Illustration: Potential Careers | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Illustration: Potential Careers

MCAD Career Development can help you find work and help employers find you. In addition to job listings, the staff is available to meet one-on-one with students and alumni to assist with career development. Services include assistance writing and editing resumes, cover letters, and other professional correspondences; career exploration and industry research; interviewing practice; networking strategies; and industry-specific practices.

Advertising Illustrator

Illustrates storyboards for commercials, new product ideas, campaign ideas, and proposals to win new business. Creates layout sketches, logo ideas, and illustrations that are included in corporate reports, printed materials, direct mail, point of purchase displays, posters, signage, and billboards.

Book Illustrator

Creates drawings and designs that accompany stories or information in books or educational materials. Works in partnership with professional writers.

Comic Illustrator

Draws, storyboards, and sometimes writes narrative stories for comic books within demanding production deadlines.

Courtroom Illustrator

Creates drawings of court trials for newspapers, digital news sites, and television networks.

Children's Book Illustrator

Creates drawings and designs that accompany stories told in children's books or educational materials. Some illustrators write their own books, but most often a publisher pairs them with a professional writer.

Editorial Illustrator

Creates story-telling illustrations that accompany magazine articles, newspaper stories, websites, book covers, or reports.

Fashion Illustrator

Illustrates for fashion magazines, pattern companies, newspapers, department stores, shops, websites, and fashion designers.

Fine Artist

Sells work to individuals, galleries, interior designers, architects, libraries, community centers, banks, hotels, government, and others on a freelance basis or by commission.

Freelance Illustrator

Designs and creates images for websites, magazines, publishers, film studios, newspapers, advertising agencies, design firms, museums, and more. Usually specializes in one or two areas.

Illustration Agent or Representative

Acts as sales representative to clients by promoting illustrators’ portfolios, marketing and selling their work, and negotiating contracts and prices.

Medical or Technical Illustrator

Produces hand-drawn or digital illustrations, technical drawings, and maps for medical, technical and scientific journals, manuals, and books.

Surface Designer

Creates patterns for fabric, clothing, and paper products.

Concept Artist

Develops characters and environments for a variety of genres, including animation, film, television, video games, and toys.