Thinking Like an Art Director Can Make You a Better Writer

By Abby Alten Schwartz

Before I became a marketing copywriter and, more recently, a freelance journalist, essayist and memoirist, I worked as an advertising art director and graphic designer, following in the footsteps of my dad. In the creative department of an ad agency, you are one or the other: artist or writer. Though hired as an art director, I often veered into the writers’ lane.

In brainstorming sessions at my old agency, I competed with the copywriters to come up with winn...