Senior Art Director, Brand

CarMax • Richmond, VA

10d • Onsite

About The Position

The Senior Art Director – Brand drives the creative vision and execution of work that elevates the CarMax brand and engages audiences. The role combines strategy, branding, and design to produce high-quality assets across brand channels and stores. It suits a creative thinker who can thrive in a fast-paced environment, pivot quickly, and apply conceptual and strategic creative skills to brand assets, installation guidelines, and messaging.

Reporting to the Associate Creative Director on the Brand team, the Senior Art Director collaborates with cross-functional teams to ensure creative work aligns with strategic objectives and brand guidelines. The role leads and contributes to ideation, art direction, visual design, brand systems, motion graphics, and project execution. It also involves applying insights and performance indicators to creative decisions, exploring appropriate uses of generative AI, maintaining guidelines and templates, and presenting creative rationale to stakeholders.

The position requires managing multiple projects with minimal oversight, building strategic relationships across teams, and balancing creative ambition with execution, timelines, and business objectives.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Arts, Digital Media, Advertising, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience in design and art direction.
• At least 5 years of experience in art direction, branding, or a related creative role.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating expertise in art direction, identity, brand storytelling, and creative leadership.
• Experience designing and creating layouts for a variety of print and digital channels.
• Experience designing and creating brand systems.
• Experience designing and creating motion graphics.
• Experience creating brand or installation guidelines and working with production vendors.
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to articulate and present concepts to diverse audiences.
• Keen attention to detail and a commitment to high-quality, customer-centric work.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment while managing multiple projects and deadlines.
• Passion for creative problem-solving and pushing creative boundaries.

Nice To Haves

• Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and InDesign.
• Figma proficiency.

Responsibilities

• Contribute ideas to Brand Communications through brainstorming, gathering inspiration, identifying relevant trends, and developing channel-specific approaches to bring the brand to life.
• Identify opportunities to evolve the CarMax brand and explain the rationale to brand stakeholders.
• Contribute to developing and maintaining style guides and installation guides for channels and stores.
• Lead brainstorming sessions to generate innovative and original project ideas.
• Understand project goals and how deliverables support broader marketing strategy.
• Apply innovative thinking and art direction across visual design, branding, concept development, motion graphics, and design systems or layouts.
• Account for channel needs, performance indicators, and business goals when shaping creative work.
• Understand how generative AI affects campaign planning and identify opportunities to use it.
• Build brand-appropriate templates that meet creative briefs and work with teams to facilitate asset delivery.
• Invest in learning AI, maintain proficiency with creative tools, and understand technology and asset-type limitations and AI and brand best practices.
• Research ways tools can improve creative development and testing.
• Collaborate with the manager on strategies to optimize creative based on insights.
• Capture and document content and asset recommendations from legal and other sources, including the rationale, in shareable and editable formats.
• Follow established processes and tools, and save and share files appropriately.
• Source inspiration from diverse digital sources and use found images, mockups, and video to shape and support concepts.
• Refine and customize ideas, incorporating inspiration into original work that meets brand guidelines and platform needs.
• Promote projects and initiatives across organizational levels, presenting creative thinking and rationale.
• Communicate clearly and effectively, tailoring messages to the audience.
• Build strategic relationships across teams and engage partners to align on objectives and contribute to team goals.
• Motivate peers and business partners to support high-level creative work aligned with team and department goals.
• Seek creative feedback and ideas, recognizing when partner or team ideas better serve the project or user.
• Balance creativity and execution through critical thinking and informed independent decisions while managing tight timelines and ambiguity; address issues independently.
• Lead multiple projects independently, managing timelines, deliverables, and team expectations with minimal oversight.
• Evaluate and question high-level strategic decisions to suggest improvements or strengthen creative direction.
• Adapt to changing requirements and manage transitions with minimal disruption.

Benefits

• Paid sick time: up to 48 hours per year accrued each pay period for eligible full-time hourly or commission/incentive-eligible associates.
• Vacation time: 80 to 200 hours per year after a 90-day waiting period for eligible full-time hourly or commission/incentive-eligible associates, based on years of continuous service.
• Six paid scheduled holidays per year, with 8 hours of pay for each, plus one floating holiday for eligible full-time hourly or commission/incentive-eligible associates.
• Holiday Premium Pay for eligible associates who work on a scheduled holiday due to business need.
• Full-time salaried associates receive paid time away with no specified limit as needed for sick time, vacation, bereavement, jury duty, holidays, and floating holiday, subject to manager approval.
• May be eligible for bonus and equity.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior