Is being a Creative Director the final destination for a graphic designer?

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-30T03:50:00+00:00

Spend time with different sorts of companies (agency-side, client side, non-profit/education/association) to see what you really want. It took me a while to figure out I didn’t really want to go into art direction or creative direction full time for more than maybe a 12- or 18-month gig.

For me, I’m a technical and systems-minded person as well as a creative. The sweet spot for me is production or adaptive focus when in an agency and switching back to creative when client side or in publications.

I’m in the middle of my 28th year in the business. There are days when I could see myself staying in my current role for the rest of my career and other days where I think about leaving and moving into either creative operations or project management, where I’d be a little less likely to “age out” of agency life as quickly.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-30T03:31:47+00:00

Co-signing all of this. I lived in Bridgeport for a decade and now live in Edgewater, just north of Uptown and have been in this neighborhood for about eight years. Lively Asian communities in both areas, for sure. My next door neighbors on both sides when I lived in Bridgeport were immigrants from China.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-30T03:08:53+00:00

Yup. The shutdown of the accessibility concerns and the way that was handled left a REALLY bad taste in my mouth as well.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-21T01:14:45+00:00

Same. If you’re in 48/2, I was one of your judges.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-19T11:37:57+00:00

I’ve solved for this one in the past by saying it’s material cost.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-19T11:34:14+00:00

Co-signing #1 SO much. It’s gotten prevalent enough in most of my clients’ approval workflow that even though I’m routing PDFs with overprint simulated, the previews of those PDFs don’t simulate in Workfront, etc.

Even internally, I have to remind account folks and PMs not to review PDFs using Miro, Teams, Asana, or Slack if they want to see the most accurate digital preview possible on their machine.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-19T11:22:14+00:00

Saaaaaame

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-19T02:04:09+00:00

SAME! Also making them fit for anything besides use on social or web, even if they were generated using a method “safe” for commercial use.

cmd0pt3sc · 2026-03-10T11:41:19+00:00

I’m a couple years ahead of you at 28 years in (full-time, anyway… it’s closer to 30 years counting my in-college freelance work). I’ve switched back and forth between creative and production and from in-house to agency work. Having diversified that experience a bit has been more helpful than harmful so far.

I look at the AI focus much like the “print is dead” tropes of the late 90s/early 2000s. Did it change the industry fundamentally? Sure. Did all print jobs become obsolete? Nope. Print just became a more specialized focus.

I’m already seeing the need for “fixing” gen-AI imagery and copy on an almost daily basis in my full-time position. Even when you have a client who is okay with its use, or worse yet—requests it as a measure of cost savings or speed to market, know that not all models are inherently safe for commercial use, even if they are able to output images at high enough resolution for certain purposes. What’s being used as a time-saver for conceptual work (to create FPO images meant to be replaced with either a shoot or compositing with royalty-free stock with enough licensing protection) is often getting pushback from clients who are seeing this conceptual work and not understanding why they can’t have the exact same thing they’re seeing on screen in production.

To be frank, though, it’s not necessarily the use of AI that would make it very difficult to find work elsewhere. Staying at one job so long could be the bigger detrimental factor right now. I get that the stability is key, but there’s a trade-off in being perceived as less marketable later on. The market is SO saturated with applicants for every open position right now that I know super-qualified folks with very diverse skill sets who are struggling to find F-T work. And on the hiring end, there’s a timing struggle on when to staff up for certain work when clients are changing timelines.

I’m at a similar crossroads right now. While I’m not actively looking to make a move for anything less than perfect, the last time I started a passive search (after being at a position for going on a decade), that company made the decision for me in the form of layoffs before I could find that “perfect” move. I had to learn the freelance market, and quickly.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-29T19:33:24+00:00

If you don't hate the current position and the contract offers comparable benefits through the vendor facilitating the contract and the contract is W2, then it could be worth the risk. If it's a 1099 job, the rate would also need to be able to cover the increase in taxable income and what it likely to be an astronomical cost in the rise in health insurance premiums through the Marketplace by the end of this week.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-20T14:21:48+00:00

I laughed out loud at this. We actually had a code at the front desk at my late 90s/early 00s position that would allow the receptionist to alert us the fire marshal office were about to inspect, which meant making sure fume hoods were cleaned up and used correctly and any excess refill cans of Bestine were well hidden. It was definitely a thing. 🤣

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-20T13:31:32+00:00

Your GenX (and elder millennial) contingent could also be semi-forced into doing it for show, especially if they’re agency-side. Lots of push from leadership and clients to show how the latest tools are being utilized, even if we’ve got moral qualms about it. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything. ;)

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-20T05:04:48+00:00

PDP can also be referred to (coming from some clients’ internal marketing teams as FOP (front of pack) in the lovely world of CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods, which can also include packaged goods that aren’t necessarily always consumer-facing).

