The marketing underworld is alive with creatives: copywriters, advertisers, strategists and creative directors dominate the scene with innovation and leadership. Perhaps those who can coin the right slogan to sell products and services of household brands get the most acclaim, but there are those working tirelessly behind the scenes who function as the magic production glue.

Who can follow a relentless book of brand guidelines from a pharmaceutical company and still manage to be “creative” in advertising and branding? Who can turn a blue sky vision for a TV ad into a reality with a shoestring for a budget compounded with crazy turnaround times?

Meet the Art Director.

[*Zoe De Poalo, AD at MullenLowe, image by Elizabeth Joy Sanders]*

They’ve been called the “weird theater kids” of the design world or misunderstood as aloof artists who float through museums critiquing paintings all day, but art directors, despite the hoard of confusion around the role, literally *“direct art”* as Zoe Concetta De Poalo, AD at MullenLowe emphasizes. Art directors hold their client's vision in tension with the serviceability of the consumer and strike the chord between practicality and idealism with one fell stroke.
De Poalo spends her time coming up with scripts and campaigns for tv commercial projects, designing magazine layouts, and overall weaves clients' expectations, photographers, videographers, and designers all together to align on a single ad campaign.
While the role is diverse and each art director can specialize in different kinds of design and production, they uniformly come together to direct art and birth the story behind their client’s products and services.

Here’s what the Art Director should be recognized for:

Firstly, they are true working artists. Compared with visual artists, who are commissioned for their vision and can often end up selling their self-expression from an ivory tower very separate and detached from the pressure of supply and demand, art directors are engaged. “The role isn’t always creative,” asserts Justine Kashulines, AD at Jack Morton Worldwide. And perhaps that’s what makes them the best kind of working artists.

[*Christa MacDonald, AD at 829 Studios,* *image by Elizabeth Joy Sanders]*

Art directors must live in the trenches of a market economy, look at supply and demand, care first about the user experience, client goals, and the ideals of beauty and art while keeping the direction focused tightly on a target audience. *“Wherever you look, someone designed that,”* Christa MacDonald, AD at 829 Studios explains that it’s a million small things that add up vying for the half a second she gets of everyone’s attention.
From a box of lemon wafers at Eataly, to the welcome sign at an orthodontist's office, to a Coca-Cola billboard, to a price tag on your new Vans – someone designed that. *“You have to prioritize strategy and be data driven and always ask ‘Where’s the love in it?’”* MacDonald emphasizes that in the middle of so much data, **storytelling must hold its own.**
Art directors must be the communicators between their clients and their clients’ audiences, and as a result they must consider every angle, every color, overall accessibility, and every potential narrative behind each design decision.

An art director is only as good as their creative team. Camila Amortegui, AD at Wayfair, explains: it’s not the directors themselves that get to enjoy all the art-making, but it’s the management of people and seeing them thrive that makes the magic happen. Building beautiful sets, hiring great stylists, coming up with concepts for brand design, and establishing a brand voice for a particular client or campaign is the result of an honest team effort.

Not only do we salute the art director for getting messy and creating serviceable art, we also acknowledge the unique challenges they have in STEM-central cities. In cities where science, healthcare, technology, engineering, medicine, and finance are the leaders – the art director is tasked with a challenge to highlight seemingly “dry” industries’ emotion and creativity.

[*Madison Albano, AD at Mass Mutual, image by Elizabeth Joy Sanders]*

*“Anyone can make a poster,”* Madison Albano, AD at Mass Mutual declares, *“but you always want to make something that is more than meets the eye.”*
Albano acknowledges the nuance she must hold in this field, and explains that part of the art director’s challenge is to get people to slow down and engage with a piece of content from a different perspective.

Art directors must be the champions of accessibility when it comes to sharing the messages of industries in the STEM-world. In Boston, we find a city that is particularly charged with bio-med or bio-tech companies who desperately rely on creative professionals to be good at what they’re not good at. Alana Kelley, AD at Workhuman, emphasizes that these industries do not have to be boring, but remain a challenge for art directors to stand out in the midst of competition with their creativity. Lane Beachler, Senior AD at Argus, shares that bringing this kind of vision to life is one of the most rewarding aspects of her job.

[*Lane Beachler, Senior Art Director at Argus,* *image by Elizabeth Joy Sanders]*

Beachler stresses the importance of developing listening skills when dealing with “less creative” industries who, more often than not, are thrilled when they see thoughtful and creative proposals.
In order to achieve successful outcomes for clients in the STEM-world, the art director must listen well and provide creative solutions that include what *they think* the client wants, what the client *actually wants,* and what *could be possible* if the art director or agency had free reign and no limitations.

