Art Direction Techniques You Can Use

Today we're going to talk about art direction ingredients. Because one of the reasons why art direction can be kind of tough for us to wrap our heads around is that there's not a clear tool in the way that a photographer has their [music] tool. They've got their camera. A painter has a paintbrush. That's their

tool. Even a graphic designer, you think about their tool. You think about their software, maybe Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop. But what is the art director's tool with it being a more conceptual role? Are there repeatable tools we can use over and over again? And I'd say there are. I often like to compare our direction to visual

orchestration because yes, you are conducting the visuals and that might involve multiple team members, but it can also be a one-man band where you put on that hat. You become the photographer or you become the graphic designer as you're mocking up something. I also like to compare it to being a chef. The chef

might lead a team in the kitchen, but they can also assemble these ingredients themselves. And they have frameworks and tools and principles they can use over and over again to put those ingredients together. That's what we're going to talk about today. And this video is sponsored by Musicbed because music is one of the most important creative

ingredients for my content. I'm going to share the exact songs I use in my videos, but more on that later. Now before we talk about visual ingredients, I need to kind of ground you in some of the principles I use for thinking conceptually. These are timeless principles that a lot of the best

creative agencies in advertising and brand marketing utilize and and that's thinking big, the big idea. I visualize it as a big idea pyramid. And the reason why we need to at least have a a brief understanding the big idea pyramid is before we get to the ingredients, we need to understand why or what we're