this first section I will be identifying roles within graphic design and the pros and cons of each.
Graphic designers
With a graphic design there are multiple job roles, these are as follows.
Junior Designers
Junior Designers are usually employed straight from education and will generally be considered ‘junior' for up to two years. Junior Designers will lie out pages, draw logos, redraw logos, do text corrections, be involved in brainstorming and generally all the stuff that the middleweight and senior designers don't want to do.
Pros: challanging working environment, which allows the employee to refine their talents
Being straight from education this time enables them to introduce new skill or acquire them.
Allows time for development of portfolio.
Cons: Minimum creative input, Low wages, menial tasks, high number of applicants to jobs.
Middleweight Designers
Middleweight Designers should usually already have some kind of professional portfolio. They will probably have mainly worked on parts of larger campaigns and a few smaller projects of their own. They will be able to take design briefs and implement them, but will still generally be overseen creatively by a Senior Designer or Art Director.
Pros: more creative input, increased wages, more challenging work and therefore more portfolio fillers
Cons: no final outcome, little interaction with client (not sure if that’s a con)
Senior Designers
Three to five years working experience will have been clocked up, before a ‘senior' tag is applied. Senior Designers will ideally be adept at taking briefs and may well have a lot more client liaison experience. A senior designer should have developed those famous problem-solving abilities to a degree where each design project is not seen in isolation. But rather, they will also be able to look at the ‘bigger picture' in a creative or advertising campaign.
Pros: increased wages, control over designs and outcomes, client liaison
Cons: increased responsibility (not sure if that’s a con really)
Art Directors
The Art Directors role is to brainstorm and come up with ideas. Other than the Creative Director, an Art Director will generally be the most senior ‘hands-on' creative for a design project or creative campaign. They will understand branding and also oversee the correct briefing and supervision of the rest of the design team. Often this will be in conjunction with the Studio Manager.
Creative Directors
Creative Directors will often have come through the same route as Art Directors. But, more and more they are coming in from a marketing background and certainly this would be beneficial in a corporate design environment. Often, this would not be a ‘hands-on' design position. Or rather, there are few Creative Directors that would sit down in front of a Macintosh and bash out concepts in Illustrator or QuarkXPress on a daily basis. Although there is certainly some that do. Creative Directors will be concerned with the higher-level issues of branding and marketing and would have a lot more direct contact with the client.
Pro: total control of works, highly paid, final discoing making.
Con: not a grate deal of hands on creation.
Web Designers
So where do Web Designers fit in with all of this? Once again, this varies from company to company. At one point the term ‘web designer' meant an HTML developer, or JavaScript coder who could use a bit of Photoshop. Currently, certainly amongst many graphic design agencies, web designers tend to have similar titles and roles to their colleagues in the print design industry. Some web designers are expected to be able to code as well; others are required to at least be able to use WYSIWYG web design software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive. Others are only responsible for creating the concepts in Photoshop, before handing over the graphics to web developers to hand code.
Obviously, a close working relationship would be required between a creative graphic designer and a web developer. Moreover, a graphic designer, working on interactive design or web site design projects, should have a good understanding of interactive design principles, usability and online branding issues.
Pros: highly sort after, if a designer can also code to a high standard they are on to a winner, can be highly paid
Cons: high amounts of compition, constant technologies changes, coding can be extremely complex, can have low creative input.
Art workers
Before the true advent of computing, graphic designers and art directors conceptualised and produced design concepts. They then briefed specialists, who went ahead and used highly expensive hot-metal machinery, chemicals and cameras to produce the type and graphics/artwork the designers imagined. These people came to be known as art workers or graphic artists and typesetters. now in the present day, using computers, some of these roles still exist although in different guises.
Mac Operator
The term Mac Operator is such a relative one, that it is hard to give a specific description to the role. A Mac Operator will often do much of the less creative work in a design studio, or publishing house. This can include marked-up text corrections, spell checks and formatting documents to pre-arranged templates. However, in a pre-press or print environment, the role can be a much more technical one.
Either way, it is generally true to say that being a Mac Operator is rarely a route to becoming a graphic designer. In fact, many job advertisements even display warnings such as 'This is Not a Creative Position'. On the other hand, it can be a way in to becoming an 'Art worker' or 'Finished Artist'. It can also be a good money Spinner for those returning to employment, temps and part time workers. If you fit into that category and have fast QuarkXPress or In Design skills, it may be worth a go.
Art workers, graphic artists (or Finished Artists as they are called in some countries) would generally have a high level of skill in the basic graphic design software products, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, In design, Freehand and so on. Traditionally, Art workers would not be expected to have much creative input, but would implement a concept, based on a designer's or Art Director's brief. High-end Photoshop skills, in particular, are a much sought after skill.
Art workers would also, generally, be expected to take a designer's layout and make sure that it is ready for pre-press or print. Since the advent of desktop publishing, many people have questioned the need for such a distinction between 'creative' and 'art worker'. Indeed, many design companies are beginning to despair at the number of graphic design students that continue to leave university without the ability to set up a job for print. There are, however, other design agencies that continue to function on the old system. Whether they will still be able to afford to do so in the future, is questionable.
There is, of course, the whole graphics industry based around pre-press, reproduction and printing. And many Art workers and Mac Operators work in that sector. These highly skilled jobs require a high-end knowledge of the usual graphics software, such as Adobe Photoshop, QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator. But it also requires knowledge of print production issues such as colour reproduction theory, trapping and ink density. It is here that graphic designer's concepts are actually turned into a reality.
Pros: Highly sort after, interesting work, can work for multiple designers, reasonable pay.
Con, low if any creative input, constantly changing soft/hardware needs to be kept up with.
Design management
Management careers within the graphics industry are jobs that have a tendency to overlap. They can range from hands off account handling, to creative. They can generally be covered under the following job titles - Design Managers, Studio Managers, Producers, Production Managers and Project Managers
Design Managers and Studio Managers will both have role in managing the design process within a design company. If we make a generalisation, it would be fair to say that the differences would be the degree of emphasis that each role would have on the design strategy and day-to-day management of the design studio.
A career in design management would be client facing and would typically also involve budgeting, scheduling and reporting for individual clients. A Design Manager would also foster client relationships, as well as having input into longer term marketing projects. Often the role is heavily account handling focussed.
Studio Managers, on the other hand, would have more of a responsibility for the smooth running of the creative studio as a whole (both technically and logistically), as well as resource management. A career in Studio Management is also the more likely of the two to have a hands-on creative role - in many cases a Studio Manager will also take on an Art Director or Senior Designer role. Some design companies also employ a specific Production Manager, to buy print and oversee the pre-press and print production process.
Other roles that a designer may come across, especially in an interactive design environment, include Project Managers and Producers. Project Managers have become more common in design agencies that have taken on web designers and multimedia design projects.
To some degree, it is a legacy of the software programming industry from which interactive design and web site development emerged. Producers will tend to have a more creative role, but their role in a web design company will be more akin to that of a Design Manager in a print design environment.
Pros: highly paid, lot of client interaction
Cons: low creative input, managerial position suited to analytical individuals
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