It’s Artisan’s Birthday Week, and this one’s a bit of a time machine.
In 1998, when Artisan placed its first candidates, “UX Designer” wasn’t a job. Neither was “Social Media Manager,” “Full Stack Developer,” “Data Analyst,” or half the titles that now fill creative, digital and marketing org charts across the country. Some roles have been renamed two or three times over. Some have been split into five specialisms. A few have quietly disappeared altogether, replaced by software that didn’t exist when they were invented.
We’ve been recruiting across creative, digital and marketing for the entire ride. Twenty-eight years of watching roles evolve, tools disappear, and entirely new careers get invented from scratch. So we pulled together a proper look back: job titles then and now, the software that’s come and gone, and where we think each discipline is headed over the next 5 years.
We’ve seen every version of this industry. We’re going to be here for you into all of the next ones. Grab a coffee. This one’s long, on purpose.
The 28-year timeline, in brief
The Job Title Time Machine
Creative & Art Direction
Then: Art Directors and Graphic Designers in 1998 worked almost exclusively on print. Art Directors often sketched concepts by hand, Designers brought them to life, and Finished Artists and Mac Operators computerised the work across QuarkXPress, FreeHand and Photoshop 4, producing packaging, POS, print ads and identity systems on a Mac with a fraction of today’s processing power.
Now: Creative and Design Directors oversee work across print, digital, motion, social and experiential simultaneously. Illustrators work digitally as often as by hand, and Exhibition Designers now often design for hybrid physical/digital experiences.
Software then → now: Photoshop 4, QuarkXPress, FreeHand → Full Adobe Creative Cloud suite, 3D visualisation tools, real-time collaboration platforms
Title evolution: Finished Artist / Mac Operator → Graphic Designer → Senior Designer → Art Director → Creative Director / Design Director, now often with a digital or brand specialism attached
Next 5 years: The craft skills stay valuable, but expect creatives to spend more time directing and curating work across multiple formats at once, and more of their portfolio to be motion and interactive work rather than static print.
Marketing, Social & Comms
Then: Marketing Managers in 1998 planned campaigns across print, TV, radio and outdoor, with schedules confirmed via WordPerfect and booked entirely by phone. “Digital marketing” didn’t exist as a job title. Social media, obviously, didn’t exist at all.
Now: Digital Marketing Managers, Social Media Managers, SEO Managers and Media Buyers/Planners now dominate most marketing teams, working across a dozen channels and platforms simultaneously, often guided by AI-powered, real-time performance data.
Software then → now: WordPerfect, media schedules by phone → Google Ads, GA4, Meta Business Suite, Tiktok, marketing automation platforms, AI-powered SEO & optimisation tools
Title evolution: Marketing Coordinator → Marketing Manager → Digital Marketing Manager / Social Media Manager / SEO Manager, with Campaign Manager now often channel-agnostic rather than tied to one medium
Next 5 years: Expect roles to consolidate around platforms rather than channels, with AI handling more media optimisation and marketers focusing more on strategy, brand and creative direction of campaigns.
Account Services & Client Leadership
Then: Account handling in 1998 revolved around the phone, the fax machine and a lot of in-person meetings. Client relationships were built face to face, briefs arrived on paper, meetings were logged in Lotus Organiser diaries, and a “New Business” role was as much about the golf course as the pitch deck.
Now: Account Directors and Client Service Directors run relationships across video calls, shared project boards and real-time reporting dashboards. Clients expect data alongside diplomacy. An Account Manager today is half relationship-builder, half project strategist.
Software then → now: Fax, phone & Lotus Organiser → Slack, Teams, Asana, HubSpot
Title evolution: Account Executive → Account Manager → Senior Account Manager → Client Service Director, with “Group Account Director” now overseeing entire portfolios rather than single clients
Next 5 years: Expect account roles to lean further into data literacy. Reading a client dashboard will be as core to the job as reading a room.
