Art Director

Neo Financial•Calgary, AB

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Neo is building one of Canada’s most ambitious financial brands, and this is the creative role at the centre of it. As Art Director, you’ll shape how millions of Canadians experience Neo: from the first impression in a paid ad, through every campaign touchpoint, to the feeling of opening the app for the first time. The canvas is wide: Brand campaigns, OOH, experiential, web, in-product, and social, and everything inbetween. Everything from static surfaces to nuanced animations and tactile physical design. The stakes are real. This role exists to translate strategic goals into visually compelling concepts, balancing brand consistency with breakthrough creativity that builds awareness and drives growth. Reporting to the Creative Director, you'll be the key contributor in elevating the Neo brand through creative strategy and visual design. You’ll lead and collaborate with our content/writing team and Visual Designers. You play a critical role in executing the Creative Director's vision, ensuring all visual storytelling and design aligns with broader brand and business objectives, while also contributing hands-on design work and maintaining balance between leadership and execution. You'll work closely with the Director, Creative Design & Operations to ensure project intake, resourcing, and delivery meet the requirements of the brief — including identifying gaps before work begins so the creative team is always set up to succeed.

Requirements

6–10+ years of design experience, including at least 3-5 years in an Art Director or senior creative lead role.
A strong portfolio demonstrating campaign concepting, brand identity, and multi-channel execution.
Proven ability to translate strategy into visual concepts that drive awareness and growth.
Experience managing and mentoring designers, with a track record of elevating team output and craft.
Excellent collaboration skills — you work in lockstep with copywriters, creative directors, and cross-functional partners.
A sharp eye for detail and a high bar for quality, consistency, and error-free execution.
Experience reviewing and stress-testing creative briefs; you know what a good brief looks like and won't let a bad one derail a project.
Hands-on with design tools (Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and experienced working across digital, social, OOH, and print.
Thrives in a fast-paced environment where speed and quality both matter.

Nice To Haves

Motion design background with demonstrated experience in storyboarding and fast iteration on animated concepts.
Exceptional contemporary typography — you push the limits of typographic design while preserving legibility and clarity; a portfolio with modern editorial typographic direction is a significant plus.
Experience scaling brand systems into comprehensive, flexible design libraries that work cohesively across all channels and touchpoints.
Fintech, financial services, or brand-first company experience.

Responsibilities

Bring our creative vision to life
Partner with the Creative Director, ensuring design and advertising concepts align with strategic objectives and brand direction.
Think holistically about how the brand shows up across every surface of the business, ensuring the visual language and narrative remains coherent and intentional across the full customer journey.
Contribute fresh ideas that strengthen campaigns while staying true to the Creative Director's vision.
Present and clearly articulate design concepts and campaign ideas to stakeholders and senior leadership, providing rationale and ensuring alignment with business goals.
Co-develop fully integrated campaigns
Collaborate closely with the Copywriter to develop integrated campaign ideas where words and visuals reinforce each other to drive engagement, awareness, and growth.
Translate briefs from product, growth, and brand teams into compelling design concepts and visual storytelling that resonate with audiences.
Concept and storyboard motion design ideas rapidly, iterating at speed to explore and validate animated campaign executions before moving to production.
Champion the brief
Partner with the Director, Creative Design & Operations to uphold briefing standards, flagging gaps before work begins and ensuring the team has everything needed to execute properly.
Review incoming briefs critically, challenging anything incomplete or ambiguous before it enters the production pipeline.
Act as a quality gate on brief intake, protecting team efficiency and creative output by ensuring no project proceeds without a clear, well-scoped brief.
Lead and develop the design team
Provide creative leadership and mentorship to Graphic Designers, setting direction, reviewing work, and helping them grow professionally while maintaining high-quality design standards.
Champion a culture of exploration and iteration. Introduce processes that encourage rapid prototyping and multiple design solves over prolonged refinement of a single direction, ensuring the team always brings options to the table.
Elevate team output through process, not just feedback — build workflows and rituals that increase creative velocity, reduce bottlenecks, and enable designers to produce more, faster, without sacrificing quality.
Hands-on creative stewardship
Balance creative leadership with direct hands-on design contribution across campaigns and channels.
Oversee final review of all visual deliverables, ensuring work is polished, consistent, and error-free before launch.
Maintain and evolve Neo's visual identity
Ensure Neo's visual identity system remains distinctive, scalable, and consistently applied across all brand touchpoints.
Push the creative envelope for compelling visual and narrative execution that builds brand awareness and drives growth.
Build and scale the design system
Collaborate with Neo's Lead Product Designer & Design Systems team to scale Neo’s current brand system into a comprehensive, universal library of design elements — components, typography, motion, and visual patterns — that work together as a flexible, channel-agnostic system.
Ensure the design system is built for scale, enabling the broader creative team to execute efficiently and consistently across every touchpoint without sacrificing creative flexibility.