What is a staff designer?

November 8, 2011 7:54 AM

What is a "Staff Designer"? How does that vary from a graphic designer? Or a creative director?
posted by ejfox to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Well, what a position entails is often specific to an organization. I was a graphic designer and also a creative director for different organizations and had different roles (with the same title) at each.

Generally speaking, a staff designer is someone who does graphic design for "in-house" needs. So, you might commonly hear of a staff designer for a publication. A staff designer for Martha Stewart magazine does graphic design that services Martha Stewart magazine. By contrast, I always had outward-facing design positions, so when I was a staff designer I was working for clients of my organization, such as Ford Motor Company, Goodyear Tires, Pfizer, etc.

What separates a creative director typically is a focus on overall strategy. The creative director may still do graphic design, but she is also likely involved in coming up with overall campaign ideas and brand strategy. This person also oversees the work of other designers and sometimes also writers, illustrators, videographers, etc. Lastly, a creative director likely has a lot more interface with the client than a graphic designer might. I certainly met with clients frequently. There can be a business development side to being a creative director.

I decided that I wanted to work with young graphic designers and I now teach graphic design at the University level.
posted by Slothrop at 8:03 AM on November 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've hired staff designers before. The job description at our company was close to what is described in Slothrop's second definition.

At some of our vendors, the position was similar. Staff Designers at those companies were folks who performed work on behalf of clients such as us as a value-added service. Their services are also useful for companies who lack an in-house team.

The employees at a banner ad service we worked with did incidental creative for us when our team was overly taxed. We also worked with events companies whose staff designers did things like design banners and table toppers without much need for interaction with our own creatives.
posted by xax at 8:30 AM on November 8, 2011

Staff designer and graphic designer are frequently interchangeable titles. Exact duties will vary by the job. Creative director is generally the head honcho; in smaller companies they will have plenty of day to day graphic design duties as well as providing things like overall vision, in larger companies there will be several creative directors who take a certain % of clients or projects. In general places with more than a few designers will also have an Art Director position; this is a step up from graphic designer but in general means you are designing all day, in addition to ensuring vision/quality of more junior designers' work on larger projects.

To be a creative director you don't necessary need to have a graphic design background (could be copywriting, etc.).
posted by shownomercy at 9:07 AM on November 8, 2011

I was the staff designer for a small software shop. I called myself the "art department", as I was pretty much expected to provide design and graphic services to all departments. I started-out doing UI design for the software side and, later, transitioned to doing marketing materials.

Pretty-much you're the go-to person for any graphic needs anyone in the company might have.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:29 AM on November 8, 2011

Not sure, but I think I've also seen it used to fill in the blank and avoid ambiguity:

junior designer
___ designer
senior designer
lead designer

(I may have misunderstood though)
posted by -harlequin- at 1:02 PM on November 8, 2011