Creative Director, Design

Brainrider is a marketing and creative agency with teams in Menlo Park/San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, London, and Toronto. We work with ambitious marketers, in-house creative teams, and internal agencies to do more, by filling capability and capacity gaps and enabling them to execute their marketing and creative at scale.  

We believe collaboration is at its best when we feel at home, so we work as a team — plain and simple. Whether we’re brainstorming better marketing ideas for our clients, or pushing the gas to meet a tight deadline, it all happens with adaptability, optimism, and teamwork. When you join us, you may be pleasantly surprised to find yourself surrounded by smart, genuinely down-to-earth and inclusive people who want to grow with you.

Are you our next team member?

Our client in Menlo Park is one of the most innovative companies on the planet, and we are helping them build an in-house creative studio to support their internal projects team. 

As the Creative Director, you'll be the creative lead for the team, working side-by-side with the Executive Creative Director to build, shape, and manage a team of art directors, copywriters, and project managers. This team will design and create superb visual experiences in support of internal branding projects including summit and event design, programmatic video content, and other communication design challenges.

You have an affinity for new technologies, you are probably an early adopter, your leadership skills naturally attract and bring out the best from those you work with, and you have an eye for top shelf creative talent and great work. You should be able to leverage your talent and smarts to lead a multidisciplinary team to execute in a variety of visual styles, and articulate design decisions that lead quick iterations.  The ability to collaborate seamlessly with VP stakeholders, creative leads, art directors, and content strategists is your superpower.

You're also eager to get your hands dirty, working on conceptual design projects alongside the team. You don't want your own office, and you don't want to spend all of your time in management meetings. You want to be in the studio, hands-on, helping make magic happen. You are a visual storyteller, combining brand strategy and design thinking to bring ideas to life. You bring a passion for design, photography, type, and motion together to tell compelling stories.

You're a good match for this role if the following describes you:

• Leading strategy, concept development, and design for a wide range of projects
• Prioritize competing needs with good reasoning and creative solutions
• Working cross-functionally and collaborating with internal and external team members
• Ideating on brand visions and strategic understanding of brand systems
• Defining visual concepts/themes/directions and refining design work based on partner and stakeholder feedback
• Developing visual identity platforms, systems, typography, palette, illustration, iconography systems, while contributing to the development of the broader design system for the brand
• Keeping project timelines on track
• Delegating projects to team members
• Clearly articulating design decisions to a variety of partners
• Collaborating with executive staff
• Developing branding glyphs, logos, identification marks, website / wiki designs, product experiences, presentations, presentation templates, storyboards or animatics for motion graphics and video
• Ability to extract the key elements of a story from a client conversation or brief, then tell that story creatively in a simple, compelling, persuasive way.

• 8+ years experience with communication or branding design 
• Self-starter with strong verbal and written communication skills
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams, from junior designers to senior art directors, writers, illustrators, producers, etc.
• Experience leading strategy and partner relationships to drive project goals
• Experience developing branding systems and environmental design
• Experience in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and other packages
• An online portfolio that showcases a range of branding, website designs, presentation support, communication design, promotion, and environmental design
• A track record of engaging launched projects
• Strong understanding of web UX/UI trends and best practices
• Experience articulating the design trends

This is a full-time embedded position working 100% with our client's office. This position is remote until further notice, following COVID-19 recommended SIP guidelines. 

We offer competitive salaries, paid vacation, work from home (WFH) support and set-up assistance, 401K options and a wide variety of other great perks!

The fine print:

• Please include with your application:
  • An online portfolio that showcases a range of branding, website designs, presentation support, communication design, promotion, and environmental design
  • Your resume and cover letter—we would like to learn more about you and your experience leading content team

All cover letters and portfolios will be reviewed; candidates who are selected for next steps will be contacted

Brainrider is a place where everyone can do their best work and be themselves. We work as a team, plain and simple. We respect and value the unique characteristics, skills, and experiences of everyone, and support and champion each other to be the best we can be — for ourselves, our team, and our clients. We recognize that a diverse and inclusive workplace leads to better ideas, better solutions, and better results. And we’re here for that — and for you. We #ridetogether.

You can learn more about us at Brainrider.com