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Senior artist vs freelance designer

The differences between senior artists and freelance designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 1-2 years to become a senior artist, becoming a freelance designer takes usually requires 6-12 months. Additionally, a senior artist has an average salary of $83,394, which is higher than the $57,260 average annual salary of a freelance designer.

The top three skills for a senior artist include maya, animation and AAA. The most important skills for a freelance designer are sketch, CSS, and HTML.

Senior artist vs freelance designer overview

Senior ArtistFreelance Designer
Yearly salary$83,394$57,260
Hourly rate$40.09$27.53
Growth rate5%3%
Number of jobs3,66545,914
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 67%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age4038
Years of experience212

What does a senior artist do?

A senior artist has a variety of duties and responsibilities. These include designing all the concept art, online advertising assets, and graphics, designing and creating marketing brochures, invitations, greeting cards, and other materials, and creating the process for different artwork. Additionally, you will be responsible for identifying client objectives and translating them into an efficient multimedia solution. As a senior artist, you are also expected to create original graphics and user interfaces for multimedia projects.

What does a freelance designer do?

Freelance designers are creative, independent contractors who create visual and graphic designs for their clients. They develop text and illustrated versions of brands, messages, and communications with strong visible influence with their clients. Typical activities include networking, seeking projects, and negotiating prices to their customers. They manage client proposals, develop concepts, present solutions, and ensure the timely completion of projects. Freelance visual and graphic designers are creative, self-motivated as well as result and deadline oriented.

Senior artist vs freelance designer salary

Senior artists and freelance designers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Senior ArtistFreelance Designer
Average salary$83,394$57,260
Salary rangeBetween $54,000 And $128,000Between $39,000 And $83,000
Highest paying CityReno, NV-
Highest paying stateNevada-
Best paying companyMeta-
Best paying industryTechnology-

Differences between senior artist and freelance designer education

There are a few differences between a senior artist and a freelance designer in terms of educational background:

Senior ArtistFreelance Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 67%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania

Senior artist vs freelance designer demographics

Here are the differences between senior artists' and freelance designers' demographics:

Senior ArtistFreelance Designer
Average age4038
Gender ratioMale, 71.8% Female, 28.2%Male, 48.0% Female, 52.0%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 4.3% Unknown, 6.0% Hispanic or Latino, 14.0% Asian, 7.6% White, 67.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.8%Black or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage11%13%

Differences between senior artist and freelance designer duties and responsibilities

Senior artist example responsibilities.

  • Lead a team of artists to create a series of space adventure games for the PC.
  • Edit video, write copy for television, radio, and web-base commercials while managing the scheduling of all studio employees.
  • Maintain servers, install software packages for Apple/Mac base computers and maintain editing suites for video and audio production.
  • Design and programme pop-ups using HTML.
  • Mentore team members and conduct Zbrush training.
  • Edit footage, and photography base on authentic styles.
  • Show more

Freelance designer example responsibilities.

  • Lead the transition from paste-up, typesetting, pasting up page layout to digital ad/page building and web printing.
  • Hand-Code HTML, CSS, JS and PHP for custom design solutions and form processing, validation, and animations.
  • Provide identity and stationery design, web design, HTML / CSS development and WordPress integration (content management system).
  • Image manipulation in platforms such as Photoshop and illustrator as per assign.
  • Develop high-qualityshop drawings for all casework to be build by in-house woodshop.
  • Design websites, landing pages, banner ads, pop-ups, and HTML emails.
  • Show more

Senior artist vs freelance designer skills

Common senior artist skills
  • Maya, 12%
  • Animation, 7%
  • AAA, 7%
  • ZBrush, 6%
  • In-Game, 6%
  • VFX, 5%
Common freelance designer skills
  • Sketch, 11%
  • CSS, 7%
  • HTML, 6%
  • Adobe Photoshop, 6%
  • Adobe Illustrator, 6%
  • Photography, 5%

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