Creative Director, Experiential & Digital

About the Company

Our client is an established, independent creative agency headquartered in New York City. With more than three decades of expertise, they partner with complex organizations across financial services, higher education, professional services, and technology — industries where trust, long-term relationships, and the quality of ideas define success. Their work spans brand strategy, digital platforms, and integrated experience design. The agency is known for rigorous, human-centered creative work and a culture built on craft, collaboration, and intellectual curiosity.

About the Role

The Creative Director, Experience Design exists to close the gap between brand idea and lived experience, ensuring that what is defined in strategy comes alive across websites, customer journeys, content systems, and interactions. Reporting to the Chief Creative Officer, this person will define the creative north star for each engagement and hold creative integrity from concept through launch. The role requires digital fluency and strong brand instincts. The primary strength must be creative leadership and conceptual thinking, not UX execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead conceptual development across brand, web, and customer experience programs, establishing a clear creative direction for each engagement
• Translate brand platforms into experiential, visual, and narrative systems that scale across digital touchpoints and channels
• Shape tone, mood, interaction feel, and experience personality; define the emotional arc of user journeys and digital interactions
• Direct motion language — transitions, reveals, and micro-interactions — that bring brand ideas to life in the digital environment
• Review and shape wireframes and prototypes for narrative alignment, creative coherence, and experiential integrity
• Partner with the UX/UI Lead, who owns IA, flows, and interface structure, to ensure ideas scale without losing creative intent
• Collaborate with writers on messaging, narrative, and tone of voice across all deliverables
• Present and sell creative vision to senior decision-makers and clients with confidence, clarity, and a strong point of view
• Maintain creative fidelity through design-to-development handoff, including QA for experiential and brand integrity
• Mentor designers, elevate creative standards, and contribute to a culture defined by craft, rigor, and cross-disciplinary collaboration

Qualifications

• 8 to 15 years in brand, digital, or integrated creative roles with a portfolio demonstrating conceptual excellence and experience design thinking
• Demonstrated ability to direct the emotional flow of user journeys and shape interaction and motion language across digital programs
• Comfortable reviewing Figma files, prototypes, and digital layouts; able to provide meaningful, specific creative feedback on interface and interaction patterns
• Strong understanding of responsive behavior, component systems, and buildability — and where to push for creative ambition over convention
• Experience leading brand systems and digital experiences end-to-end, from strategic concept through launch and QA
• Clear communicator with senior client presence and strong presentation and storytelling skills
• Collaborative leader who can work fluidly across UX, content, strategy, and engineering without losing creative authority
• Commitment to accessibility, simplicity, and user clarity as core creative principles, not afterthoughts