Last year I put out a survey aimed at artworkers; specifically, artworkers as opposed to retouchers, or designers, or designer artworkers. Over the last 15 years or so, I’ve encountered many full-time and freelance artworkers that, on the whole, seemed to have less in common with each other than their designer counterparts have among their own peers. The career path for a designer can be fairly straightforward. That is, study graphic design with a view to practising graphic design, go from junior designer to midweight, to senior, to design director, to creative director, but all the while, defining oneself as a creative practitioner, able to tell your parents what you do in two words.
This is not the case with artwork. Plenty of artworkers have a degree in design, and once an HR department has their sausage fingers on an artworker job spec, they may well insist that candidates have one, but did those graduates imagine doing artwork for a living? Chances are they’d never heard the term in their lives. I originally studied for a BTEC in graphic design with a view to working for a printer, and I was doing the role of an artworker for 2 years before I realised it was an actual job. At no point did I think I would ever be called a graphic designer. So in general, artworkers seem to come from a design background or a technical one, but it’s easier to just say what they aren’t, and that is graphic designers.
I talk about what an artworker does/doesn’t do in a separate post here.
Using linkedin to get the word out, I asked eight questions:
What do you enjoy about being an artworker?
What do you dislike about it?
Do you see yourself as having some creative input in your work?
What’s the longest day you’ve ever worked?
What’s the strangest thing a client/colleague has ever said to you, or asked of you?
If you had the chance to go back in time and speak to yourself on your first ever day as an artworker, what would you say?
What would you be doing if you weren’t an artworker?
The survey website cost me an arm and a leg, and I had to conclude it before I could get a satisfactory number of responses (48 in the end). I still think it was a worthy exercise though, and I’ll probably try again later this year.
Here’s a brief rundown of the responses. As I say, too small a pool to be turning into pie graphs and what have you, but I hope other artworkers out there see familiar stories in the responses here and there.
One other thing – I gave responders the option of anonymity but on the whole most people chose to give me a name of some sort. Even someone calling themselves ‘Batman’ (fights crime, views separations).
What do you enjoy about being an artworker?
It would seem most of you like the process of organising something that can be chaotic and confusing e.g a design visual, and turning it into something organised and logical. Funny that, because I’ll bet you that designers feel the same way about their own work. I’m including in this group of ‘process’ responders those who like the attention to detail required to perform the role of artwork. Second to this group are those who liked the variety of it all. They are a lucky lot! I once worked in the production studio of a now-defunct supermarket chain and there were days that were mind-numbingly repetitive in terms of tasks. At the time, there was a QuarkXpress extension called Quick Keys that allowed you to carry out multiple operations with one keystroke. Press F9 and you could open a template, flow in and style up a body of text, save it with a unique file name and open up another file, ready to repeat your F9 keystroke. You would have to do that 2,000 times by 11am. Little did I know that 18 years later I would be creating crude presentations in Canva. I guess that the more experience you have, the wider the variety of work you do.
Notable mentions go to Paul for ‘being responsible for the finalisation of the product required’ and an anonymous responder for ‘seeing the end product being used’. The latter I’m guessing is a packaging artworker. Probably the biggest printed product roll-out you can do – my wife did packaging artwork for Coca-Cola, some hefty print runs there. As for the former, there is a certain ‘ultimate responsibility’ when it comes to artwork, though I’ve been involved in some expensive errors in the past, and the post mortem can (and should) stretch way beyond the artworker if the error is significant enough. Also, any client worth their salt isn’t going to be satisfied with ‘oh yeah, the artworker spelled ‘beans’ wrong’ on their £100k print ad. Bigger heads would need to roll.
Batman’s response was ‘everything’, by the way. Holy Enthusiasm!
What do you dislike about it?
A really broad church of complaints here. Everything ranging from a general feeling of inferiority to a strong feeling of being misunderstood, or not being understood at all. ‘A lack of recognition in the industry’ (Anonymous), ‘profession not understood or respected by creatives/AM’ (Laura). That in turn seems to lead to ‘sometimes feeling undervalued’ (Cleo), ‘treated like a lesser member of staff’ (Kev), ‘thoughts that you are inferior to designers and not as important’ (Claire).
Others took the opportunity to vent their spleens when they answered this question. I’ll leave the names out for these:
‘Being privy to how incredibly useless some designers are on a technical level’, ‘clients, deadlines x10’, ‘being used as a cheap designer, “Artwork could do that with overseeing…”’, ‘bad briefs and bad PMs’. Actually that last one was Batman’s.
A small group of respondents were more specific in their gripes. ‘Powerpoint’ (Duncan), ‘too many amendments’ (Pedro), ‘designers who have designed in RGB when they know it will be printed in CMYK’ (Rufus). Incidentally, if that last one hasn’t happened to you yet, you cannot call yourself an artworker. Ditto if you haven’t then been helpfully advised to ‘play with the levels’.
