Advertising and Design

Advertising and Design

These are the notes from my Professional Practice lecture. I learnt a lot about what working as an illustrator for an advertising agency would be like, to summarise... Intense. Give it a read if you're interested in entering that sector, or if you're just curious about what goes on =)

Advertising

An illustrator must be very well established in order to approach an advertising company as lots of money is involved and art directors want to see published, relevant work so as to ensure that the illustrator isn’t too much of a risk. An advertising campaign consists of more than 3 adverts; the outlets of these could be direct mail, newspaper, and posters, TV and/or the Internet. The campaigns could be local, national or international.

There is a very long, extensive hierarchy involved in the advertising process. The illustratorà Art buyerà one of the creative teams (of which there are often many) à Art directorà Hiring Company. This means that there are extremely tight deadlines involved as everyone’s approval and opinion is required before moving ahead on the final artwork. The clients are often very demanding and there is very little creative freedom allowed to the illustrator, with dwindling deadlines and highly controlled briefs, this is a stressful but lucrative industry.

Design Companies

Design companies can range from a two people to multinational corporations, some are multidisciplinary and some specialise in certain areas of the field. Design companies can deal with branding and corporate identity, which often involves a very complex remodelling of the hiring company. Illustration is common in this area and design for print is still the dominant form of media. Branding could be fashion, food and drink, sports etc.

To keep up to date in this area, it is important to know what everyone is doing, from illustrators working in the design sector, to the ad campaigns themselves. This can be done by looking on online directories such as chb.com, creativemat.com, creativehandbook.com and newdesigners.com. Magazines that often write features on advertising campaigns are Graphik, Design Week, Creative Review and Campaign. ALF (Account list file) is another good place to look.