Meet the R&I Art Director: Katie Durski.

IMAGES BY JENS PHOTOGRAPHY

Are you confused? Isn’t that the owner too? Why yes! It’s me! Lately I have been thinking about how I am so much more to my clients than just a graphic designer. I am, in fact, and art director.

Google defines an art director as:

“the person responsible for overseeing the artistic aspects of a film, publication, or other media production.”

That is most definitely me. In business school you’ll learn every business needs a competitive advantage: something to set you apart from the crowd. My strongest competitive advantage has always been having a business background, but what does that really help with? Well, it helps my clients by having me as an art director who oversees all the bits and pieces of their large branding puzzle and enables me to use my skills to form one cohesive plan from those pieces. I am able to see the whole picture from the beginning and assemble all the parts. In other words, I have vision.

Any good designer can create something beautiful, cool, pretty, or whatever other adjective you want to use, but it takes someone with vision to understand the why behind what they are creating. It also takes someone who understands that they, as the designer, don’t know the “why” and that they need need to help their clients really process the “why” behind their brands.

Something I often hear from my full branding clients is something like “this process has really gotten me to think” and that, to me, is a job well done! I want my clients to think about why they want their brand to look x, y, or z. This is why my brand coaching process is so cool: it gets my clients to think beyond their line of work.

I love my job. I love helping people and hearing stories. I am my clients’ biggest coach and cheerleader. Branding can be tough, but, if you have a designer who is an art director it helps a lot.

Get started today and contact me!