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Senior production artist vs freelance designer

The differences between senior production artists and freelance designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 6-12 months to become both a senior production artist and a freelance designer. Additionally, a senior production artist has an average salary of $86,821, which is higher than the $57,260 average annual salary of a freelance designer.

The top three skills for a senior production artist include adobe indesign, art directors and adobe photoshop. The most important skills for a freelance designer are sketch, CSS, and HTML.

Senior production artist vs freelance designer overview

Senior Production ArtistFreelance Designer
Yearly salary$86,821$57,260
Hourly rate$41.74$27.53
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs55,00045,914
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 68%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3838
Years of experience1212

Senior production artist vs freelance designer salary

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

Senior Production ArtistFreelance Designer
Average salary$86,821$57,260
Salary rangeBetween $65,000 And $115,000Between $39,000 And $83,000
Highest paying CityBellevue, WA-
Highest paying stateWashington-
Best paying companyPIXOMONDO-
Best paying industryTechnology-

Differences between senior production artist and freelance designer education

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

Senior Production ArtistFreelance Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 68%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania

Senior production artist vs freelance designer demographics

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

Senior Production ArtistFreelance Designer
Average age3838
Gender ratioMale, 58.3% Female, 41.7%Male, 48.0% Female, 52.0%
Race ratioBlack 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%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 Percentage13%13%

Differences between senior production artist and freelance designer duties and responsibilities

Senior production artist example responsibilities.

  • Manage production of products; custom banners, t-shirts, satin flags, from concept to final product.
  • Produce PDF files for outside vendors and internal customers.
  • Perform layout and pre-press of all POS, window backdrops, magalogs, and advertising.
  • Eliminate printing of regional meeting line art by creating live PDF files to save 5K+ sheets of paper.
  • Retouch all wedding/fashion/commercial/portrait/architecture digital photography.
  • Retouch all wedding/fashion/commercial/portrait/architecture digital photography.

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 production artist vs freelance designer skills

Common senior production artist skills
  • Adobe Indesign, 14%
  • Art Directors, 10%
  • Adobe Photoshop, 7%
  • Web Banners, 6%
  • Mac, 6%
  • Print Production, 5%
Common freelance designer skills
  • Sketch, 11%
  • CSS, 7%
  • HTML, 6%
  • Adobe Photoshop, 6%
  • Adobe Illustrator, 6%
  • Photography, 5%

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