Ad School 101 - Top 3 Pieces of Advice to 1st Quarter Art Directors

1. Get a Wacom Tablet. Now.
   As an art director, you will get one at some point. You might as well get it now, learn it, and benefit from it as soon as possible. Some things are basically impossible to do without it, and the rest is just a whole lot easier.

   A good one is the Intuos 4×6″. You an get them used, or new for about $200. You can get a Graphire for about $100. It also makes a great birthday/Christmas present.

   As an art director, this is one of the few professional tools you have (other than your camera and laptop). Treat it as such. You can use your Wacom for many years to come.

2. Learn Flash Elsewhere.
   It’s a dirty little secret that you will be under-worked 1st Quarter. Use this time wisely to start learning Flash. Your options include books, websites, community college, adult education classes, and computer training companies like LearnIT in San Francisco. For books, you can’t go wrong with Adobe’s Classroom in a Book Series.
   As always, check the public library. They have lots of resources for free.

   In addition to working on perhaps the most in-demand and lacking skill for art directors, you will save yourself time and money. You won’t need “Intro to Flash” taking up your time and tuition in later quarters when you’d rather be making stuff.

3. Start a Backup Routine.
   Yes, this sucks. Yes, this is a little technical. Recovering from a hard-drive crash sucks more, and is more technical. It also usually happens when you can afford it least.

   EVERY QUARTER, at LEAST one person I know has a complete hard drive crash. Some of them have had good backups, some haven’t. Hard drives are mechanical devices. They fail. All the time. Don’t be caught without a backup of your work. I generally suggest an external hard drive with backup software (more on this in another post). Forget about CDs, DVDs, and flash drives. They don’t have the capacity, speed, or reliability you need.

Follow these 3 simple pieces of advice and you will be miles ahead of your 1st Quarter Art Director brethren.