Design Director - FMCG - Interbrand - London

Job description
Design Director is a responsible role – Design Directors are accountable for design quality, and other designers and managers will look up to the Design Director as a role model.

Skills and Experience
- Experience in major branding consultancies working on high profile clients on a variety of branding issues.
- Experience in developing creative solutions for FMCG specific clients.
- Design skills and aesthetics should be a given.
- Clarity of thinking, delegation, effective use of other design staff and resource.
- Pushing hard for creative solutions that become leading examples of branding.
- Strong understanding of Brand Architecture and the wider world of design beyond packaging.

Working within the Interbrand structure
- Supporting the creative director he or she is assigned to and learning from their working practice. Continuing to take on and develop his/her own clients.
- Using the briefing tool and attending, preparing and creating brainstorm sessions to fast track projects.

Working with Clients
- Holding a number of clients directly as the main creative lead.
- Acting as the lead client-facing creative from Interbrand, drawing on the support of his/her creative director at any time.
- Being strongly involved in the Creative Director’s client work, giving support and relieving pressure. The balance between supporting the Creative Director and their own clients should be about 40/60 (but of course will vary.)

Client Relationship
- Balancing the needs of a happy client with achieving leading creative work.
- Representing Interbrand not just creatively but in terms of experience, insight and attitude
- Listening carefully to clients and developing the client relationship.
- Leading the presentation of creative work to the client in a clear compelling and inspiring way, demonstrating polished and articulate presentation skills.
- Growing new business from existing clients (this will be a key objective.)

Quality of Work
- Aesthetics of work should never be in question at this level - a primary focus will be quality and clarity of thinking and ability to articulate this to the client in a compelling way.
- Using his/her own time and that of other designers and resources effectively, ensuring that creative thinking is checked with the Consultants and Creative Director before work is undertaken by others.
- Leading others in terms of the brand idea creation and direction, taking responsibility for projects s/he owns creatively and ensuring delivery on the end deliverables.
- Building good cross-working relationships with the Consulting and Client Management teams and maintaining a shared responsibility for the overall quality of project output, leading by example.
- Demonstrating excellent quality of mark making and design vocabulary of work. Conceptually searching for a great idea that can drive the brand, concentrating on benchmarking ideas against the leading brands in the sector and developing ideas to create standout and differentiation against those leading brands.
- Having a joint responsibility with Other Design Directors and Creative Directors to ensure high creative standards are maintained.

Efficiency and effectiveness
- Having a financial understanding of what time and deliverables are required for each stage of a programme, in order to manage his/her own time and that of others. Liaising with the Traffic Manager and Client Management team to achieve this.
- Using tight design direction and insightful briefings using other brand benchmarks. Checking the project is run efficiently in terms of: his/her own time, as well as the Studio, Freelance and Artwork time.

People Development
- Responsible for mentoring and educating other members of the team, particularly in aesthetics and brand idea creation.
- Playing an active and lead role in studio training (in conjunction with HR)

Awards and profile
- Aiming to develop work which is the most effective it can be, and which with the correct measurement criteria should be a potential Design Effectiveness entry. Some projects may also have the potential for design and art direction entry. These goals should be identified before the project is kicked off creatively.

Specialist knowledge and craft skills
- Developing and promoting good aesthetics in typographic sensitivity and all other brand basic elements

Drive and Enthusiasm
- Having a high energy drive, being helpful and offering lots of encouragement - a joy to work with.
- Good awareness and keen interest of packaging in the market today.
- Maintaining a positive attitude and working rapport with the Design team and wider Interbrand employees.

Communication
- Being open, articulate, passionate and clear on what s/he is delivering.
- Building relationships and improving team morale, e.g. by working as much as possible face to face with colleagues.

New business and wider objectives
- Taking on a significant number of new business development pitches in the year.

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