Executive Creative Director

Chicago Fire•Chicago, IL

About The Position

Chicago Fire FC is seeking an Executive Creative Director to build and lead Fire Studio, bringing the Club’s design, video, photography, and production capabilities together as one integrated creative team. This person will set a new creative standard for the Club and shape how the Chicago Fire brand comes to life across every touchpoint. Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, the Executive Creative Director will be the Club’s senior creative leader, responsible for how the Chicago Fire brand comes to life visually and creatively. The people and capabilities are here; the opportunity is to bring them together and shape how Fire Studio works – its creative vision, culture, processes, technology, and ways of working. The successful candidate will combine exceptional creative taste and craft with strong leadership and operational instincts. They should love developing ideas, art directing, giving feedback, solving creative problems, and jumping into the work when needed, while also building the team, processes, and systems that enable exceptional work at scale. This is a highly hands-on creative leadership role. The successful candidate should expect to spend at least half of their time actively creating, designing, concepting, and art directing work alongside the team, with the balance focused on leading the people, processes, and systems behind Fire Studio. This role arrives at a unique moment for the Club, with the opportunity to help evolve the Fire’s visual identity, shape how the brand shows up across Chicago, and contribute to the creative expression of McDonald’s Park. Come build Fire Studio with us.

Requirements

Significant experience leading creative for a brand, agency, sports or entertainment organization, or other culturally relevant consumer-facing business.
A portfolio demonstrating exceptional creative thinking, visual taste, art direction, design, brand-building, and integrated campaign work.
Deep understanding of brand identity and visual systems, with exceptional hands-on design and art direction skills, strong proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, and the desire to remain actively involved in concepting, designing, and creative problem-solving.
Experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams, with a demonstrated ability to develop talent, provide direct and constructive feedback, and build high-performing creative cultures.
Experience overseeing design alongside video, photography, content production, or similar disciplines is strongly preferred.
A builder’s mentality and strong operational instincts, with genuine interest in shaping a creative organization, its culture, processes, tools, and systems to enable exceptional work at scale.
Curiosity about emerging technology and enthusiasm for thoughtfully incorporating new tools, including AI, into creative workflows and output.
Ability to collaborate effectively with senior leaders and cross-functional stakeholders while balancing long-term brand building with the speed, volume, and changing priorities of a professional sports environment.
Strong cultural fluency in soccer, including an understanding of the visual language, traditions, supporter culture, and contemporary influences shaping the game globally.
Ability to work flexible hours, including but not limited to evenings, weekends, and holidays.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in soccer or professional sports is preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

Set and continually raise the creative vision, ambition, and standard for Chicago Fire FC.
Build and lead Fire Studio, bringing graphic design, video, photography, and production together as one connected team with a shared creative vision, culture, and standard.
Develop and lead creative concepts for major brand campaigns, launches, matchday moments, Club announcements, and other tentpole initiatives.
Operate as a true player-coach, combining exceptional creative direction, art direction, and feedback with significant hands-on creative execution alongside the team.
Recruit, develop, mentor, and inspire creative talent while building a culture of collaboration, experimentation, accountability, and high standards.
Partner with the Director of Video and other creative leaders to provide clear direction while empowering discipline experts to lead their teams and craft day-to-day.
Own the visual and creative expression of the Chicago Fire brand and serve as a key creative voice in how the brand continues to evolve and connect with Chicago.
Lead the Club’s creative involvement in the development of Chicago Fire FC kits, partnering with internal teams, adidas, and Major League Soccer to shape concepts, design direction, storytelling, and launch creative.
Help shape the creative expression of matchday, ensuring in-stadium content, environmental creative, presentation, and fan-facing moments feel distinctive, connected, and unmistakably Chicago Fire.
Provide creative direction for merchandise, apparel, retail, and brand collaborations, identifying opportunities to extend the Chicago Fire identity into products and cultural spaces beyond traditional Club marketing.
Develop creative platforms and storytelling that build deeper connections between the Club, its players, supporters, the city, and culture.
Ensure the broader Fire ecosystem – including the First Team, youth soccer, Chicago Fire Foundation, community initiatives, and other Club properties – comes to life through a connected but appropriately flexible creative system.
Partner closely with Social, Content, Communications, and Marketing teams to create work that is culturally relevant, channel-appropriate, and capable of breaking through beyond traditional sports marketing.
Partner closely with Corporate Partnerships and marketing peers to develop distinctive creative ideas and executions that serve the objectives of both the Chicago Fire and its partners.
Create integrated concepts that can extend across design, video, photography, social, experiential, matchday, and other channels while helping unlock new commercial value.
Serve as a key Club-side creative voice in the development of McDonald’s Park, working alongside internal stakeholders and external agencies and partners.
Contribute creative perspective to environmental identity, signage and wayfinding, content systems, in-venue creative, photography and art, launch campaigns, and other elements of the stadium experience.
Help ensure the new stadium feels unmistakably connected to Chicago Fire FC while representing the ambition and next chapter of the Club.
Build a modern, scalable creative operation that enables the team to consistently produce exceptional work in a fast-paced sports environment.
Establish smarter processes, workflows, and systems that reduce friction and low-value work, giving the team more time and space to focus on great creative.
Improve how work is briefed, prioritized, assigned, produced, reviewed, approved, delivered, stored, and reused across the organization.
Build and continually improve the Club’s approach to digital asset management, creative archives, taxonomy, accessibility, usage rights, and retrieval.
Identify opportunities to thoughtfully use technology, automation, AI, and emerging creative tools to improve the team’s process, capabilities, and output.
Build and manage a strong network of external creative partners, agencies, freelancers, artists, and production resources that can extend Fire Studio’s capabilities and bring new perspectives to the Club’s work.
Keep Fire Studio connected to the best work and emerging ideas across soccer, sports, design, entertainment, fashion, music, and culture, continually bringing new influences and perspectives into the Club’s creative work.