Creative
 
Degree
 
Qualifications in the creative field
 
BA (Creative Brand Communication)
 
• Duration: 3 years
• Career options: Art Direction or Graphic Design
 
1 :: Art Direction
 

As an Art Director you will be directly involved in the actual making of advertisements. You and your copywriter (you work together as a team) are responsible for the conceptualisation (i.e. the ‘Big Idea”) of an advertising campaign. After that you become responsible for the visual elements of print advertisements and television commercials.

Your special skills will come into play when executing the ads. Aspects such as the choice of visuals, layout, typography, supervision of photography and so on are of great importance. When working on a television spot, the drawing-up of a storyboard (which depicts the scenes in a commercial) becomes your challenge. After the client has accepted the work, you will play a crucial role in the final execution and production of the advertisements. To do this job you need to be a lateral thinker, a visualiser, a competent illustrator, a fundi on the computer and an expert in the advertising and marketing process.

   
2 :: Graphic Designer
 

As a Graphic Designer you will be involved in the design of packaging, logos, corporate identities, promotional items, brochures and so on. You will learn typographical skills and knowledge of the relevant computer software.

And in addition to the above…
…these are the qualities you’ll need (in no particular order of importance) to make great art directors and graphic designers:

 
• You love reading, listening to and watching advertisements and would be proud to be part of the industry that creates them
• You appreciate that art directing an ad or designing a pack is a serious business
• You’ve always enjoyed drawing and taking photographs for your own pleasure
• You have an enquiring mind and love knowledge for its own sake
• Art directors and designers have vivid imaginations and are full of ideas
• You are naturally competitive
• Art directors and designers are individualists, yet are happy to be part of a team
• You’re fascinated by what makes people tick
• You’re happy mixing in any sort of society?
• You appreciate the better things in life - not just art, but literature, music, film, theatre, etc.
• You thrive under pressure in advertising, art directors and designers must ‘do it on demand’ – every single time
• You are highly intelligent. In advertising, art directors, copywriters and designers must not only have the ability to understand a marketing plan and advertising strategy, they must also be able to sift through mountains of invariably incoherent research findings and distil everything down to one sharp, innovative, compelling idea that will not just rationally motivate people to buy the product but thrill them into believing that the product is at the cutting edge of the ‘now’, ‘in’ life we lead today.