Developers & Engineers
Then: In 1998, a “Webmaster” did everything: wrote raw HTML in Netscape Composer, managed the server, and probably designed the site too. Development was a generalist job because the internet itself was still simple.
Now: Development has fractured into deep specialisms. Front End, Back End, Full Stack, Mobile, API, each with its own toolchain, frameworks and career path. “Tester” has evolved into dedicated QA and automation engineering roles.
Software then → now: Netscape Composer, raw HTML → React, Node.js, Git, CI/CD pipelines, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure)
Title evolution: Webmaster → Web Developer → Front End / Back End Developer → Full Stack Developer / Lead Developer
Next 5 years: AI-assisted coding tools are already changing how developers work day to day. Expect the job to shift further toward architecture, review and problem-solving, and further away from writing every line by hand.
Production & Studio
Then: Production in 1998 meant laying out pages in QuarkXPress, checking physical film proofs, and finished artists preparing files for print with painstaking manual precision. A “job bag” was a literal paper folder that followed a project through the studio.
Now: Studio Managers and Production Coordinators run digital workflows through cloud-based project management platforms, with most “finishing” work happening for screens rather than presses, though packaging and finished art for print is still very much alive.
Software then → now: QuarkXPress, film separations, physical proofs → Figma, InDesign, digital asset management systems, automated proofing
Title evolution: Pre-Press Operator / Desktop Publisher → Finished Artist → Creative Art Worker, with Traffic Manager roles now often folded into broader Production Manager positions
Next 5 years: Expect production roles to keep absorbing more project management responsibility, as studios get leaner and workflows get more automated.
Copywriting & Content
Then: Copywriters in 1998 drafted in WordPerfect for glossy brochures, print ads and magazines, alongside direct mail campaigns, TV commercial scripts and the occasional press release. A “Sub Editor” or “Proofreader” was a dedicated, often senior role: the last line of defence before anything went to print, because there was no fixing a typo after 50,000 copies were on the press.
Now: Copywriters write for web, social, email, video scripts and long-form content, often across multiple brands and platforms in the same week. Technical Writers and Tender/Bid Writers have become specialised, high-demand roles in their own right as businesses compete for complex contracts.
Software then → now: WordPerfect → CMS platforms, SEO tools, content calendars, digital asset libraries
Title evolution: Copywriter stays a constant, but now sits alongside Technical Writer, Bid Writer and Web Content Manager as distinct specialisms
Next 5 years: The core skill, knowing what to say and how to say it, becomes more valuable, not less, as content demands multiply across new formats, platforms and channels and AI use becomes noticable.
UX, UI & Digital Design
Then: This entire category simply didn’t exist in 1998. Websites were designed in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and hand-coded page by page, and tested in Netscape Navigator. “User experience” wasn’t a phrase anyone used in a job interview, and a “Digital Designer” would more likely have been called a “web designer” doing everything from layout to image editing.
Now: UX Research, UX Design and UI Design are three distinct, senior careers. Product Designers and Service Designers work across entire customer journeys, not just screens. App Designers didn’t exist until smartphones did.
Software then → now: Photoshop, hand-coded HTML, Netscape Navigator → Figma, Sketch, prototyping tools, reusable design systems
Title evolution: Web Designer → Digital Designer → UX Designer / UI Designer → UX Lead / UX Researcher / Product Designer
Next 5 years: Expect UX Research to grow further in importance as businesses lean on data and user testing to justify every design decision, and design systems to become even more central to how products are built.
Motion, Animation & Video
Then: 3D and motion work in 1998 was the domain of a small number of highly specialised (and expensive) studios, rendering overnight on 3D Studio Max and delivering finished work on tape. Video production for most brands meant TV commercials only. Nobody was making video “content.”
Now: Motion Graphics Designers, 3D Animators and Videographers are core to almost every marketing team, producing content for social, web and campaigns on tight turnarounds. Video has overtaken print as many brands’ primary creative output.
