If you've got big ideas and the talent for communicating them effectively, consider a career in advertising design. An advertising design career combines your artistic ability with marketing skills. It all begins at advertising schools, where you'll learn to effectively convey a client's message to a target audience.

What you'll learn
At advertising schools, you'll learn the formal and technical aspects of design as well as ways to evaluate an audience, plan a campaign, develop a brand, and write compelling copy. You'll learn art direction, TV commercial production, diversity marketing, digital advertising, guerilla marketing, integrated marketing, digital filmmaking, presentation skills, and business skills.

You will also gain experience collaborating with other students in writing, illustration, photography, and graphic design, which mimics the interaction inherent in professional advertising.

Practical experience
Advertising and design are trades; the only way to really learn them is by practicing them. In design schools, you'll create cutting-edge messages across a wide array of media, including print ads, billboards, radio spots, posters, Web sites, integrated campaigns, TV commercials, and Web ads.

These are the same kinds of projects you'll be given in real-world advertising agencies, as they involve researching, analyzing, and identifying marketing opportunities and strategies. The experience you'll gain in design schools will enable you to use your own creativity to produce persuasive advertising.  

A professional portfolio
Without the kinds of assignments and professional assistance provided at advertising schools, it would be tough to make ads that are good enough to get a job. Your best work in design schools goes into your professional portfolio, or book, which is the key to securing an advertising design job. Your portfolio will showcase your skills in research, idea generation, systems design, promotional packaging, and interactive design. Portfolio samples are the main way you will be evaluated by potential employers, so you'll need to make sure your portfolio shows how great you are at making ads.

At advertising schools, you can create a book that's filled with smart, interesting, compelling ads that make people want to try a particular product. Your book will be filled with about 20 ads, five campaigns of four ads each, with a few one-shots thrown in. Your ads should feature a variety of goods to show your versatility in marketing.

Career placement
At advertising schools, corporate partners and sponsored projects bring the real world into the classroom via actual clients. Oftentimes agencies sponsor specific courses so you'll have the opportunity to be part of a "creative department" well before you graduate. Plus, design schools offer internship opportunities so you can gain resume-worthy experience.

Design schools also offer design competitions as well as portfolio reviews that are attended by representatives from local and national advertising agencies. On-campus recruiting is another opportunity to attract the attention of future employers. Graduates of advertising schools usually become creative directors, art directors, copywriters, producers, interactive media directors, advertising designers, or advertising production artists.

Cultivate your marketable creativity with training from advertising schools.