Role description

The Associate Design Director at Article Group leads visual thinking and design development across our B2B technology marketing projects. You will be accountable for creative problem-solving and project team leadership while contributing to client-facing deliverables in a “hands-on” manner.

As a project lead, you will drive creative excellence across design-centric workflows and deliverables, lead visual (and sometimes verbal) creatives, and ensure that work products are useful, beautiful, and on-brief. In close collaboration with cross-functional disciplines within AG, you will represent Article Group to clients and own accountability for creative decisions. 

As a design leader, you will be a trusted resource for designers creating other projects around the agency, helping them with challenges around ideation, raising their craft, applying fit and finish, and bringing great work with coherent reasoning back to their teams.

As a craftsperson, you will bring your design skills to making and elevating work for clients and the AG brand.

Your background skews towards keynote and presentation design, art direction, and visual storytelling. You are capable of direct partnership with strategy and engagement leads to identify client problems and plan project-level processes. You can lead the creative effort by example as both a doer and delegate of tasks while giving concise, actionable feedback to team members of all levels. Ultimately, you are responsible for crafting and advocating for the integrity of the core creative vision with team members and clients. You will work in a remote environment and represent PST time zones for many of the agency's clients on the West Coast. Travel for on-site events will be required.

Key responsibilities: 

• Leads project teams and manages creative processes and deliverables from conception through final delivery
• Consults with visual creatives to push their work and their craft
• Advocates for the creative team to senior clients within workshops, presentations, and problem-solving activities
• Improves internal efficiency and effectiveness by designing or refining workflows and guiding colleagues through process change
• Delegates or takes on design work directly as required
• Supports junior team members via training, feedback, and coaching for craft, communication, collaboration, and process
• Partners regularly with strategy colleagues to understand client business and audience and ensure creative work fulfills strategic intent
• Partners regularly with engagement/project management colleagues to shape design-centric scopes of work, build pragmatic schedules, and prioritize resources and attention 
• Proficiency in Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Creative Suite (specifically Photoshop and Illustrator). Working knowledge of Keynote, Google Slides, Figma is expected. Knowledge of After Effects and Media Encoder is nice to have.

You'd be a great fit if you have:

• At minimum, 5 years’ experience in advertising, brand design, digital production or relevant creative services
• A contemporary portfolio reflecting your specific designs and contributions
• A passion for design, a bias for flawless execution, and a desire to deliver excellent client work.
• Comfort handling overlapping assignments with durations ranging from roughly 4-8 weeks
• A proven ability to manage and organize your own work and adhere to schedules and deadlines, while directing the work of others
• Demonstrated skill as an empathetic listener, communicator and collaborator
• Poise under pressure 
• Resilience to accept criticism of your work
• Expert in Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Sketch and other design software 
• Proficiency with G Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar), and an ability to quickly learn and embrace new tools