The Role
Reporting to: Head of Creative. Working closely with: Creative Directors, Senior Copywriters, and Client Partners
This is a creative leadership position, and a pivotal opportunity for an accomplished Art Directing Designer to drive the visual narrative and creative output for key clients. As a Senior Designer / Art Director, you will be instrumental in conceptualising, shaping, and delivering high-quality, transformative creative solutions that consistently exceed expectations and push creative standards.
You will act as a lead visual architect, driving the visual direction of projects, leading design thinking across teams, and inspiring excellence in others through your craft and leadership. Your work will involve spearheading advertising, design and brand briefs across digital, print, social, and video. Expect to bring concept-to-completion leadership in shaping major campaigns, evolving brand identities, and contributing significant strategic and visual power to high-stakes new business pitches.
This position demands a blend of hands-on creative excellence and a proactive approach to team leadership and client engagement. You will expertly craft visual narratives that ignite engagement, convey powerful messages, and deliver measurable outcomes, often setting the creative direction for projects. You'll partner with strategy and account teams to help define briefs and shape pitch responses. While highly collaborative, you will possess the ability to independently lead and own complex briefs, engaging directly with clients in workshops, strategic discussions, and high-level presentations of your work. Your contribution will be vital in further elevating the agency's reputation for delivering intelligent, impactful design solutions, fostering deeper client relationships, and inspiring creative excellence across the team. We expect you to be a driving force of creative innovation and precision, mentoring peers, setting new benchmarks in design, and consistently challenging conventional thinking.
About Ideas + Outcomes
We are the insight-driven ideas company, purpose-built to help businesses shape their future. At Ideas + Outcomes, our expert teams in Strategy, Creative + Film, UX, and Development work seamlessly across our four UK offices. We’re proud to partner with leading brands including Superdrug, Just Eat, Save The Children, Futura Foods, Oak Tree Mobility, and Eakin Healthcare. Our work spans a dynamic range, from brand development and video concepts to art direction, point-of-sale campaigns, and comprehensive brand asset design.
Our agency exists to solve our clients’ toughest problems. We do this through our distinctive Understand. Simplify. Wow. methodology, which places consumer insight firmly at the heart of every project.
Our Vision: To become the UK’s Most Recommended Agency and to be recognised as a Great Place to Work. We’re already a Drum Recommended Agency – our clients consistently rate us 9/10 – and we're genuinely excited about what’s next.
Ideas + Outcomes is a Common Thread Agency alongside Notepad, Pull, Ideally, and Threesixty.
Location
Central London. This is a hybrid role, requiring 3 days per week in our Barbican office. You'll work directly alongside colleagues from our creative, project management, and client service teams, fostering a truly collaborative environment.
Key Responsibilities
As a Senior Designer / Art Director, you will:
Lead Design Thinking: Take a leading role in conceptualising and developing innovative design solutions, often setting the visual direction for brand and campaign work from concept to final execution, ensuring ideas are both strategically sound and visually distinctive. Create outputs across social, digital, print, pitch/presentation decks, and events.
Brand Stewardship: Act as a senior brand champion for clients, possessing a deep understanding of their core principles and expertly applying them across all design work, ensuring brand consistency and evolution.
Collaborative Partnership: Work closely with senior creatives and strategists to push creative boundaries and spot new opportunities for clients, ensuring a unified and powerful visual narrative across all projects.
Pitch & Proposal Leadership: Play a key role in developing and presenting robust visual support for new business pitches and proposals, translating strategic insights into compelling mock-ups, scamps, and beautifully presented designs.
Project Ownership: Independently manage and drive multiple complex briefs simultaneously, demonstrating exceptional time management and accountability in a fast-paced environment.
Creative Direction & Mentorship: Mentor junior creatives, oversee freelancers, and support others through feedback, design reviews, and collaboration, fostering their growth and ensuring creative output meets agency standards.
Client Relationship Management: Lead design presentations, clearly articulating ideas and direction to clients and internal teams, proactively seeking and integrating feedback to refine solutions, often acting as a primary creative contact.
