 %

Creative/Art Director Degrees

Admissions

Most Popular Majors

Business

Education

Photography

Music

Psychology

Top Skills For a Creative/Art Director

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 19.6% of creative/art directors listed sketch on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and creativity are important as well.

Sketch, 19.6%

Art Direction, 7.3%

Photography, 6.6%

Creative Direction, 5.0%

Web Banners, 5.0%

Other Skills, 56.5%

Choose From 10+ Customizable Creative/Art Director Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Creative/Art Director templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Creative/Art Director resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

Creative/Art Director Demographics

Creative/Art Director Gender Distribution

Male

65%

Female

35%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

Among creative/art directors, 35.4% of them are women, while 64.6% are men.

The most common race/ethnicity among creative/art directors is White, which makes up 67.7% of all creative/art directors.

The most common foreign language among creative/art directors is Spanish at 51.0%.

Online Courses For Creative/Art Director That You May Like

Advertising Disclosure

1. Creativity And Entrepreneurship

Creativity & Entrepreneurship will help you tap into your inner creativity and learn how to leverage it for career development or business innovation. Presented by Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship founder Panos Panay, this course features interviews with world renown entrepreneurs, innovators, songwriters, producers, creative directors, educators, performers, visual artists and chefs as they discuss parallels between the creative and entrepreneurial journeys. The course...

See More on Coursera

2. ART of the MOOC: Public Art and Pedagogy

Students of this course may try their hand at their own public art interventions, or simply focus on learning from the theory of public practice and its recent history. Designed by artist and Duke professor, Pedro Lasch, and co-taught by Creative Time artistic director, Nato Thompson, this course presents public culture and art in their radically reinenvented contemporary forms. The lectures link major developments of recent decades to wider topics like spatial politics, everyday social...

See More on Coursera

3. Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps

This course is for anyone who would like to apply their technical skills to creative work ranging from video games to art installations to interactive music, and also for artists who would like to use programming in their artistic practice. This course will teach you how to develop and apply programming skills to creative work. This is an important skill within the development of creative mobile applications, digital music and video games. It will teach the technical skills needed to write...

See More on Coursera

Show More Creative/Art Director Courses

Job type you want

Full Time

Part Time

Internship

Temporary

Best States For a Creative/Art Director

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a creative/art director. The best states for people in this position are California, Iowa, New York, and Kansas. Creative/art directors make the most in California with an average salary of $148,398. Whereas in Iowa and New York, they would average $137,300 and $133,391, respectively. While creative/art directors would only make an average of $132,938 in Kansas, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. California

Total Creative/Art Director Jobs: 735

Highest 10% Earn:

$228,000

Location Quotient:

1.15

$148,398

Avg. Salary

View 735 Creative/Art Director Jobs In CA

2. New York

Total Creative/Art Director Jobs: 457

Highest 10% Earn:

$208,000

Location Quotient:

1.63

$133,391

Avg. Salary

View 457 Creative/Art Director Jobs In NY

3. Oregon

Total Creative/Art Director Jobs: 93

Highest 10% Earn:

$206,000

Location Quotient:

1.03

$128,956

Avg. Salary

View 93 Creative/Art Director Jobs In OR

Full List Of Best States For Creative/Art Directors

How Do Creative/Art Director Rate Their Jobs?

Top Creative/Art Director Employers

Most Common Employers For Creative/Art Director

Rank	Company	Average Salary	Hourly Rate	Job Openings
1	Meta	$198,745	$95.55	18
2	Leo Burnett	$177,048	$85.12	3
3	TBWA Worldwide	$172,665	$83.01	7
4	Amazon	$169,538	$81.51	2
5	Mattel	$157,050	$75.50	3
6	Texas Children's Hospital	$153,983	$74.03	4
7	JCPenney	$152,393	$73.27	2
8	Young & Rubicam	$149,605	$71.93	5
9	Creative Circle	$140,718	$67.65	2
10	Addison Group	$140,025	$67.32	2

Creative/Art Director Videos

Day in the Life: Art Director

I'm an Art Director

How to become an Art Director | by Designer @JonPhenom

Updated February 6, 2023

What is a Creative/Art Director?

What Does a Creative/Art Director Do

How To Become a Creative/Art Director

Creative/Art Director Career Paths

Top Careers Before Creative/Art Director

Top Careers After Creative/Art Director

Recent Job Searches

Average Salary for a Creative/Art Director

Roles and Types of Creative/Art Director

Director

Art Director

Creative Director

States With The Most Creative/Art Director Jobs

Number Of Creative/Art Director Jobs By State

Creative/Art Director Education

Creative/Art Director Majors

Creative/Art Director Degrees

Top Colleges for Creative/Art Directors

1. Harvard University

2. Duke University

3. University of Pennsylvania

4. Northwestern University

5. Carnegie Mellon University

6. University of Southern California

7. University of Texas at Austin

8. University of Florida

9. Northeastern University

10. New York University

Top Skills For a Creative/Art Director

Choose From 10+ Customizable Creative/Art Director Resume templates

Creative/Art Director Demographics

Creative/Art Director Gender Distribution

Online Courses For Creative/Art Director That You May Like

Best States For a Creative/Art Director

How Do Creative/Art Director Rate Their Jobs?

Top Creative/Art Director Employers

Most Common Employers For Creative/Art Director

Creative/Art Director Videos

Creative/Art Director Related Careers

Creative/Art Director Related Jobs

What Similar Roles Do

Resume For Related Jobs