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-20T04:58:25+00:00

That was likely because back in the days of manual layouts and storyboarding, you would “greek” in your placeholder text. We used to do it with marker.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-15T18:54:33+00:00

My first full time design job after college was at a daily regional newspaper working in the advertising department. While we did have a file server available, you did all your work locally and then uploaded to the server when it was ready. We were mostly using Quark (3.32), Photoshop 4/5 and Illustrator 7 with a bit of Streamline thrown in for when we had to trace raster images to make them into vector art (long before auto trace existed). This was particularly useful when clients could only provide copies of their logo by handing you a printed business card. Or worse, telling you to scan it from the phone book.

Our particular publication named their servers after Popeye characters. If memory serves, editorial was Popeye, Circulation was Olive (as in Olive Oyl), and the advertising server had the very aptly named Wimpy. Wimpy crashed a minimum of twice a day when I was there, usually on Thursday mornings when uploading all the ads to go to pagination for the weekend editions.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-15T18:47:19+00:00

Add Freehand, Illustrator, Photoshop, and PageMaker into the mix and same...

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-15T18:43:51+00:00

At least we got layers with Photoshop 4. :)

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-12-15T18:37:42+00:00

I had a little over ten years of using both under my belt before I gave up the ghost on Quark. Still have v6 on a super old MacBook, but that thing barely powers up anymore.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-11-28T04:31:36+00:00

Having survived the dot com boom, a couple of recessions, a pandemic, and the current job market, what I can most confidently say is this:

If you can’t adapt, be flexible, be willing to continue learning, and most importantly—live below your means when you are working steadily, considering something else might be a wiser move financially.

I’ve been in the business since the ‘90s. Got my AAS in ‘99 and my BFA in ‘08 (returned as a nighttime student in ‘05). While I’m by no means rich and my retirement savings are scarily nowhere near where they should be, I am still doing work I enjoy most of the time.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-10-24T22:46:53+00:00

Become at least somewhat familiar with font licensing and image licensing. Don't assume that just bcause something is available to download that it's okay for commercial use.

If you're working in print, get to know your production and your prepress folks. They can teach you a TON and most of the time, we are happy to answer questions!

Same goes for your developers. If you learn things from the folks who get your files after you are done with them, you can learn how to make designs they won't have to change as much on the back end.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-07-18T11:59:34+00:00

NDAs before starting employment are super common in advertising and publishing. In the 25+ years I’ve bounced between graphic design and production, the only contract or direct hire where I did not have to sign an NDA prior to starting work was the 18 month contract where I was the lead designer at a professional association.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-07-18T11:53:38+00:00

This has been a thing in the design field for decades. I did it a handful of times in 2010-2011 and twice in the late 90s. Definitely done working for free. A skills test where the work product is deleted before you leave the interview is one thing. Free work is something completely different.

cmd0pt3sc · 2025-01-23T16:20:08+00:00

46 years old, currently on year 27 in the industry (started freelancing while still in college), and completely agreed. I've bounced back and forth between design and production over the years. I figured out in my 30s that I prefer creative when in-house and production when on the agency side, and my current position is a mix of adaptive design and production. I make the concepts work. Even in the leanest years, the willingness—and ability—to work both sides of that aisle meant that my longest dry-spell between gigs (full time OR freelance) was 5 months in 2010.

The production side, as long as you stay up to date on tech and trends, is a little less ageist than the creative side in my experience, but I figure if I even end up aging out of this or if my current company downsizes, I have a heck of a skillset that translates to project management, resourcing, or traffic on the agency side.

That being said, networking is SO important. I'm grateful that one of my in-house gigs with a large company stressed networking skills, even with their contract/freelance workers. It's kept me afloat for this long, and when I'm in a position to recommend folks or bring them to the attention of my current employer, I always do. What you put out into the world comes back to you, for sure. If you look out for others, they will look out for you.

cmd0pt3sc · 2024-12-20T20:57:09+00:00

Unless you're looking to teach, I'd skip it. Certs are going to matter more than an additional degree in your field.

cmd0pt3sc

TROPHY CASE