Industry Authority: Continuously track and anticipate the latest design trends, emerging technologies (including AI advancements), and innovative techniques, integrating them to ensure our design solutions remain competitive, fresh, and forward-thinking, and sharing knowledge across the team.
Artwork Finalisation: Ensure meticulous preparation and delivery of designs for print or digital publication, guaranteeing they meet all required standards and specifications for flawless execution.
Benefits
Salary: £45,000 - £53,500.
Pension: Penfold.
Life Insurance.
Hybrid Working Policy: 3 days in our office (or full-time if preferred), with flexible hours between 08:00 - 18:00.
9-Day Working Fortnight Option: Compress your hours over 9 days to enjoy every other Friday off – a true work-life perk!
Annual Leave: 25 days (FTE), plus bank holidays, increasing with service.
Profit Share: Based on company performance, so everyone benefits from our collective success.
Recognition: Employee of the Quarter and Year Awards, including an extra half-day holiday for quarterly winners.
The Type of Person for the Role
We’re looking for a seasoned Art Directing Designer with a proven track record of generating powerful ideas and driving them through to genuinely transformative, high-impact creative.
Essential Skills & Attributes:
Qualifications: A bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Arts, or a closely related field.
Experience: You’ll bring 6+ years of professional design experience within a dynamic creative or agency environment, including leading multi-disciplinary projects and mentoring creatives. You’re confident owning workstreams, building strong client relationships, and setting high standards in design thinking and execution. You’ll have a strong track record of independently owning complex briefs and collaborating effectively within a team, particularly with copywriters, to shape high-impact, award-worthy campaigns.
Portfolio: An outstanding and diverse portfolio showcasing your leadership in art direction, conceptual strength, and the successful execution of a wide range of design projects. This should include complex campaigns where you have led the visual identity of brands or large-scale campaigns across static and animated social content, brochures, experiential, and video, clearly demonstrating your ability to lead an idea from strategy to polished finish.
Technical Proficiency: Mastery of the latest Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign) and other relevant design software. A deep understanding of advanced print and digital media specifications, along with meticulous asset and artwork production requirements.
AI Integration: Advanced practical experience with AI platforms for asset production and as a co-pilot tool to significantly enhance, accelerate, and innovate the creative process.
Ideation & Visualisation: Exceptional capabilities in sketching, storyboarding, and conceptually visualising complex ideas, translating strategic thinking into compelling visual communications.
The Creative Impact of Language: A profound passion for, and expert understanding of, typography – its uses, its psychological impact, and its linguistic power. Strong copywriting skills for headlines and short-form content, with an articulate ability to rationalise and defend complex creative ideas.
Leadership & Personality: You are a natural leader, highly approachable, and capable of inspiring confidence and fostering growth in those around you. You demonstrate strong autonomy while excelling in close collaboration with senior creatives, strategy directors, and client service teams. You’re a proactive problem-solver and a calm, decisive presence in a fast-paced environment. Comfortable giving and receiving critique to elevate the work.
Ambition: A clear and demonstrable drive to consistently produce creative work that is original, unexpected, highly relevant, and sets new industry benchmarks.
Future-Focused: Committed to continuous personal and team development, actively seeking out and championing new tools, techniques, and training opportunities to push creative boundaries. You bring curiosity, empathy, and creative ambition to everything you do.
Energy & Resilience: Thrives in the fast-paced, deadline-rich, multi-project environment of a leading creative agency, demonstrating exceptional time management skills, personal accountability, and the ability to inspire a calm under pressure.
Industry Authority: Deep and up-to-date familiarity with the intricacies of both print and digital media design, cutting-edge design trends, social media trends, and broader marketing landscape shifts.
Skills & Attributes That Will Help You Stand Out Further
Proven ability to manage and mentor a small team or lead specific creative initiatives.
Expertise in additional design software such as Canva, Figma, and After Effects (including advanced animation techniques).
Extensive UX/UI Design knowledge and proven expertise.
A strong portfolio of creative interests outside of work, demonstrating a continuous passion for creativity and exploration.
Significant photographic / film art direction experience on major campaigns.
Extensive experience with large-scale events and complex experiential projects.
Advanced experience designing for high-level presentations and MS Office Templates.