Design Director

Interbrand•New York, NY

4d•$120,000 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

About Interbrand Interbrand understands what it takes today to build the world’s most iconic brands. To support our clients in an ever more complex and fascinating world, we have renewed our commitment to both common global standards and greater empowerment, experimentation and entrepreneurialism. Interbrand is its people. We are a global team of highly diverse thinkers, makers and collaborators. We are proud of our heritage and often regarded as the university of branding. Over the past four decades, we have pioneered iconic work and invented many of the brand building tools that are now commonplace. In collaboration with many of the world’s leading brands, we are pioneering the future of brand building. In a world where people’s expectations are moving faster than businesses, we give our clients the confidence to make Iconic Moves that create desire and utility, reshape the competitive landscape and drive extraordinary results. The Interbrand Best Global Brands study/rankings are resources to our clients and the industry, providing proprietary data and insight for our role as client partner and commentator. We have published 18 books on brands and are often the reference point for university curriculum and professional associations. Today, through our own Academy, we aim to be the most impactful learning environment in the marketing world. Our Behaviours Our culture is informed by a set of behaviours we co-created as a business. Our behaviours give us space to experiment, permission to speak out, and a model of leadership that anyone in the business can adopt. Our behaviours are Lead with love, Be Brave, Listen First and Make it happen. We are proud of our behaviours. They make us, us. The opportunity You're a thinker and maker who leads the creative team on major engagements. You set a strong creative point of view and coach the team to deliver their best work, elevating not just what we deliver but how we work. You're connecting creative excellence with commercial outcomes and contributing to how Interbrand is known in the market. You're a holistic creative who architects comprehensive brand systems that work intelligently and beautifully across all consumer touchpoints—physical, digital, social, and emerging platforms. You're proficient in emerging creative tools and AI applications, and you have the judgment to know when to use them to amplify creative work and when craft must be unmediated. You shape how your team approaches tool selection, emerging technologies, and cross-channel design thinking.

Requirements

Proven track record leading creative work on significant client engagements. Portfolio showing systems excellence and how ideas work across multiple channels and touchpoints.
Demonstrated expertise in holistic brand design with evidence of leading projects where a single identity system performs effectively across radically different contexts and platforms. Proficiency with emerging creative tools; understanding of how AI can enhance creative work.
You bring clarity about what's distinctive and why it matters. You generate routes that unlock both commercial value and memorable experiences. You know the difference between good and great. You understand how to design systems that are coherent yet flexible and how a brand can feel unified across touchpoints while adapting intelligently to context, audience, and channel requirements.
You work seamlessly across disciplines, bringing strategy and delivery into creative conversations. You navigate tensions between vision and feasibility thoughtfully, not by compromising either.
You develop people and bring out their best work. You coach individuals, create space for contribution, and help the team understand the thinking behind decisions. You shape how your team thinks about and works with emerging tools, balancing technological curiosity with craft standards.
You tell compelling stories about your work that move people to action. You adapt your approach for different audiences and know how to frame choices so people understand what matters.
You operate autonomously and own outcomes. You anticipate risks, structure teams and timelines for success, and deliver at scale.

Responsibilities

Interrogate briefs with strategy and client management, reframing challenges to unlock distinctive creative opportunities
Lead the creative platform on your projects, architecting scalable systems that work coherently across all touchpoints, including web, mobile, social, physical retail, packaging, events and emerging channels.
Identify and frame potential iconic moves, testing feasibility with delivery and challenging the team to think bigger. Consider how the ideas can travel across contexts to better resonate with the audience.
Build senior relationships with clients and partners, leading co-creation sessions that shape decisions
Develop your team, coaching individuals towards their potential and creating space for originality to emerge. Encourage them to think across channels and think about the whole consumer journey.
Structure how creative work flows, setting rituals and reviews that keep momentum and quality high
Own creative delivery, managing scope, budget, and timeline while anticipating and mitigating risks
Provide critique that's clear and decisive, holding the quality bar and ensuring production-ready work
Present your work with conviction, connecting human insight, commercial value, and experience together
Stay ahead of tools, methods, and emerging practices, bringing these into how our team works. Help evaluate new design software, AI tools and other emerging technologies that will help strengthen the creative capability within the company.
Contribute to proposals, building cases for investment, and elevating Interbrand's reputation through awards and recognition
Partner with Brand Economics, understanding impact and using that to inform creative priorities