Types of Reading & Writing for an Art Director

When it comes to reading and writing in business, there are various forms like memos, e-mail, mail, magazines, newspapers, etc. Why do business people read and write these sorts of things? Well how else will they be informed about their career field and what is going on in the world that affects them. Also, when it comes to writing, it has to be formal and not casual or else people will not take you seriously. For Mr. X, in my previous blog post, he mostly reads e-mails, magazines, and postings online to look for an art directing job since he is a freelancer.

The first thing he reads when he starts business with a new company, is researching about who his employers are and what they are about. Learn about “what companies they are similar to or who they are competing with.” Knowing a company’s background is a nice insight to know because it helps decide if you really want to work with them or not. Next are the contracts, so as not to violate anything. It as an agreement between two people to compromise on what will be promised and what a person can and cannot do.

Other readings that he does are magazines like Seventeen or Thrasher to try n keep up with the designs and how they advertise their apparel. He tries to learn from them and apply it to his type of advertising to help promote Fresh apparel and what they stand for; creating that unique image for them.

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E-mailing is one of Mr. X’s main means of communications for his job. This is where he contacts his team to discuss a few things like about the design of the ad, what critiques can be made to better the ad. He said that the thing about e-mails is that “you have to be specific.” Besides being specific, he mentioned approaching it in a friendly matter and also in kind of a formal tone. “You can’t be like ‘Hey what’s up dude…’ because you have to have that professionalism so that they can take you a lot more seriously.” This shows that you have the knowledge of what you are doing and you know what is best for the company. It is good to start off with a sort of compliment because the employer or team member took the time to do this and that, which takes a lot of effort. Also, it helps to kind of ease into a type of negotiation that can be discussed.

There are different ways to write a professional business e-mail because there is a certain etiquette to it. The person on the receiving end has to read and understand what is going on in the e-mail so he or she won’t get lost. Along with being specific, it is good to have the e-mail short and almost to the point because otherwise if it is too long, who would want to read it. The person receiving the e-mail may not have that much time on his or her hand to read such a long email. 

To learn a little more here is a website you can go to learn how to write a professional business e-mail: http://grammar.about.com/od/developingessays/a/profemails.htm

Or you can watch this YouTube video