Creative Director, Marketing

Department:  Marketing and Creative Services

Date Posted: 2/22/2023

Dallas Market Center is seeking a Creative Director to join our team!

We are a small, fast-paced internal Creative Team who creates high-caliber creative for multiple business segments including fashion, home décor, and lighting. We inspire our audiences of retailers, interior designers, and leading brands from around the globe with strategically sound, breakthrough creative through a variety of channels (e.g., print, web, social, email, video).

You are a leader and an amazing creative. You are big picture while juggling the small stuff. You generate ideas and excel at problem solving. You have an innate ability to motivate a small, nimble team of designers and generate top creative outputs yourself. You are not afraid to take risks and you push yourself and the team to new heights. You independently identify and solve issues before they turn into problems, and you work collaboratively with partners at all levels.  

You are a team player. You are a great listener and collaborator; you have creative vision and know how to bring it to life. You are low ego, like working in teams, and can communicate creative strategies to others.

You design with energy and passion for your craft. Creativity, design, photography, motion, and video are your passion, and you inspire the creative team with your knowledge, energy and ambition.

You create strategically. You can see a vision through from sketch to final product while meeting business needs. Delivering amazing work that generates results and compels action is your goal.

You are organized, methodical, and timely. You meet or exceed all creative expectations for deliverables. You work within deadlines, briefs, and creative direction leveraging outside vendors such as freelancers, videographers, photographers, and illustrators as needed.

You are an experienced and motivated talent, and you have the skills set to show for it: extensive experience leading and designing for digital and print platforms and the ability to lead photography, visual merchandising, brand guidelines, video and experiential projects.

You are a self-starter who will create projects and have a polished visual aesthetic that is fun and energetic. You lead with passion; you are a thinker with a growth mindset. You are proactive and come to the table with ideas and improvements. You are constantly keeping up with new creative trends.

Position Description:

• Provide strategic creative vision with a true mastery for unravelling complex problems and driving teams to their solution 
• Demonstrate a pixel-perfect design sensibility as well as tight typography chops 
• Direct, manage and plan all photo and video shoots ensuring top quality work is produced
• Manage multiple projects, partners, and team members all while keeping your cool
• Create design solutions that meet or exceed strategic objectives 
• Apply & manage evolving brand identity systems, typography, photography, color, and other items to create innovative solutions that align with business and user needs 
• Provide quality assurance on creative deliverables 
• Articulate a vision and lead direction of creative based on business needs and strategy
• Create design briefs and resulting work to ensure the correct level of aspiration and accountability is maintained
• Proficient in Digital, Social, AV, and Print advertising formats and top of class design benchmarks
• Find and develop working relationships with new creative and production vendors, as well as strengthening partnerships with current vendors, to conceive/execute campaigns
• Lead by example. Get into the trenches with creative team
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of the marketplace and competitive landscape in addition to cultural, design, and business trends
• Consistently articulate your point of view utilizing visual storytelling to stakeholders as well as senior leaders
• Collaborate as a strategic partner to internal teams across multiple industries
• Develop designers as thinkers, leaders, and innovators through leadership, meaningful feedback, timely criticism, and ongoing mentorship 
• Provide clear creative direction and provide timely and helpful feedback to improve creative processes to keep deliverables on time and on budget
• Lead and work with full-time team members, contract workers as well as external agencies as needed
• Oversee day-to-day department responsibilities
• Develop annual department budget and ensure that budget is maintained

Positions Supervised:

• Graphic Designer, Art Director, Visual Director
• External partners as needed

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s Degree in the Creative field, Strong understanding of industry trends and Creative Tools including Adobe Creative Suite, intimate understanding of design, copy and web best practices/guidelines

Required Experience:

• 8+ years of professional experience in a design or creative field; in-house Creative preferred
• 5+ years in a creative leadership role
• Fashion, consumer, home, and/or design experience preferred
• An amazing online portfolio showcasing multiple types of projects and solutions
• Experience creating and managing a high volume of creative and campaign types in parallel
• Experience managing external resources
• Strong working knowledge of brand development, the creative process, and integrated marketing, including digital, video, audio, print, and visual merchandising/experiential
• Fluent in current Adobe Creative Suites Applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
• Computer proficiency in Microsoft suite of products

Physical Requirements:   

• Office Environment- Ability to sit for vast majority of work shift
• Market Duties - More strenuous and requires light lifting, moving and a significant amount of walking/standing

Required Core Competencies:

• Creativity
• Analytical Skills
• Decision Making Skills
• Interpersonal Skills
• Leadership
• Comfort interacting with customers and internal staff.
• Strong persuasive skills
• Excellent Communication Skills:  Effectively listens to others and makes clear and effective oral presentations to individuals and groups regarding work-unit or organization issues.  Communicates effectively in writing; is clear, concise, and easily understood.
• Flexibility:  Adapts to change in the work environment in ways that help work-unit staff keep projects “on course.”
• Interpersonal Skills:  Considers and appropriately responds to the needs, feelings, capabilities, and interests of others.
• Planning:  Establishes policies, guidelines, plans, and priorities required to meet work-unit or organization objectives.
• Resource Utilization:  Responsibly spends financial resources in ways that result in ultimate accomplishment of work-unit or organizational objectives.  Effectively and efficiently uses materials, supplies, equipment, systems, or organization facilities.
• Self-Management:  Engages in the effective use of self-assessment and self-management techniques to proactively and continuously improve own performance.  Exhibits full responsibility for one’s own work achievements and consistently maintains a high level of self-management that contributes to sustained high performance.
• Time Management:  Effectively uses the time available to complete work tasks and activities that lead to the achievement of expected work objectives (as results or outputs).