A production artist is a technical and creative position in a creative profession. The

job title The International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) is an International Labour Organization (ILO) classification structure for organizing information on labour and jobs. It is part of the international family of economic and social ...

originated at

advertising agencies An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

, assigning what was known as paste-up work (now

prepress Prepress is the term used in the Printing and Publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...

production) to the position. Production artists work closely with the designer and art director to execute the design. What distinguishes "production art" from design is opportunities to utilize prepress knowledge into

creativity Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed lit ...

and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...

training in the work involved. The degree of technical knowledge required for some production art work may be comparable to higher skilled engineering, especially with computers. The position was once exclusive to print media electronic media such as web pages and

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both com ...

s. Skill requirements for a production artist are creative, print production, and working knowledge in using

art software Graphic art softwareBob Gordon, Maggie Gordon ''The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design '', 15 March 2002 pp:44 is a subclass of application software used for graphic design, multimedia development, stylized image development, technical il ...

of creative industries. Job descriptions for production artists are usually tailored to a company's specific needs. Alternate job titles such as multimedia specialist have been used to expand the role of production artists to

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

development. Entry level multimedia work may include

data entry Data entry is the process of digitizing data by entering it into a computer system for organization and management purposes. It is a person-based process and is "one of the important basic" tasks needed when no machine-readable version of the inf ...

or basic skill level programming tasks. In companies that provide mass printing on paper,

novelty item A novelty item or simply novelty is an object which is specifically designed to serve no practical purpose, and is sold for its uniqueness, humor, or simply as something new (hence "novelty", or newness). The term also applies to practical items wi ...

s, and

out-of-home advertising Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, also called outdoor advertising, outdoor media, and out-of-home media, is advertising experienced outside of the home. This includes billboards, wallscapes, and posters seen while "on the go". It also includes pl ...

printing, this position requires an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-press and printing standards through variety of methods. In such companies, it is often a higher paid position than a junior

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

or desktop publisher, as it requires more specific knowledge than gathering digital assets and exporting files to standardized

image file formats An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be ...

page description language In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap (or generally raster graphics). An overlapping term is printer control la ...

s such as Adobe

Portable Document Format Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating syste ...

. Per Comic Book historian

Mark Evanier Mark Stephen Evanier (; born March 2, 1952) is an American comic book and television writer, known for his work on the animated TV series '' Garfield and Friends'' and on the comic book ''Groo the Wanderer''. He is also known for his columns and b ...

, in that industry the position generally has involved into "lettering corrections, art touch-ups, laying out advertising and other editorial material and generally doing whatever in the office required the services of someone who could draw a little."

Production assistant A production assistant, also known as a PA, is a member of the film crew and is a job title used in filmmaking and television for a person responsible for various aspects of a production. The job of a PA can vary greatly depending on the budget ...

is a similar position in the

film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, ...

References

Printing occupations * Advertising occupations {{occupation-stub