Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To and today I'm going to tell you the
difference, hopefully, between graphic artists, production artists and graphic designers.
So if you just graduated college, you're probably out there looking at job listings, and you
might notice that a lot of the listings, their descriptions are really similar but they all
have these different titles: graphic artist, production artist, graphic designer.
And actually in college, at least at my college, there was a completely different curriculum
for a graphic artist versus a graphic designer.
So first, let's tackle production art.
I think that one's pretty much the same across the board.
A production artist is kind of like a graphic workhorse.
I was a production artist.
Actually, my title was graphic artist but I did a ton of production art in my first
job as a Tshirt graphic designer.
Production artists know the programs inside and out, they're very fast, and they're very
accurate.
So they'll take designs and make changes very, very quickly.
Usually they are not the ones who design the graphics that they're working on.
They're taking someone else's project and making changes to it or maybe just completely
changing it out to a new style.
So a good example of this: as my first job as a graphic artist/production artist, I took
tshirt designs, and the design was maybe made for somebody like Arizona State, that college.
And my job was to take that Arizona State design and change it to a University of Central
Missouri design.
So I would change the logos, the colors, everything about it to say Central Missouri instead of
Arizona State.
And that was my whole job.
I could do about 30 of these in a day, on a very good day.
A day where they were really flowing and didn't have too many problems.
And I really loved that job for a long time.
Just, over time you get to where it's second nature and you can just put on your headphones,
play music, and just get through designs all day long.
There is some creativity involved - when you know something doesn't look right, you can
make a change and put it somewhere else, but very little creativity when it comes to production
art jobs.
The problem with them is they generally become a little boring because you're not ever putting
your own input in, you're just getting the designs done.
And so for me, it sort of turned into...it kind of reminded me of my old factory job
that I worked in between college breaks that was just the same thing over and over.
I didn't have to think about it, and it got pretty boring.
So that's the downside of production work.
Now a graphic artist a lot of times will do some production work like I did, but they
also make a lot more creative changes.
And online a lot of people who call themselves graphic artists are people who do, like, photo
manipulations, maybe they're doing digital painting, but they don't really have a strategy
in mind when they're creating their art.
They're just creating art for art's sake.
Production artists and graphic artists are usually paid a little less than graphic designers
because there's not a lot of creativity involved, and there's not a lot of strategy involved.
When I became a graphic designer, it was a huge change.
There was a lot more creativity involved, a lot more strategy, and it was really problem
and solution oriented.
I would get a creative brief and a Word document with all the content that needed to go into
the piece I was creating.
And then that's it, I would have to completely create a magazine ad or a billboard or maybe
an infographic, and the design and everything was up to me completely.
I did have to stick with brand standards like colors, logos, of course, and keep it on brand
for that client, but the layout and everything else was up to me.
So I generally tend to think of these three titles as production artists being very low
creativity, graphic artists being a bit more and then a graphic designer being really creative...and
the pay does reflect that.
However, when you're searching for a job, you might notice there's so much ambiguity
with job titles and a lot of overlap.
So when you're looking, don't only focus on the title itself.
Go in and read the description to find out what you're really going to be doing in that
position.
Let's take a look at a few different job postings in the New York area.
First, we've got this graphic artist position at Prestige Custom Awards.
And right here it says the graphic artist is responsible for taking our clients concepts
and ideas and translating them into a 3d design.
Now, this is what I think of when I think of a graphic artist position.
They're taking someone's idea and they're making it happen.
There's not a whole lot of creativity involved because the client is just telling the graphic
artists what to do, but it is still creative.
So right here it mentions, you need to use your creative genius to take sometimes general
design themes or concepts and translate them into impactful designs that will convey the
importance of the event or whatever's going on.
And so with this position, you're going to need to be creative.
I really feel like this position is probably titled pretty well.
It's a graphic artist position.
Alright, let's move on to another job title.
Here's a graphic designer for the New York City Department of Environment Protection.
And here we see that this person will concept, develop, and create a wide variety of graphic
assets for all of these different applications.
So they're starting from scratch.
They're concepting, they're developing, and then probably presenting to their senior graphic
designer.
And here we have one more.
This is a graphic artist at the New School, and this says they should be adept at translating
data concepts and message s into innovative designs.
So this position to me sounds like a graphic designer.
But a lot of graphic designers wouldn't take this, they wouldn't apply to this job simply
because of the job title.
And what I don't want you to do is to skip a bunch of jobs that would be great for you
just because you want to be really creative.
A lot of jobs that are actually titled graphic artist are graphic designer jobs.
So don't limit yourself by only applying to those jobs that say graphic designer in the
title.
When I was first starting out in the industry, I applied to ANYTHING and EVERYTHING graphics-related
and I think you should, too.
And then as you move on and get more experience, you can really kind of hone down exactly what
you're looking for and be a lot more selective.
Alright, that's my video for this week.
If you liked it, please click on the Like button.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design video.
Thank you!!!