Friday Buzz: Association Art Directors Make Bank

For magazine art directors in the association world, there’s a bit of a silver lining inside an otherwise dire new report.

Folio magazine’s “2015 Art & Production Salary Survey,” whose results were released Friday  (opens in a new tab), found that art directors for association magazines received significantly higher compensation than their counterparts in the consumer and business-to-business (B2B) publishing spaces. The average base salary for association art directors in 2015 was $77,600, nearly $7,000 more than an art director at a consumer publication was likely to make and nearly $16,000 more than an art director at a B2B. In addition, other forms of cash compensation were significantly higher for association art directors ($17,300 on average, bringing total compensation to $94,900) than the industry as a whole ($4,700 on average).

The level also reflects a significant shift in fortunes for the association space. Two years ago, art directors at consumer magazines made more in base salary than their association counterparts.

The overall study, however, was a bit more negative in its findings, with respondents as a whole sharing mixed feelings about compensation—especially in light of the additional duties they’ve been asked to take on in a time of staff consolidation.

“I think I’m paid okay for the market, but have taken on a lot of new things. Being print centric, I am happy to continue to be employed,” a production director told the magazine.

The study also touched on issues of gender gaps in the publishing industry, as well as geographic differences in pay.

A Matter of Frequency

As a nonprofit marketer, how often should you touch your various communication outlets? This little infographic from Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog,  (opens in a new tab) based on the site’s “2016 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report  (opens in a new tab),” offers a nice reminder of the differing frequencies needed for different kinds of communication.

Other Links of Note

If you’re running Windows 8 on your PC, you should probably upgrade to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 ASAP. ZDNet‘s Ed Bott reports that  (opens in a new tab), thanks to a quirk in the software’s update cycle, Microsoft won’t be offering support for the touch-centric version of Windows beyond next week.

If at first you don’t succeed … Last year, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone shut down his follow-up app, Jelly, after it failed miserably  (opens in a new tab) at finding an audience. But that failure isn’t stopping Stone from trying again, as his latest Medium post reveals  (opens in a new tab).

Mark J. Golden, FASAE, CAE, the executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers, has a lengthy resume of association experience. What’s his best piece of advice for working with volunteer leaders? He shares it over this way  (opens in a new tab).

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