Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an editorial art director and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An Editorial Art Director is responsible for overseeing the presenting of the visual artistic life with the words used in displaying their artistic styles to the customers. Art can be expressed in many ways including video, audio, photography and design. This position is for those who show their artistic side with the use of words ensuring they capture the audience they intend to.
Duties for this position include, developing the overall look or style of a publication, determining how to present a concept on paper with designs that fit the particular art, supervise editorial staff, review and approve different editorial designs, talk to clients about the artistic approach and the styles that can be used, coordinating activities with other artists to create new impressions.
Core Skills Required to be an Editorial Art Director
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An editorial art director should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Listening Skills:
Listening Skills are a practical ability to accurately receive and interpret messages you receive during the communication process to ensure flow and accuracy are maintained.
An Editorial Art Director ought to have outstanding listening skills that lead to a better understanding at the workplace between the management and the staff, customer satisfaction in return yielding greater productivity with fewer mistakes and increased sharing of information in a more creative and innovative way.
Decision Making:
Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.
An Editorial Art Director cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.
Potential for Advancement:
The potential for Advancement is the ability to make something better by being more skillful, more efficient, and more useful to produce high-quality results.
An Editorial Art Director needs to invest in his employees by creating room for individual advancement that encourages stronger job performance because it positions the employees to demonstrate just how well they can perform their jobs through motivation and feedback that are critical to the employee performance.
Project and Goal Focus:
Project and Goal Focus is setting your mind and heart on things that matter and add value to your life against those things that add no value at all or of little value.
An Editorial Art Director ought to learn of early hiccups that may cause distraction and get to motivate the employees early enough to see the projects completed promptly and in good condition.
Time Management:
Time Management is the capacity for an individual to assign specific time slots to activities as per their importance and urgency to make the best possible use of time.
An Editorial Art Director must schedule each task within a stipulated period for each employee and ensure all the tasks are completed promptly thus actually teaching the staff the value of time and how to utilize it for the interest of the business and their growth.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
An Editorial Art Director should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Process Improvement:
Process Improvement is the creation of new processes or improving the existing ones that will work and take your corporation to the next level.
An Editorial Art Director must maintain the continuous improvements in the workplace that are favorable to the current investors, potential investors, and stock owners while working with methods that can serve as a foundation for future business decisions causing a profitable growth.
Research:
Research is the ability to stay updated on the latest trends in different fields as per your concern or the concern of your company or business.
An Editorial Art Director ought to stay up to date on the latest trends in hiring, leading, retention, technology and much more by using the newest research methods that allow him to make better decisions and improve productivity.
Scheduling:
Scheduling is creating daily workflow charts that the employees are supposed to follow when working and submitting their projects.
An Editorial Art Director must be dedicated to establishing and maintaining the schedule using either manual or technology methods to ensure it is always updated according to the tasks, the employees responsible or the time allocated to each task without fail or delay.
Training others:
Training is the ability to expand the knowledge base by learning new truths that are useful in the workplace.
An Editorial Art Director needs to creatively schedule training for his employees in a focused manner that will allow the employee stay useful in the workplace and get new knowledge so that both the business and the worker not suffer from delays and work related stress.
Hard Skills Required to be an Editorial Art Director
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An editorial art director should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.