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Designer/art director skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
5 min read
Quoted experts
Samantha Osborne,
Doug Regen
Designer/art director example skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical designer/art director skills. We ranked the top skills for designer/art directors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 9.1% of designer/art director resumes contained photography as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a designer/art director needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 designer/art director skills for your resume and career

1. Photography

Here's how designer/art directors use photography:
  • Assigned and supervised photography, illustrations and designs for editorial layouts and magazine advertisements.
  • Experience in commissioning illustration and photography, working with editorial and production staff.

2. Graphic Design

Graphic design is the art of making visual content to communicate messages. Designers apply different page layout methods and visual hierarchy by using letters and pictures to meet the need of end-users. Most companies use graphic design to sell their product or services and to convey complicated information by using infographics.

Here's how designer/art directors use graphic design:
  • Collaborated and managed a team of graphic designers to enhance brand identity and continuity.
  • Function as primary graphic designer on both statement and collateral material.

3. Creative Concepts

A creative concept is a big idea that helps in capturing the audience's interest, attracting customers, influencing decisions, and help them to take action. A creative concept can be applied to all communication channels like messages, call to action, emails, etc. Generally, a headline or a tagline is the place where creative concepts play a vital role in successfully attracting the target audience.

Here's how designer/art directors use creative concepts:
  • Executed creative concepts and visual design for interactive media presentations.
  • Develop creative concepts and liaise with creative teams on branding campaigns, web restructuring project, publishing and various marketing collateral.

4. Adobe Photoshop

Here's how designer/art directors use adobe photoshop:
  • Created corporate identities, collateral, including brochures, flyers and direct mail using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
  • Designed and coded web sites for dozens of clients utilizing Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

5. Sketch

Here's how designer/art directors use sketch:
  • Work on Adobe Illustrator to sketch silhouettes, hardware and create linesheets.
  • Developed strategic project plans managing and maintaining multiple projects from sketch to print, facilitating high-impact presentations to senior leadership.

6. Product Design

Product design can be described as a process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve user's problems and talk about the specific needs of users in the market. Product design is an engineering disciple and it is the basic design and idea that goes before the mass production of the product.

Here's how designer/art directors use product design:
  • Identify target audience and demographic for each product and maintain consistency and integrity throughout product design.
  • Managed all company product designs for manufacturer of etched precision parts and decorative products.

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7. Design Concepts

Here's how designer/art directors use design concepts:
  • Formulated design concepts and information architecture for interactive content according to specifications.
  • Design icons and logos to for feature illustrations + Create illustrations to help visualize abstract design concepts.

8. Website Design

Here's how designer/art directors use website design:
  • Specialized in interactive media, logo design and application, signage, video production, website design and development.
  • Worked with the New Media Team designing and collaborating Website designs, e-blasts, and online banner ads.

9. Adobe Creative Suite

Here's how designer/art directors use adobe creative suite:
  • Utilized HTML, CSS, Adobe Creative Suite, Quark Express, and CAD.
  • Used Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe MAYA.

10. Creative Direction

Here's how designer/art directors use creative direction:
  • Selected to bring creative direction to new corporate social responsibility Committee.
  • Lead the creative direction of projects and conveyed client objectives to the respective team members and stakeholders.

11. Adobe Illustrator

Here's how designer/art directors use adobe illustrator:
  • Co-designed at exclusive luxury brand, Katharine Kidd on Spring/Fall 2013 and 2014 collections using Adobe Illustrator from start to finish.
  • Invented graphics and images on Adobe Illustrator to be used in the print edition of the Panther Newspaper.

12. Photo Shoots

A photoshoot is a series of photographs that a photographer takes of someone, usually of a model or a famous person, to be used in a newspaper or a magazine. The goal of a photoshoot is to achieve a predetermined visual objective. Later, these images can be used for editing or post-production..

Here's how designer/art directors use photo shoots:
  • Coordinated and supervised photo shoots for client advertisements.
  • Design advertisements to client needs, layout magazine, schedule photo shoots with photographer and clients, update / maintain website

13. Brochures

A template, leaflet, or pamphlet which carries particulars about a certain company or an organization is called a brochure. Brochures are informative documents that are mostly used for advertisement purposes. These informative papers are organized in the form of booklets that act as promotional documents.