Software then → now: 3D Studio Max, overnight render farms → Cinema 4D, Blender, Adobe After Effects, real-time rendering
Title evolution: 3D Artist (rare, specialist) → 3D Animator / 3D Modeller / Motion Graphics Designer (mainstream, in-demand)
Next 5 years: Real-time rendering and generative video tools will keep speeding up production. Expect demand for motion and animators who can direct and refine that technology, not just animate from scratch.
Strategy & Insights
Then: “Strategy” in 1998 largely lived inside media planning and account teams. Dedicated strategist roles were rare, and research was overwhelmingly quantitative: paper surveys, focus groups, and numbers crunched in Lotus 1-2-3 from Nielsen ratings books.
Now: Brand Strategists, Digital Strategists and Communications Strategists are dedicated, senior roles at most agencies and in-house teams. Business Analysts and Data Analysts now sit alongside creative strategists, backing gut instinct with hard data.
Software then → now: Paper surveys, Lotus 1-2-3, Nielsen ratings books → Google Analytics, social listening tools, CRM data, predictive insight platforms
Title evolution: Planner → Strategist → Digital Strategist / Brand Strategist, with Data Analyst emerging as a standalone specialism
Next 5 years: Strategy roles will increasingly require comfort with data science, as the gap between “creative strategy” and “data analysis” continues to close.
Industrial & Product Design
Then: Industrial Designers, Structural Designers and CAD Operators in 1998 drafted in Pro/ENGINEER, slow and expensive software that was largely limited to 2D. Packaging and product design relied heavily on physical prototyping built entirely by hand.
Now: 3D CAD, rapid prototyping and digital sampling have transformed the discipline. Apparel and Textile Designers now often work entirely digitally before a single physical sample is made.
Software then → now: Pro/ENGINEER, physical prototypes → SolidWorks, Rhino, 3D printing, digital sampling
Title evolution: Draftsperson / CAD Operator → Industrial Designer → Structural Designer / Packaging Designer, with sustainability increasingly built into the role itself
Next 5 years: Expect sustainable and circular design principles to become a core, expected skill rather than a specialism, as regulation and consumer expectations continue to shift.
So, what’s next?
If the last 28 years have taught us anything, it’s that job titles will keep changing, but the underlying skills rarely disappear. They just find a new home. The Desktop Publisher of 1998 didn’t vanish; they became the Digital Designer of today. The Webmaster didn’t disappear; they split into six different specialist developer roles. Whatever “creative, digital and marketing” looks like in another 28 years, we’re willing to bet the people doing it will still be the ones who can combine craft, curiosity and a genuine understanding of what a client or audience actually needs.
If we had to guess at the next 5 years, here’s where we’d put our money:
- AI becomes a genuine collaborator across every discipline in this list, not a replacement for any of them. The premium shifts to judgement, taste and knowing what to ask for.
- Specialisms that barely exist today (think prompt engineering, AI ethics, synthetic media production) become standard line items on org charts, the same way “UX Designer” did over the last decade.
- Sustainability and circular design move from a nice-to-have to a baseline expectation across product, packaging and industrial design.
- The line between “creative” and “data” keeps closing, until most senior creative and strategy roles expect genuine comfort with both.
That part, at least, hasn’t changed in 28 years, and we don’t expect it to change in the next 28 either.
Thank you for being part of the story
Whatever your job title was in 1998, or is today, or will be in 10 years’ time, thank you for being part of Artisan’s story. Whether we placed you, hired through us, or worked alongside us on a project, you’re part of the reason we’re still here, 28 years on. We’ve seen every version of this industry, and we’re going to be here for you into all of the next ones.
Missed the first Birthday Week surprise? Check your inbox for the first gift.
Artisan is Australia’s most connected, trusted and committed recruitment agency for creative, digital and marketing talent. Looking for talent? Looking for work?
