SHADOW is seeking an Senior Art Director with 6-8 years of design and art direction experience, preferably working with consumer brands. This is a cross-divisional agency role, responsible for executing campaign concepts and developing visual assets and design elements for SHADOW’s full roster of clients. The ideal candidate has a proven ability to manage a robust workload in a dynamic setting.
What You Bring:
- Portfolio: You have an impressive portfolio of creative work that demonstrates an ability to deliver across various forms of art direction and design
- Technical Know-How: You are fluent in Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and comfortable with video editing and animation platforms, including Premiere Pro and After Effects.
- Leadership & Collaboration: You have experience mentoring junior art team members and directing freelance talent, with a track record of bringing out the best in collaborators while maintaining a high creative standard.
- Innovative: You are always up to speed on design, video, style and culture trends, and have the necessary context to think unconventionally and deliver cutting edge work.
- Organized: You can manage projects independently or incorporate within a team, always delivering on deadline. You’re buttoned-up and can juggle multiple multiple different projects at once.
What You Do:
- Creative Ideation & Development: Develop and design concepts for client projects in collaboration with the creative, strategy and social divisions, including social media content, photo/video, events/experiences, digital/web and more. This includes overseeing the creation of moodboards, storyboards, and design mocks, ensuring all client-facing presentations meet agency standard of polish and impact. You're capable of both directing and doing the work, consistently elevating every design touchpoint.
- Campaign Work: Execute campaign ideas and visual elements across a number of mediums, including print and graphic design, video, motion, experiential and digital/web. Take ownership in driving art department elements forward in integrated campaigns ensuring visual outputs uphold high levels of craft and consistency, from managing photographers, illustrators, stylists, etc. to guiding post-production.
- Asset Creation: You direct the asset compilation, design and layout of company decks, presentations, client strategies and other miscellaneous materials.,
- Brand Identity: Thoughtfully and creatively help brands establish their design guidelines and identity
- Team & Talent Development: Manage and mentor members of the junior creative staff. Build and maintain strong relationships with external creative partners, including photographers, designers, directors, illustrators, and animators, with an ability to propose and assemble teams tailored to each project.
- Relationships: Build and maintain agency rolodex of creative talent including photographers, designers, directors, illustrators, animators, etc. Oversee and manage the assistant art director. Develop client relationships through confident and clear presentation of work and trust-building in production-based settings.
Please note that if you are to progress in the interview process, an assignment will be included as part of the candidate assessment.
A quick note: This job description is meant to provide an overview of the role and its core responsibilities, but it’s not a complete list of everything the position may involve. As our teams and business continue to grow, responsibilities may shift and evolve based on company and client needs.
Annual Compensation
$110K - $150K (commensurate with experience)
What We Provide:
- Medical + dental + vision insurance
- Generous PTO and paid holidays
- Dedicated mental health days
- Unlimited sick time
- Give Back. We want SHADOWs to extend their hearts and give back to their various communities and interests, on the clock! We offer 40 hours of paid VTO annually (voluntary time off)
- 401(k) retirement plan with matching
- Pre-tax commuter and healthcare benefits
- 12 weeks paid leave for new parents
- Individualized career mapping
- Summer Fridays (early close Fridays Memorial Day - Labor Day)
- Hybrid work schedule (1-3 days in office per week, depending on role)
While SHADOW intends to maintain these employee benefits, the Company reserves the right to modify, amend or terminate these benefits at any time and for any reason.
Additional Information
SHADOW promotes a diverse and high performing company culture. SHADOW is dedicated to providing equal opportunities to all qualified persons, and to recruit, hire, train, promote, and compensate persons in all jobs without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation.
All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
Skills Required
- 6-8 years of design and art direction experience
- Proven ability to manage a robust workload in a dynamic setting
- Fluent in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
- Experience with video editing and animation platforms (Premiere Pro, After Effects)
- Experience mentoring junior art team members
What We Do
SHADOW is a creative marketing and communications agency with integrated disciplines across media relations, influencer marketing, experiential and event production, social media management and content development. Using these services, we shape insights and ideas into stories, animate stories into moments and engineer moments into movements. We are also connectors – we create inter-client synergies to maximize opportunity as well as leverage industry relationships for introductions, partnerships, business development and more. With a robust portfolio of brand campaigns, cross-categorical experience, and a deep rolodex of industry relationships, we have captured the loyalty of some of the world’s most prestigious companies, including luxury and lifestyle brands, retailers, tech start-ups, publishers, personalities, non-profit organizations and hospitality groups. We are a New York-based agency, with a west coast presence made possible through our SHADOWest suite of services.
