What is a Design Director? Explore the Design Director Career Path

The Day-to-Day as a Design Director

A Design Director leads a team of creative professionals who create the look and feel of a product or project through the production of visual design strategies. They work on projects like magazines, movies, advertisements, video games, or websites. Design Directors can work in industries such as interior design, retail, marketing, architecture, and entertainment. They work with Designers, Managing Partners or Directors, Project Managers, and Sales and Marketing teams.

There is contract, full-time, and freelance work available for Design Directors both remotely and onsite. There is no typical work week for a Design Director, as some work a full-time 40-hour week while others work contract positions with overtime for shorter periods throughout the year. Each Design Director position will vary, but typical responsibilities include meeting with team members, pitching to new clients, meeting with current clients, responding to RFPs, designing products or projects, hiring contractors, delegating tasks, helping team members solve problems, developing deliverables, estimating projects, creating mockups or storyboards to guide their teams and demonstrate concepts to clients, and reviewing team members’ work.

What Skills Should Design Directors Have?

The Design Director is a leadership position, and they are expected to establish a design team through hiring, mentorship, and training. Most design teams use project management software such as Trello, Asana, or monday.com, and it is beneficial for any Design Director to get to know these tools and choose their favorite. Design Directors must keep up with industry trends and design innovations as well as new technologies to stay relevant in their industry. This career path expects Designers to continue learning throughout their careers.

The Design Director is responsible for setting deadlines and ensuring the entire team meets them. They’ll also be creating estimates or budgets for their client or project and will be responsible for ensuring their team stays within the budget. To ensure these items are estimated properly, Design Directors must be able to communicate clearly in both written and verbal forms with their clients and their team. Their experience should inform their onboarding and offboarding questionnaires as well as how they manage their team’s concept creation process.

Design Directors must know how to develop design ideas; create storyboards, design compositions, or mockups; choose specific design elements for each project; design for user experience and user interfaces; and collaboratively design with all teams involved. They should know how to analyze data from market research, customer reviews, and other research to create effective designs. Depending on their industry, they should know basic graphic design, web design, visual design, print design, advertising, branding design, product design, and/or UI and UX design. Their required technical skills will vary but might include Adobe Creative Cloud applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, as well as programs like Sketch. They might also need to know video editing and basic HTML and CSS coding.

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Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Design Director

Graphic Design

Graphic design is the creation of visual content to communicate a message. Graphic design uses visual hierarchy, typography, photo editing, spacial awareness, empathy, color theory, and more to create visually appealing and communicative images. Graphic design can be done with software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Figma, and Sketch.

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Web Design

Web design is the process of creating the look and feel of a website. This includes web page layout, content production, copywriting, graphic design, typography, user-flow, and some coding. Web design can be done using tools like a code editor, templates, and photoshop.

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Video Editing

Video editing is most commonly the use of digital software to manipulate and organize video and sound files into a final deliverable. Video Editors use software like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Filmora, and others to create videos that compel, convert, inform, or tell a story.

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Photoshop

Photoshop is a software application created by Adobe for image editing and photo retouching on Windows or macOS computers. Photoshop can be used to manipulate and retouch photos. It can also be used to create compositions, collages, design comprehensives, and more.

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UX Design

UX Design stands for User Experience Design which is the practice of designing software and other applications with the user in mind. This means researching, testing, and designing a product using empathy and end-user avatars.

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Adobe

Adobe is an international software company based in the United States. Adobe is best known for its web software ecosystem Flash but also distributes creative software like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Lightroom, InDesign, XD, Muse, Dreamweaver, Spark, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and more.

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InDesign

InDesign is a computer software created by Adobe for publishing and typesetting. It can also be used to create posts, flyers, magazines, brochures, newspapers, books, and presentations.

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Illustrator

Illustrator is a computer program for design developed by Adobe. Illustrator is used by designers to create and edit vector graphics. It can be used for print, web, applications, videos, animations, and more.

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HTML & CSS

HTML is Hypertext Markup Language and CSS is Cascading Style Sheets. HTML is used to create web page structure and text while CSS is used to style the structure and text visually. HTML can be used to create objects like sections, menus, and functions within a webpage. CSS is used to select those objects and style them with fonts, colors, layout, and more to make the webpage visually appealing.

