What is art direction? Is it the trend from a few years back to give every blog post a different look? Not really. That was called art direction, but the trend wasn’t quite art direction, even if it did present different aesthetics to different sets of content.

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What is design’s relationship to art direction? Are they the same thing? Similar? Is one a subset of the other? What’s the connection between art direction and design?

A few week’s ago I listened to an episode of Andrew Clarke’s Unfinished Business podcast. The guests on this particular episode were Dan Mall and Jeffrey Zeldman and all three had a very interesting conversation about design and art direction.

The conversation arose out of a question about why the current state of web design is considered by many to be boring and lacking creativity. A lack of art direction was suggested as the main reason or one big reason for the less than exciting web design currently online.

If you haven’t listened to it, do yourself a favor and listen. It was definitely interesting and worth the time.

While I listened I realized a lot of what I think of as improving the sites we design with meaningful aesthetics and communicating extra levels of communication is really art direction.

I’ve probably misused the terms art direction and aesthetics at times and thought I would do a little research to make sure I understood art direction and design and their connection. Naturally since I put in the time to learn, I thought I’d share what I learned and offer some thoughts I have in general.

I want to talk today about what art direction is as well as the relationship between art direction and design. I also want to offer some other reasons why the web doesn’t look as aesthetically interesting as it might.

Next week I’ll share some additional thoughts and try to answer the question of how important is art direction to the web.

What is Art Direction?

I thought I’d start my research with a dictionary definition and found this.

Art direction (n) — the management of the artistic and design elements of a project, esp. in film, television, advertising, or publishing.

Seems reasonable enough. In a larger organization there are usually multiple people contributing to the content, art, and design of something like a magazine article. One person writes the article, another edits, a third designs the page layout or creates the illustrations or choose the photos or all of those things.

Someone needs to direct all these people and ensure the work maintains the vision. Everything should be working in harmony, in unity, to communicate the same message.

One part of art direction is having someone direct all the people who’ll work on the project. Another part is having that someone create the vision, the concept, in the first place.

Art direction is concerned with the message, the story being told. It’s concerned with delivering an emotional impact. Art direction wants the reader or visitor to feel something that enhances the experience they get reading or viewing content.

When you come up with a concept for a website, you’re art directing. If you’re thinking of words to describe the site and the emotion its aesthetics should carry, you’re art directing. When you decide a site should be sophisticated or playful or adventurous or elegant, you’re art directing.

Art direction creates the vision, defines the tone, style, mood, and emotion that should be conveyed. Then it oversees the project to ensure the design remains in harmony with the vision and that the proper emotion is communicated.

The Connection Between Art Direction and Design

Design is the execution of art direction. If the art direction calls for a playful mood, the design might use a color scheme made from bright primary colors.