Art Direc­tion Explained, At Last! by Steven Heller & Veronique Vienne does a phe­nom­i­nal job of answer­ing the ques­tion I know I’ve asked so many times, what is it that art direc­tors do? This book does an amaz­ing job of walk­ing you through the tech­ni­cal aspects of being an art direc­tor. You also get a glimpse into the process of art direct­ing as 10 art direc­tors attempt to self direct, and the visual essays sub­mit­ted are tru­ely inspir­ing! If you still have ques­tions about what art direc­tion is and what art direc­tors do after this book, it’s time you do some soul searching…

An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple, who call them­selves art direc­tors, func­tion as ‘impre­sar­ios’… mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary, tal­ented indi­vid­u­als who are able to actu­al­ize a vision from begin­ning to end.

Penned by two highly suc­cess­ful art direc­tors, Art Direc­tion Explained, At Last! is divided into four sections:

1. WHAT IS AN ART DIRECTOR
2. CREATIVE TENSION 101
3. AUTO ART DIRECTION
4. NUTS AND BOLTS

Sec­tion 1 starts with sev­eral chap­ters that address the tech­ni­cal aspect of art direc­tion (five easy read chap­ters) fol­lowed by an art direc­tor test. 

Sec­tion 2 is where it gets inter­est­ing with nine dif­fer­ent case stud­ies where we get a glimpse into the mind of an art direc­tor.  From “The Allur­ing Art of Allure”…

Allure is a slip­pery term. For some it con­notes ele­gance in the extreme, for oth­ers it means sub­lime sim­plic­ity. Kiehl’s, the quir­cky cos­metic and sundry brand, builds its allure on tradition–an old-style drug­store approach to pack­ag­ing that is almost antidesign.

For sec­tion 3, Auto Art Direc­tion, the mood of the book seems to tem­porar­ily shift direc­tions. The matte papers turns to glossy and it almost feels like you’re brows­ing through a giant book of idea gen­er­at­ing spreads… for good rea­son. Auto Art Direc­tion includes thir­teen visual essays where ten art direc­tos and three illus­tra­tors art direct them­selves. The end result is a beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of visu­ally mov­ing assign­ments and a glimpse of what it’s like to prac­tice art direc­tion as a pro­fes­sion. Cristoph Nie­mann & Nicholas Blech­man con­tributed an insanely enter­tain­ing and insight­ful set of illus­tra­tions titled “The Illustrator’s Guide to Art Direction”.

Sec­tion 4, Nuts and Bolts, reels us back in from our cre­ative jour­ney through self art direc­tion and pro­vides some key nuggets of knowl­edge like “What Do We Call Our­selves?” where the many dif­fer­ent art direc­tor titles are exl­pained in detail. “Handy Art Direc­tor Say­ings” offers up a straight for­ward trans­la­tion for say­ings often heard com­ing from your favorite (or least favorite) art direc­tor. My per­sonal favorite has got to be…

‘Expe­ri­ence is not use­ful in this busi­ness.’ — The less you know, the more we can exploit you.

This “trans­la­tion” really res­onated with me within the con­text of Art Direc­tion Explained, At Last!

…As this book attempts to emplain, peo­ple who embrace this career path are mul­ti­tal­ented indi­vid­u­als who dab­ble in everything…

Tech­ni­cal:
Art Direc­tion Explained, At Last! by Steven Heller & Veronique Vienne
Pub­lished by Lau­rence King Pub­lish­ing, 2009

Dis­claimer: Pur­chas­ing the book from ama­zon using any link con­tained in this arti­cle will result in me being paid a small comm­sion. If you found the arti­cle help­ful, please show your support!