Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a deputy art director and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Deputy Art Director is responsible for supervising videographers, designers and photographers a well as reviewing the freelancer's portfolios. This position is primarily based on experience and judgment to plan and accomplish the set goals.
The essential duties of this post include helping in planning and executing art, design and other visual elements in newspapers, books, magazines, websites, advertisements and any other printed and digital visual communications, collaborating with other artists and designers to deliver quality work to the leading art director, taking orders on the visual direction of projects, helping with choosing what photographs and artwork should be used in publications or shows.
Core Skills Required to be a Deputy 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.
A deputy art director should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Dealing with Difficult People:
Dealing with Difficult People is learning how to tactfully calm down an obnoxious person who is either verbally attacking you or stealthily criticizing you or your professional contribution.
A Deputy Art Director must learn how to combat and tone the demanding customers or staff who are competing for power, privilege or spotlight which defy logic not with fights but with the truth and more listening skills as well as lots of patience.
Developing Others:
Developing others is an unremitting process that focuses on the broader, longer-term growth of individuals to nurture them to their potential and promote future development.
A Deputy Art Director needs to support, coach, positively impacts and effectively aid in developing talents of their staff by motivating them to become outstanding in their behavioral change and performance improvement that opens up development opportunities in the organization.
Flexibility:
Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.
A Deputy Art Director needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.
Empathy:
Empathy is the understanding of another person's condition from their perspective by placing yourself in their shoes and feeling what they are feeling.
A Deputy Art Director ought to practice empathy with his staff by learning to be a good listener and understanding what his employees are going through and choosing to feel it with them through the use of imagination and accommodate them.
Self Awareness:
Self Awareness is the ability to have a sound understanding of who you are as a person and how to relate to the world in which you live by understanding your strengths and weaknesses and how to manage them in the workplace.
A Deputy Art Director must creatively know how to administer the workforce diversity by understanding the culture identity, biases, and stereotypes and become more aware on how he reflects his thoughts, feelings, and behavior towards the staff.
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.
A Deputy 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.
Quality Management:
Quality Management is the management approach to the long-term success through customer satisfaction that directly involves the employees in the continual improvement of the daily tasks.
A Deputy Art Director should consider the quality management earnestly for the success of the business by improving the processes, products, services, the discipline and the culture in which they work under to warrant the improvement of profitability and productivity.
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.
A Deputy 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.
Scheduling:
Scheduling is creating daily workflow charts that the employees are supposed to follow when working and submitting their projects.
A Deputy 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.
A Deputy 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 a Deputy 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.
A deputy art director should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.