Mary Oliver, American poet extraordinaire, writes about the “Ordinary Self” in an essay called On Power and Time. She makes the distinction between those who work in jobs that make the world go around and those who make the world go forward. She writes:

“You want the pilot to be his regular and ordinary self. You want him to approach and undertake his work with no more than a calm pleasure. You want nothing fancy, nothing new. You ask him to do, routinely, what he knows how to do — fly an airplane. You hope he will not daydream. You hope he will not drift into some interesting meander of thought... So, too, with the surgeon, and the ambulance driver, and the captain of the ship...Their ordinariness is the surety of the world. Their ordinariness makes the world go round. In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward.”

Right now, what’s driving the advertising industry forward is an increasing demand for authenticity and relatability. Art directors must track trends and listen well to the consumers to deliver what the people want — they do this by providing fresh perspectives that encourage people to think deeper in microscopic ways.

[*Caitlyn Sinclair, AD at Evenflo, image by Elizabeth Joy Sanders]*

Caitlyn Sinclair, AD at Evenflo, tells us: *“Culture is only inching forward, it’s allowing one little bit of change at a time – the wins come in but it only gets there little by little.”* Sinclair’s target audience at Evenflo highlights the importance of motherhood and family, and the demand for authenticity in depicting motherhood has never been higher.
The creative call of the art director is not found in the surety of its ordinariness, as Mary Oliver would have pilots and surgeons, but it is vision-casting ideals that heavily shape a society – one pixel at a time.

De Poalo also speaks to this by saying that as she tracks trends and societal shifts, there is no telling what the repercussions of a series of small decisions can make over the course of a decade. Design is served with intention and purpose in the moment, but usually cultural change does not happen overnight.

While the data will only be revealed over the course of years, the everyday decisions of art directors who are either in-house for a company or at ad agencies will move culture forward one way or another. The art director has been given so many open-ended pieces of a puzzle without a guide. Armed only with their creativity and worldview they can move culture forward in the ways they tell the story of products, services, and the experiences of a brand or business. Jaci DaCosta, AD at Brown University, highlights the work of storytelling in art direction that comes at the cost of perfectionism, she says: “We are teachers always on the relentless pursuit of perfection, but it doesn’t have to be perfect, it needs to hold humility.”

As a commercial photographer who gets the honor of working with art directors and helping bring their visions to life, I see these artists labor over each detail with an idealism that calls them to tell the truth about life with the products and services they advertise. Each of their stories speaks an encouraging message to art and design students who are unsure of their place in the world — turns out there is not only space for you in the commercial world, but corporate desperately needs your authenticity and creativity!

Perhaps a note of wisdom and warning can be found in what Olivia Crane, Senior AD at Stop & Shop advises — she notes that it is essential for the art director to be passionate about the subject matter she is working with. She encourages younger and aspiring art directors to be passionate around the industry the art director is dealing with in order to produce the very best work. Allison Brown, AD at Wheaton College, when asked what career advice she would give to her younger self, says unabashedly, “Everything! I would say to my younger self that you’re gonna face a lot of tough clients and projects and you’re gonna need to push through, but you’re gonna grow.”

The labor is not always glamorous, but with a growth mindset little by little the impact of art directors on society can shape a new generation of leaders and thinkers, and for this we thank them for leading with humility and courage.

Covert Culture-Makers: Boston’s Leading Art Directors

Who can follow a relentless book of brand guidelines from a pharmaceutical company and still manage to be “creative” in advertising and branding? Who can turn a blue sky vision for a TV ad into a reality with a shoestring for a budget compounded with crazy turnaround times?

Meet the Art Director.

De Poalo spends her time coming up with scripts and campaigns for tv commercial projects, designing magazine layouts, and overall weaves clients' expectations, photographers, videographers, and designers all together to align on a single ad campaign.

While the role is diverse and each art director can specialize in different kinds of design and production, they uniformly come together to direct art and birth the story behind their client’s products and services.

Here’s what the Art Director should be recognized for:

Art directors must be the communicators between their clients and their clients’ audiences, and as a result they must consider every angle, every color, overall accessibility, and every potential narrative behind each design decision.

“Anyone can make a poster,” Madison Albano, AD at Mass Mutual declares, “but you always want to make something that is more than meets the eye.”

Albano acknowledges the nuance she must hold in this field, and explains that part of the art director’s challenge is to get people to slow down and engage with a piece of content from a different perspective.

Beachler stresses the importance of developing listening skills when dealing with “less creative” industries who, more often than not, are thrilled when they see thoughtful and creative proposals.

Mary Oliver, American poet extraordinaire, writes about the “Ordinary Self” in an essay called On Power and Time. She makes the distinction between those who work in jobs that make the world go around and those who make the world go forward. She writes:

The creative call of the art director is not found in the surety of its ordinariness, as Mary Oliver would have pilots and surgeons, but it is vision-casting ideals that heavily shape a society – one pixel at a time.

The labor is not always glamorous, but with a growth mindset little by little the impact of art directors on society can shape a new generation of leaders and thinkers, and for this we thank them for leading with humility and courage.