job at a time for a company, often under contract. The commercial artist on the staff of an organization is a paid employee, while the freelance artist is self-employed. The freelance artist just spend a good deal of time finding new jobs, keeping accounts for tax records, paying for his or her own medical insurance, and running his or her career like a business. While there are many more similarities between the career of a fine artist and a freelance commercial artist, there are also differences:
The basic difference is that the fine artist's work is the development of that person's unique talent to its fullest potential in a life's work of expression of the artist's concepts; and the commercial artist's work always contributes to the advancement of other people's ideas, products, and businesses (Gordon and Gordon 4).
Commercial artists tend to work in certain types of company, and the type of company also determines specifically what type of work the commercial artist produces and even what salary he or she receives. Advertising agencies are one such company. The field of advertising can be divided into three groups: advertising agencies, advertisers, and advertising media. Agencies today have some 60,000 employees who prepare the advertising for national or brand-name advertisers as well as some local, retail firms. Agencies place ads in all media. Advertising is intended to gain attention, and the design of the ad is vital in securing the interest of the target audience. some attention-getting devices that are used are not part of the artist's repertoire, such as overpowering size, timeliness, or provocation in the headline. Other features are the responsibility of the artist, such as liveliness of design, contrast of elements within the ad, and contrast of the ad with competing ads. The best of the commercial artists in this field work with the copywriters from the inception of the ad through its production. T...