Senior Graphic Designer / Art Director

Who are we?

Flying Object is a boutique, values-driven, unconventional creative agency. We make work for clients, usually brands - especially in tech - as well as cultural institutions and charities. Our work is surprising, interesting and delights audiences, and delivers meaningful business impact. While our team is relatively small we tend to punch above our weight in terms of briefs: just because we are a small agency, we don’t just work for small clients.

Some highlights from the past year or two include:

• An awareness campaign for Monzo Business, delivered across paid social
• A back-to-school campaign for education app Quizlet, paid social & OOH
• A content series around quality audio in music for speaker specialists KEF
• A chirpy, animated introduction to the Coronation for primary schoolchildren

You can see some of our work for other clients like Twitter, YouTube, Wellcome & DeepMind at weareflyingobject.com.

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for a talented, experienced graphic designer/art director with strong credentials to join our talented creative team and lead, or help lead, creative projects.

Along with our current Senior Art Director you would be one of the leading visual creatives in the company, with a direct responsibility over design work in all forms. You would be working with our broader creative team to develop visual concepts and art direction for campaigns, video content, and branding, as well as coming up with out-of-the-box ideas for anything from experiential pop-ups to TikTok content.

Key responsibilities:

• Ensuring the agency consistently delivers high quality, original visual work
• Coming up with original ideas, and visual concepting, in response to client briefs
• Art direction of live-action shoots, motion graphics and animation
• As happy directing design work from others as doing it yourself
• Working with other members of the art/design team, as well as copywriters and strategists, as part of a broader team answering client briefs; taking a leadership role within that team, able to think both creatively and critically
• Working with client briefs, and direct conversations with clients, to understand and better formulate creative strategy; briefing in other members of the creative team on briefs and strategy
• Making presentations for clients and presenting them confidently
• Project leadership, in terms of talking directly to clients, guiding more junior members of the team in the right direction, discussing options with Production, and working with our Studio Manager to ensure we have the correct creative resource on a project
• Developing and working with brand guidelines

You’ll be reporting to one of the Founders/ECDs. We do not run classic “art director & copywriter” pairs but rather put teams of different sizes together as best fits the brief. We are a close knit team with a fun and collaborative working culture, so hiring someone who aligns with our ‘Good Vibes’ values is very important to us.

Please note, we are currently operating a hybrid office working policy where the team is required to work in our office in Farringdon at least 50% of the time per month, with every Wednesday in the office all together.

Essential skills and experience

• A proven track record leading on and delivering high quality creative projects for major commercial clients, as part of an agency, in-house at client, or freelance
• Creds across campaigns and creative assets, including advertising, content marketing, integrated campaigns, digital & social media
• Excellent design ability, both from a craft and conceptual point of view
• Expert Adobe Creative Suite ability; additional platforms (like Figma) are a plus
• Motion design ability is essential; actual AfterEffects skills are optional, but you need to be able to conceive of and direct motion design
• Experience leading a creative team in front of a client
• 3D design ability (directing and/or practitioning) is a plus
• Experience in art direction of animation, film shoots, and/or experiential are a plus
• A collaborative mindset, open to and keen on working both in a creative team and with client teams to get to the best idea, as well as independently where necessary
• Ability to work in ambiguous situations and coolly lead a path to a solution
• Ability to work across multiple projects simultaneously and switch seamlessly between them

Strengths and personal attributes

We would like to see candidates who meet the following criteria:

• Has a genuine interest in Flying Object’s work
• Invested in elevating the quality of creative work coming from the agency
• Shares our creative approach of visually rich, surprising, witty, and worth engaging with
• Enjoys saying ‘Yes, we can find a way’, and also ‘I think there’s a better way’
• An owner who will take responsibility, and a sharer who is happy to hand things over
• Invested in sharing knowledge, inspiring and mentoring other members of the team
• Comfortable with tight deadlines and calm in a storm
• Great attention to detail
• A clear communicator who understands the value of good communication, and can share ideas, plans and instructions clearly and effectively, verbally or in writing

What we offer to you*:

• All permanent staff are included in our profit share scheme, which takes 10% of our annual net profit and shares equally among team members (prorated by days worked that year)
• All permanent staff are included in our pension scheme, in which the company contributes 3% to a company pension if you contribute 5% (or more)
• Vacation: 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays & Christmas closure (3 days)
• All staff have the right to switch to “90% time” - 9 working day fortnights, at 90% pro rated salary & vacation
• Staying late or working weekends is by exception only, and excessive hours are given back as time off in lieu
• Learning, development and career progression are key priorities for us. We have a dedicated L&D budget as well as personal development plans, a regular 121 structure and an annual review cycle for all staff
• Flexible working arrangements, including our 50% hybrid working policy and the ability to adjust hours where needs be. More generally, we take a people-centred approach to our team’s working life and offer flexibility in all of our working practices, with a focus on being as inclusive as possible
• Mental health support through Life Assured’s Friend in Need programme and our Mental Health First Aider, with a wider focus on staff wellbeing. Mental and physical health hold equal weighting; our staff are entitled to take mental health days when required
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Leave with a premature policy in place
• We have a lovely, friendly team culture that is supported by our staff culture budget for regular socials
• Company provided eye tests for display screen use

*We are a small but growing agency, committed to offering our people the best benefits we are able to offer at any given time, which means that these are under continual review.

Remuneration and timeline

Depending on experience we are offering a starting salary of £55-60k per annum, based on a full time role, plus inclusion in our company pension and profit share schemes. There will be a 3 month probationary period.

We are hoping to agree on the chosen candidate by the 4th of August* following the successful completion of:

• One initial first round online interview (45 minutes)
• Two second round interviews, preferably in person at our Farringdon office. These interviews will also involve a short task which will be briefed in advance (1 hour per interview)

We are hoping for these interviews to take place in the week of the 31st of July.

*This date could change depending on candidate and interviewer availability.