Qualifications of Creative director

Qualifications

Creative directors are usually promoted from copywriting or art directing positions, and while all have a command of one of the two disciplines, they are more than familiar with the other, and in some rare cases they are equally adept at both. Long lists have been arrived at to enumerate the qualifications a CD should have, but the lists can be as illuminating as they can be obscure. Vindicative opponents usually help embellish the list by arriving at qualities CDs shouldn't have. CDs should be more than just masters at their craft. They also should be able managers of people, especially the charged and livewire individuals that gravitate to advertising. Nevertleless, at the very least, art directors who become creative directors should have developed an extremely fine ear for good copy, just as copywriters who become creative directors should have an educated eye for design.

David Ogilvy once advertised for creative directors for his agency, and called them "Trumpeteer Swans." This may highlight the difficulty of finding consensus on what qualifies a creative director. There isn't an easily understood qualification similar to an MBA for creative people. However, the management schools and independent advertising schools do graduate people with their own degrees and diplomas.

Traditional qualifications

Art directors usually possess a communication design or fine arts degree. Copywriters may have degrees in journalism, language arts or may develop more emphasis on writing while pursuing a communication design degree. The discipline of creative directing may be a minor study while pursuing a communication design degree as well.

Many creative professionals arrive at advertising from a variety of other professions with no formal degree. While mere experience in other professions may seem as non-advertising-career-related experience to those unfamiliar with advertising, it's generally seen within advertising as qualification for having "lived a life", enabling one to empathize with consumers, at whom advertising is directed anyway. Knowing the demographic of the person one is selling to is fundamental to advertising. The insight into the consumer is a much desired or insisted-on trait.

Beyond degrees and experience as art directors or copywriters and a track record of good advertising, the qualifications for creative directing are more subjective. Communication designers lack well-known standards that telegraph and establish their training, experience or capabilities. Complicating the validity of traditional qualifications, many communication designers have gravitated to advertising from the unlikeliest careers. Salman Rushdie was a copywriter, as was Lawrence Kasdan. Ridley Scott was an advertising film maker before he began directing films. Tarsem Singh was a highly acclaimed television commercial director based in London, shot the very arty "The Cell" with Jennifer Lopez.

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