Here's how designer/art directors use brochures:
  • Redesigned and standardized our project proposal covers and marketing brochures.
  • Created point-of-purchase displays/ merchandising programs, free-standing inserts, corporate and brand identities, brochures, packaging, and marketing collateral.

14. Motion Graphics

Here's how designer/art directors use motion graphics:
  • Create motion graphics for Flash presentation Amazon in the classroom.
  • designed print, web, and motion graphics for various marketing/advertising purposes.

15. Mac

A media access control or simply MAC is a network policy that identifies or determines how the data is being transferred in two particular servers through a network cable. The purpose of a MAC protocol is to prevent network or technical issues and simplify transferring the information or data.

Here's how designer/art directors use mac:
  • Considered an Adobe CS 5.5 expert using both Mac and Windows platforms on a daily basis.
  • Created various media including all things print and digital, in both Mac and PC environments.
top-skills

What skills help Designer/Art Directors find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on designer/art director resumes?

Samantha Osborne

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, Owner, Samantha Osborne Design, Eastern Illinois University

Soft skills are equally important to hard skills. Graphic designers are visual communicators. Visual communication is a universal learned skill, vs. a linguistic capability. This means that graphic designers must learn to recognize and effectively utilize mood and tone in their own visual compositions in regard to color theory and psychology, gestalt principles, and font or lettering design. Essentially a well-skilled graphic designer becomes part psychologist in working through design problems and deciphering client direction, part problem-solver in developing an effective solution to the design problem, and part artist in bringing astonishing and original visual communication and graphics to reach a solution.

What soft skills should all designer/art directors possess?

Doug Regen

Professor of Practice, Belmont University

Team player. Enthusiasm. Hark worker...willing to put in the time. Strong communicator. Openminded.

What hard/technical skills are most important for designer/art directors?

Elizabeth Sutton

Department Head, Professor of Art History, University of Northern Iowa

We train our students in Adobe Creative Suite: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator.

What designer/art director skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Scott FosterScott Foster LinkedIn profile

Associate Professor of Studio Art, Chair of Creative Arts Department, Siena College

Working on a team. The exact project might not matter much, although it's better if it dovetails with your interests or career goals. This could be as simple as volunteering at a non-profit to revamp a website or build an app to measure outcomes.

What type of skills will young designer/art directors need?

Brian PirmanBrian Pirman LinkedIn profile

Associate Professor, St. Norbert College

For someone who is contemplating a career in graphic design, I recommend several things. One would be to develop a portfolio that shows a diverse skill-set. This may include expertise in design and layout, photography, illustration, typography as well as animation and video. If you have a more varied skill set, you are more likely to either gain employment or able to do freelance work. The other thing is internships, internships, internships. Having a portfolio of applied work (versus school projects), as long as it's good, will separate you from the competition.
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about designer/art director

List of designer/art director skills to add to your resume

Designer/art director skills

The most important skills for a designer/art director resume and required skills for a designer/art director to have include:

  • Photography
  • Graphic Design
  • Creative Concepts
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Sketch
  • Product Design
  • Design Concepts
  • Website Design
  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Creative Direction
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Photo Shoots
  • Brochures
  • Motion Graphics
  • Mac
  • Fine Arts
  • HTML
  • Corporate Identity
  • CSS
  • User Experience
  • Print Collateral
  • Style Guides
  • Promotional Materials
  • Brand Development
  • Design Projects
  • Creative Solutions
  • Brand Design
  • Package Design
  • Logo Design
  • User Interface
  • Web Site
  • Print Design
  • Print ADS
  • Multimedia
  • Print Materials
  • Creative Vision
  • Industrial Design
  • Creative Process
  • Collateral Materials
  • Press Checks
  • POS
  • PowerPoint
  • Concept Development
  • Creative Projects
  • SEO
  • Dreamweaver
  • JavaScript
  • Facebook

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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