Why do we love 2007? Because so many kick ass illustrators like Chuck Anderson are getting work as art directors. Wait, you say you’ve never worked in an agency before? What exactly does an art director do? That my friend, is a very good question.

Old school Art Directors like to come up with what’s known in ad lingo as “The Big Idea”, then work with a team of artists (designers, illustrators, photographers, commercial directors, etc) to bring that idea to life. You can’t really appreciate the irony of this until you’ve had said Art Director hand you his “Big Idea”, drawn out on a lined noted pad in pencil with stick figures. This person doesn’t know how to use Photoshop or draw stick figures per say, but he does know Jay Z from a commercial they shot last year, and can name drop like nobody’s business. It’s now your job to make that into something that will sell through the roof and win awards. Ready, go!

Then there’s Art Directors like Chuck Anderson who are actual artists. They make art, like really good art, around a product (like Absolute Vodka, Reeboks, or Mountain Dew). In fact if you remove the product from the picture, you’d have a piece of art you could sell as a print, and lo and behold, Chuck Anderson does just that.

Art Directors like this challenge the other artists they work with. Instead of trying to make the idea in to something worth looking at, your job is to make something that can stand next to a Chuck Anderson piece and add another dimension to it. This might take a while, you’d better go make some coffee.