Creative Director

This is an exciting opportunity for a Creative Director to join Mother Design, a highly respected and expanding independent design agency in the heart of Shoreditch.

You’ll lead, inspire, and motivate a team of designers, art directors, strategists and Mothers (AM’s) in creating the most impeccable and inspired branding solutions for an exciting mix of clients from large scale tech start-ups to the world's most loved brands to bringing up-and-coming unheard-of brands to life and a little bit of everything in between.

Reporting into the Executive Creative Director and Managing Director of Mother Design, this role will sit within the core leadership team to deliver on the creative and strategic ambition of the business. This will include building the reputation of Mother Design in and out of the business, supporting new business growth and leading pitches as well as nurturing and growing current accounts.

We’re looking for someone who’s as passionate about design as we are and will contribute to the Mother Design culture. We want someone who pushes all creative work to the next level and brings daily energy and inspiration to the team. This person must have in-depth experience of delivering award-winning, show-stopping, bold brand identity work that resonates with today’s modern consumer as well as having experience in managing a world class creative team.

Your key responsibilities will be:

The creative output

• Establish creative direction for visual output of assigned projects within Mother Design

• Manage and oversee the outputs of Mother Design on assigned projects, ensuring they are to the highest creative standard

• Responsible for contributing to wider Mother agency outputs where needed adding value to agency projects with branding skill set

• Working closely with clients on live jobs, alongside Project Director, Strategy

• Director – Manage accounts collectively from a leadership point of view

• Ensuring work is of high standard, the process is effective and enjoyable and delivers to budget and timelines. We refer to this as Mothers Holy Trinity (do the best work we possibly can, have fun, and make a living and its always in this order!)

• Work closely with Strategy Directors to challenge, define and articulate brand strategy, and ensure we have strong foundations for all creative work

• Work closely with the Mothering (Account Management) team to ensure impeccable client servicing and co-own senior client relationships with Account Directors / Managing Director

Relationship building

• Internally – Building relationship with the wider creative teams across the Mother Global network

• Clients – Alongside ECD & MD & PD - Build long-lasting client relationships, build new business pipeline and manage senior stakeholders

New business and pitches

• Supporting on day-to-day new business development

• Lead creative on assigned pitches for Mother Design’s own clients, as well as take a leading creative role in cross agency collaborative pitches with the wider Mother family where appropriate

Talent and team

• Designing the best environment for creatives to flourish – bring new creative ways of working to educate and encourage the team to design the most exciting, progressive and inspired brands.

• Maintaining, nurturing, growing talent; including conducting annual reviews

• Supervise and inspire the designers/creatives within Mother Design

The key skills required for the role:

• Successfully run creative teams at leading agencies or in-house at brands, ideally both demonstrating strong management skills

• Ability to motivate and elevate a design team, nurturing Design Directors, Senior, Middle Weight and Junior Designers

• A proven track record in defining and growing breakthrough brands, internationally. Exceptional 360 design and branding experience; conceptual but also rigorous and systematic in their approach to building brand systems, including digital

• Can demonstrate ability in leading and winning large scale pitches, as well as ability to maintain long term client relationships too

• Strategic thinker and great storyteller; can take clients on a clear and inspiring journey that sells in the work and ensures it answers the clients brief and business needs. Excellent verbal, visual and written communication skills

• Experience of working with large consumer-facing brands, but equally comfortable in working with smaller more niche brands

• Gravitas and artful persuasion without ego; always encouraging other voices and opinions in the room.

• Has an active creative network. Has existing relationships with relevant freelance graphic designers, motion designers, copywriters, photographers, illustrators

• Cool and calm under pressure, able to juggle multiple projects and teams. A detail orientated approach and amazing organisation skills

• Passionate about design, willing to get your hands dirty as well as keep an eye on the bigger picture. Flexible, adaptable both in thinking and approach to design

About us:

Mother Design is an independent Branding and Design Studio, part of the Mother Family spanning London, NY, LA, Shanghai and Singapore. We specialise in not specialising, with a diverse portfolio of work and family of clients, brought together by a shared desire to make the best work we possibly can.

Mother Design work with global brands big and small, from the likes of Facebook,

Nike and BBC to Nursem, Plenish and Nuud. We know that no two clients are the same, which is why we have no house style or magic formula, but rather an ambition to use design to break through the sea of sameness and create a brand language that is distinctive, relevant and true to the community it serves, placing brands in the hearts, homes, phones and screens of real people.

We live by our holy trinity, which is to make the very best work, have fun doing it and earn a living.