THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE HIRING AN ART DIRECTOR
Do you need someone who can pull your creative team together, have them performing at their best and blowing your client’s socks off? Get an Art Director!
SAVE UP TO 70% PER MONTH BY HIRING A C9 STAFF ART DIRECTOR
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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1
What is an Art Director?

CHAPTER 2
The Role of an Art Director

CHAPTER 3
Important Skills and Traits of Art Directors

CHAPTER 4
Where Can You Find Art Directors?

CHAPTER 5
Hiring Considerations

CHAPTER 6
C9 Staff Art Directors
What is an Art Director?
In a basketball team, you have individual stars: the playmaker, the sharpshooter, the big man, the defensive specialist, and the rebounder. Some teams even have the mascot and the trash talker whose main purpose is to make the other team lose their cool and play badly. But regardless of how good individual players are, what pulls them together and turns them into a winning team is the coach.

An art director is someone who pulls the creative team together into one cohesive unit. He visualizes and projects the overall artistic strategy for a project. Then, he defines what is needed from each member of the creative team: the graphic designers, photographers, artists, copywriters, editors, and the production staff. He inspires them to bring in their best work, and orchestrates their results together into the finished project.



Another common confusion is between that of an artistic director and a creative director. The creative director conceptualizes the overall creative direction of the project, while the art director executes that concept and turns it into a tangible aesthetic expression.
The Role of an Art Director
For an art director, management of the creative team goes beyond simply assigning tasks and making sure those tasks get completed.
In this sense, an art director needs to have a crystal clear grasp of the client’s message. He has to be present in client meetings. He needs to participate in the discussions. He needs to ask questions. He has to make recommendations if necessary. The aim for an art director is to be an authority when it comes to the client’s message. When the client says, “Our goal for this marketing campaign is to get people excited to play basketball!”, the art director must be able to reply, “5-on-5 or 3-on-3?”

Important Skills and Traits of Art Directors

But more than technical skills, as a management-oriented role, an art director needs exceptional communication skills. From the beginning of the project, when the creative vision still mainly resides in his head, he must be able to communicate his artistic idea to the creative team. That’s like describing the color red to a blind person. The measure of how well an art director is able to communicate is how close to his vision the output of his team is.
Like many other management roles, an art director also needs to have excellent time management and organizational skills. His attention to detail must be without question. And his ability to multi-task should be unparalleled.
Where Can You Find Art Directors?
So we’re down to the million dollar question: “Where do you find a worthy art director?” Is there a number you can call like 1-800-ART-DIRECTOR?

First off, you need to decide whether you want to hire a local art director or a remote one.
The advantages of hiring locally include:

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Ease of access and the ability to work with you personally – it’s always easier to work with someone face to face.
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Less cultural and social adjustment needed – you’re most probably living in the same city as your designer so you’re in the same time zone, speak the same language and share the same culture. This makes work so much smoother.
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Better team-building opportunities – being in the same place physically creates plenty of opportunity to train, collaborate, build rapport, and get feedback.
On the other hand, hiring local talent can have the following disadvantages:
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Specific skill sets can be harder to find – if you’re limited to a particular geographical area, finding a rockstar will be challenging.
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Overhead expenses – if you hire locally, you’ll be obligated to keep an office which means you have to pay rent, pay for supplies, pay for electricity and other utilities. If you already have an office, you’ll have to provide your new hire with a work space which translates to the same thing – increased overhead.
If you decide to hire a remote worker, you need to decide if you’re hiring a project-based director or a full-time one.
In any case, here are the advantages of hiring remote talent:

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Access to a global pool of talents – you’re not limited to who’s available in your city and what they know. Hiring remotely gives you access to talented art directors from different countries who may even charge relatively smaller fees than local recruits. This is true to both project-based freelancers and full-timers.
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Little to no overhead – most remote workers work from home so you don’t need to worry about providing them with work spaces. This is especially true for project-based freelancers. However, for full-time employees, you may be required to subsidize their internet connection, computer equipment etc. But these costs are still far less compared to local overhead expenses.
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Less contractual obligation – you can hire art directors on a per-project basis. If you like their work, continue to give them projects to work on. If you don’t, just don’t give them any more tasks to perform and that’s that.
On the other hand,
here are the disadvantages of hiring remote workers:
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Trial and error – you can’t really gauge the level of expertise, experience and even work ethic of the remote worker until you take a leap of faith and hire them. The good news is, if you don’t like their performance on the first project, you can just part ways right then and there.
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Time constraints – if you hire a remote art director, particularly a freelancer, you need to understand right off the bat that you’re probably sharing him with several other clients (some paying more than you). That means your project is at the mercy of the freelancer’s workload. This may not be the case, though, with full-time remote employees.
That being said, here are a few places where you can find art directors online. Note that in some of these websites, you’ll have the option to hire either locally or remotely. It’s all up to you, your needs and your budget:

Upwork (local and remote) – geared more towards the US market. You can post a media buying job, and available contractors can start lining up to apply. All you’d need to do is choose the best candidate. This is a good place to look for either part-timers or full-time art directors.
Fiverr (remote and local) – contractors already post their services and their fees upfront. However, there’s still room for negotiation once you’ve touched base with a contractor. This is your best choice for one-off projects.


People Per Hour (remote and local) – geared more towards the European market. Just like Upwork, you post a job and contractors will apply. You can choose the best candidate and go from there. This is also a good place to look for either part-timers or full-time art director.
C9 Staff (remote) – specializes in providing remote staffing services from a global pool of talents spread across 35 top international labor markets. It is considered a concierge service where you don’t simply hire an art director (or any other kind of remote worker for that matter), you hire an art director with an entire management service behind him to keep him accountable and always on his toes. This is ideal for people looking to hire the best and expecting to get the best while keeping costs relatively competitive.

Hiring Considerations
When looking to hire an art director, whether it be local or remote, there are a few important considerations you have to keep in mind.
What kind of project are you working on? Are you running an advertising agency, a digital marketing firm, a magazine, a stage production outfit or an events coordination company?


Finally, how much do you have to spend? Are you ready to spend good money on a senior-level art director or is your budget pointing towards a mid-level one?
Why C9 Staff Art Directors Rock
Here at C9 Staff, we have art directors in all levels of proficiency. Whether you need a mid-level (with 1-3 years experience) or a senior level art director (with 4 years experience or more), we have one that fits your needs.
