Production Artist

Production Artists make layouts of design elements in advertising and editorial materials. This means that as a Production Artist, you’ll spend your day putting the finishing touches on the the formatting and work produced by Digital Artists, so the final products fit together and are ready to go to print. Production Artists work with magazines, catalogs, advertising, websites or other print and multimedia outlets.

Production Artists use art software to prep design files for delivery to print vendors or for display online. These are the the same programs that Graphic Designers work with, so you’ll enter in with similar backgrounds and training. The difference is that a Graphic Designer’s work will be more creative, while you are like a Copy Editor, making sure all digital Ts are crossed and Is are dotted so there are no problems when things get sent off.

Before computers, Production Artists were employed primarily at advertising agencies and charged with handling “paste-up” work. They would literally cut-and-paste design elements on paper. But today, almost everything is digital, so you do all that work through computer programs. However the need for organizational skills and attention to detail remain the same. You’ll also probably work on several projects at a time and be responsible for quick revisions and touch-ups, so the ability to multitask is essential to meet deadlines.