Another respondent, Andrew, simply dislikes ‘Being told what to do’. A studio manager once informed me that I was ‘the last in the food chain’, which doesn’t make sense at all but I got his point. Sadly I didn’t get the chance to let him know as he was fired a few days later. Pesky food chains.
There were a few ‘not enough work/too much work’ responses but I didn’t want to make this survey about freelancers; I did struggle to get the survey out to full-timers and I really wanted their input, as they can often be on the end of some super-dull work days. Which leads me to my next question:
Do you see yourself as having some creative input in your work?
This was a multiple choice question, with the options being ‘a little’, ‘a fair bit’, ‘quite a bit’, or ‘none at all’. I was expecting quite a few ‘none at all’ responses, at least in relation to some of the responses to the previous question. As it turned out, only one (Paige) felt she had no creative input at all. I’ve just had a look at Paige’s linkedin profile and I see she has had a career change. Good luck Paige, you got out!
19 respondents said ‘a fair bit’, 11 said ‘a little’, and 13 said ‘quite a bit’. I’ll take a punt and say that for many artworkers, creative input is not particularly important. Respondents such as Tom and Jason are into problem solving, and Lee enjoys a ‘methodical approach’. Of course, all of these responses wouldn’t look out of place on a designer’s Q&A.
What’s the longest day you’ve ever worked?
This one, unsurprisingly in an industry famous for taking the living piss out of its employees when it comes to hours, elicited some big numbers. Similar to the famous ‘four northerners’ Monty Python sketch, respondents sent in their sealed bids for longest-hours-worked fame.
Consequently, the most interesting response came from our favourite escapee Paige, who answered with ‘8.30-5.30’. Outside of that it was a willy-waving competition going from 10 hours (Duncan) to 36 (Anon) though they admitted to taking a ‘couple of short snoozes in between amends’. Don’t know they’re born, do they?
What’s the strangest thing a client/colleague has ever said to you, or asked of you?
Again, in an industry not known for its commitment to creating a fair and just workplace, the responses went way beyond ‘on tea duty all the time’. I expected plenty of responses showing levels of ignorance from colleagues (that’s why you’re there I’m afraid, people!) but there’s a difference between someone asking what 300dpi means and ‘what does proportion mean’ (hi again Paige!), ‘what do you actually do?’ (Serra, who incidentally once worked 25hrs straight doing whatever it is we actually do), ‘we want to use that image, but can we see it from the other side’ (Jason), ‘make it look worse’ (Anon). Then we move out to the fringes of what is acceptable to ask of another human being. I’m not suggesting that other jobs out there don’t have these sorts of incidents, it’s just that they seem more concentrated in this game. ‘Would you like me to fiddle with your nipples to help you relax?’ (Hannah, from her Creative Director), ‘got any gear (not work equipment)’ (Anon), ‘change the skin of a white person to black rather than pay for a new image’ (Tom). Doubtless Hannah’s experience is pure misogyny and any number of women can tell us the same story, but would that CD say the same thing to a designer or art director? Actually yes, of course they would. Also, I wonder if ‘Anon’ did have any gear?
If you had the chance to go back in time and speak to yourself on your first ever day as an artworker, what would you say?
Have you ever considered what you would say to your younger self, given the opportunity? We can all have career regrets, sliding doors moments, ‘if only I’d…’ thoughts. Again, there were answers I expected, ‘’do something else’ (Anon), ‘find another career’ (Darren), ‘don’t do it’ (Andrew). I fully empathise with those views, more so than with these much drier responses from people who perhaps don’t dwell on what else might have been. ‘Learn to code javascript, html and css (Batman), ‘nothing really…’(Robert), ‘make sure you keep up with what’s going on in web design’ (Sean). I can only look on enviously at the absence of self-doubt. Some genuinely insightful responses as well, though. ‘Find a mentor’ (Hegs) ‘leave room around the edges’ (Anon), ‘work to live not live to work’ (Anon), ‘get some hobbies (Pedro).
What would you be doing if you weren’t an artworker?
I asked this question because I firmly believe that nobody grows up wanting to be an artworker. As I said earlier, nobody has even heard the term until they’re already in the industry in some capacity.
Hannah would be ‘teaching’, Darren would have ‘a trade’. Two admirable professions and I can’t help but secretly hope those professions still happen for them both. James is up for a career in behavioural psychology, Jon would be a speech therapist and David N and Franco have notions of jobs in woodwork and joinery. David P ‘always fancied being a plasterer’, Emily would be a Physio and ‘Retoucher’ would be an antique dealer. Cleo trained as a swimming teacher during a 2 year break from artwork to concentrate on bringing up her young son. Go for it people!
It’s worth noting that a small handful or responders had ‘no idea’, so I’m going to be generous to our chosen career and assume those people are already doing what they want to do, even if it wasn’t always the case that they knew they wanted to do it, if you know what I mean.
It would be great if you can share this after reading it because that means the next survey I do will hopefully have more than 48 responses. Also, I’m saying 48 even though one person responded twice.
you are not special 