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Sketch

Sketch is a design platform used to create, share, and collaborate prototypes and wireframes.

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Visual Design

Visual design is a set of strategic best practices used to improve a design or product's aesthetic appeal and usability through the selection of appropriate images, typography, use of space, hierarchy, color, and layout.

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Design Director Salaries

A Design Director in the United States makes, on average, $151,299 annually, according to Indeed.com.

Salaries for Design Directors vary by region within the the United States. Listed below are some Design Director salaries for specific areas with the United States compared with the average national salary:

U.S. Average $151K source n/a
Washington, D.C. $179K source
+18.66%
Dallas, TX $178K source
+17.83%
Orange County, CA $177K source
+17.44%
Los Angeles, CA $169K source
+12.12%
Miami, FL $169K source
+12.11%
U.S. Average $151K source n/a
Chicago, IL $147K source
-2.55%
New York City $143K source
-5.21%
Alexandria, VA $129K source
-14.59%
Houston, TX $117K source
-22.29%
Fairfax, VA $89K source
-40.88%

Searching for Design Director Jobs

Design Directors will find the most opportunities by choosing a niche or focus industry. There are myriad design-specific job boards and freelance job boards. Below are some of the top job boards, but almost every design organization has its own job board that will focus on their region, specialization, or industry.

Design Directors can find jobs on these sites:

Behance
AIGA Jobs
Design Jobs
Authentic Jobs
Coroflot
Krop
Talent Zoo
ZipRecruiter
The Ladders
Simply Hired
AngelList
Indeed
LinkedIn

Design Directors can find freelance and remote opportunities on these sites:

Dribbble
Upwork
Freelancer
Toptal

Tips to Become a Design Director

Design Directors are typically promoted from a Senior Designer position. Unless you have an unusually impressive freelance portfolio and résumé, it is strongly encouraged to work your way up through the industry from any smaller, creative, hands-on role such as Designer, Writer, User Experience (UX) Designer, or Brand Designer. Move into mid-level roles or promotions during your first two to four years and soon you’ll be on your way to Senior Designer, from which you can be promoted to a Design Director. Think like a Design Director as you work your way up—think about more than just your role on the team—learn what Design Directors do and need to know—and try to find a mentor if possible.

Many Design Directors have worked with five or more companies over ten or more years before landing a Director position. Many Design Directors are hired based on who they’ve worked for and their references there. If you can establish a good rapport with your management or boss at these stepping-stone positions, ask them to leave you a review on LinkedIn—this can be a major advantage. You’ll need to network for a Design Director job if you don’t plan on getting promoted from within a company you’re already working for. A good place to start is to connect on LinkedIn with companies you’d love to work for and members of their design, product, and marketing teams.

You’ll also want to put your portfolio on display in the “Featured” section of your LinkedIn profile. A strong portfolio is a must for any design job. Your portfolio should show off your specific style, contain information about you, include a link to your résumé or CV, and have a clear call to action where potential employers can contact you. Most Design Directors and Design Director candidates choose to compile their portfolios online. Be sure to keep the design of your portfolio clean and user-friendly, especially if you plan on working on websites or applications in your Design Director position.

Design Directors are not only designers. They need to know UX, UI, industry best practices and standards, copywriting, branding, and project management, along with design. Sharpen your skills on your way to this position to ensure you’re fully prepared.

What Job Titles Would a Design Director Hold?

Design Director positions will vary within companies, and every industry will attribute different responsibilities to the role. Some Design Director positions will combine user experience design responsibilities with visual design responsibilities for this position and will often include the word “experience” in the job title.

Design Director
Experience Design Director
Design Lead
Head of Design
Interior Design Director
Solution Design Director
Architecture Design Director
Marketing Design Director
Brand Design Director

The Day-to-Day as a Design Director

What Skills Should Design Directors Have?

Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Design Director

Graphic Design

Web Design

Video Editing

Photoshop

UX Design

Adobe

InDesign

Illustrator

HTML & CSS

Sketch

Visual Design

Design Director Salaries

Typical Qualifications to Become a Design Director

Searching for Design Director Jobs

Tips to Become a Design Director

What Job Titles Would a Design Director Hold?

Related Careers

Salary Comparison to Design Director

Digital Designer

Web Designer

Designer

User Experience Designer

Motion Graphics Designer