DESIGN DIRECTOR

LONDON (Hybrid Working)

A benchmarked salary between £64,800 to £76,680 based on your level within our progression framework. You can read more about our approach to performance, salary, and progression here.

👋 Who we are

Born Social is a full service social media agency designed for the new era of advertising. Our client list includes household names like Guinness, Primark, Ford, Mars and ASDA as well as the next generation of big brands like Nando’s, Seedlip and Peloton.

As a proud B Corp we work hard to attract, retain and develop the best social-first talent and create a culture where individuals can thrive. We’re a team of over 150 people across the UK & US and growing!

As we scale our Design department we are looking for our first ever Design Director to support the Head of Design & Studio in leading the Design department to commercial, technical, operational and cultural success. Setting the standard and personally delivering industry leading social-first design work.

✏️ What you'll be doing:

• Design Direction: Delivering leading design work, setting the standard for lead agency and social first output for the department, strengthening client & interagency relationships and driving account growth all through great work. Giving top-down advice and guidance on how brands should be consistently showing up visually across social channels – creating social-first guidelines for clients and internal teams to follow.
• Troubleshooting: Working with other account leaders to support and recover creatively underperforming accounts quickly.
• Awareness of skill & resource: Working with Resource Managers to ensure the Design Team are allocated to tasks & clients that suit their required skill set and identify skills gaps in teams to inform hiring. Utilise unrecovered team time effectively.
• Hiring & Onboarding: Working closely with the Head of, and our Talent team to Interview and hire diverse social-first talent for our roles. Managing the onboarding & probation period of new associates/seniors by thoroughly teaching role responsibilities, leadership and Born Social’s proposition and values.
• People Leadership: Personal Development of the Associate and Senior Design Team: Ensuring each individual is well and thriving at Born Social. Encouraging use of Wellbeing initiatives and engagement is cultural events.
• Professional Development of Senior Design Team: Ensuring each individual understands and is meeting the expectations of them in their role through Performance Reviews and Salary Reviews. Encouraging use of their Learning & Development budget.
• Work Reviews/Oversight: Proactively overseeing and critically assessing work and giving feedback to improve output.
• Team Skill Development: Input into Design specific Creative Times as well as collaborating with the Creative leaders on wider departmental Creative Times.
• Operations: Solving operational challenges within the design team and optimising the organisation and processes to ensure the team are as efficient as possible.
• Commercials: Supporting Head of Dept to improve the Design & Studio commercials by driving revenue growth from retaining and increasing demand for Design resource and ensuring scoping uses the correct rate cards across all clients.
• Culture: Demonstrating company values and support in leading the Design and Studio team culture ensuring inclusion, enjoyment and performance is strong.
• Roadmap: Supporting the Head of Design & Studio in setting and delivering annual roadmap goals that ladder directly to our Lead Agency ambition and support by reporting to the Head of dept with Design team specific insights/challenges/successes/areas for development. Support Head of by contributing to product development and new product implementation where relevant to design.
  
  👀 Who we're looking for:

This role is perfect for a professional individual with a strong background in branding or graphic design.

• You'll have experience leading design teams: a track record of leading and building design teams, particularly for working on bigger projects or global brands. You will be responsible for managing and mentoring senior designers and shaping the design strategy and vision for the agency.
• You'll love being hands-on: you have an impressive portfolio and you’re equally comfortable juggling strategic responsibilities with hands-on design work, ensuring that the highest quality design output is consistently delivered.
• You'll be an expert in social: You have extensive experience designing for social campaigns, collaborating with creatives and strategists to deliver impactful and cohesive brand identities.
  
  ✌️ Our values:

Our values aim to pinpoint the magic ingredients for us at our best. We look for people who share our values and can add to our culture.

See Challenge as Opportunity... is about our attitude and to be very clear, this is not a value of optimism, nor is it about loving every challenge.

Say It Simply... is how we communicate. Think of the basic rules of communication - honest, clear, confident.

Do What You Say... is the crux of our reputation and longevity. When you join Born Social, our trust is fully given. It is yours to lose.

Make Each Other Better... is about our culture of collaboration and commitment to development. We are only as good as the people around us so we all take responsibility for developing each other, as well as ourselves.

Consciously Contribute...is bigger than all the others. It ensures we grow right. It broadens our focus beyond Born Social and cements our commitment to doing what’s just, not what’s easy or immediately self-serving.

Company Benefits 

Flexibility 🤸 Hybrid working, core hours, and an allowance to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks each year

Holiday 🌴 25 days holiday allowance per year plus a 3-day company switch off between Christmas & New Year

Wellbeing 🧠 A choice of £30 monthly wellbeing budget or Health Insurance, access to Spill (virtual mental health support), a trained team of Mental Health First Aiders, an annual Recharge Day and a Bike2Work scheme

Learning & Development 📚 £100 annual budget on Learnerbly (a curated platform of brilliant learning resources) as well as lots of team & department training

Contribute 🌎 Give one day to the world each year through our volunteering scheme and make your own impact on social or environmental sustainability

Incentives 🏆 Monthly team-voted prizes to celebrate individuals who Make Born Better and an Annual Profit Share Scheme so as the business grows, you'll be able to take a share of that growth home each financial year

The Usual Suspects 👍 From pension scheme to enhanced parental leave to life assurance 

Clubs ♣️ Book Club, Film Club, Run Club, Cycling Club, Tag Rugby Club there's something for everyone

Consciously Contribute 💙 Impact our sustainability goals by joining one of our Consciously Contribute Committees

Born Socials 🎉 We like hanging out together and love us some organised (and not so organised) fun

💙 Everyone is welcome

We celebrate different ideas, perspectives, and backgrounds here at Born Social. As an equal opportunities employer, we believe in the power of an inclusive and representative team. We welcome applications regardless of race, religion or belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, political affiliation, family, or parental status. We don’t simply comply with the Equality Act, we go further and take pride in building a stronger and more creative work environment, committed to inclusion, diversity, and representation.

Born Social 🤝 Croud

Born Social is proud to be part of Croud. Together we are a global, full service digital marketing agency. We operate as a unique scaled network of Intelligent, Creative Specialists, enabling us to deliver superior brand outcomes and unlock potential for our people, our clients and our communities.

Our shared culture is designed to elevate everyone, with a focus on trust, collaboration, innovation, generosity and purpose.