Freelance Art Director

Critical Mass; Calgary; On-site; CAD 75,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A dynamic digital agency in Calgary seeks a Freelance Art Director to develop impactful advertising designs. The role requires collaboration with Senior Art Directors and Copywriters, balancing creativity with a detail-oriented approach. Ideal candidates have over 5 years of experience, a strong portfolio, and expertise in industry-standard design tools like Figma and Creative Suite. This is an in-office position for at least 3 days a week.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in digital advertising and design.
• Strong digital conceptual and design portfolio.
• Ability to articulate ideas verbally and digitally.

Responsibilities

• Create refined designs in line with agency and client expectations.
• Work with Copywriters and Creative Directors to create advertising key art.
• Prepare design files for final handoff to production.

Skills

Strong communication skills

Attention to detail

Collaboration

Design aesthetics

Understanding of social trends

Tools

Figma

Creative Suite

PowerPoint

Job description

As a Freelance Art Director, you'll work closely with Senior Art Directors and Creative Directors to develop effective campaign key art, efficiently designed display and social ads and innovative high impact ad units. This hands-on design role balances creativity and logic, and helps ensure a holistic approach is thoughtfully applied across platform, typography, iconography, motion, and photographic elements.

The ideal candidate has strong communication and presentation skills, contributes to positive collaboration with multi-disciplinary team members, a strong understanding of social trends and insights, a refined design aesthetic and exceptional attention to detail.

You Will:

• Create refined designs in line with agency and client expectations
• Work with Copywriters and Creative Directors to create engaging advertising key art
• Work within an existing design framework to create visuals that engage the audience
• Prepare design files for final handoff to production.
• Ensure layout, typography, and specs are pixel perfect.
• Confidently express and justify design choices.
• Work closely with creative and production leads to understand design direction, limitations and priorities.
• Collaborate with Copywriters and larger project teams to explore and iterate on design options.
• Consult with technical disciplines to ensure designs work within given limitations, and files are prepared with all necessary information to support the design intent.
• Promote thoughtful and purposeful design, rather than an enforcement of rules.
• Create well thought out and designed presentation decks to make the work shine.
• Take an active part in internal meetings and presentations.
  

You Have:

• 5+ years experience in digital advertising and design.
• Deep experience with display and social advertising
• Strong digital conceptual and design portfolio highlighting your storytelling and problem-solving capabilities from concept to completion.
• Keen interest in championing brand identity through a balance of consistency and flexibility.
• Proficiency in the formal elements of design, with a strong focus on typography, balance, and proportion.
• Systematic thinker; able to anticipate the impact of design decisions well in advance of their application.
• Experience working within dynamic creative optimization (DCO) frameworks
• Excellent digital file structure and asset management skills.
• Passion for pixel-perfection and order. Unparalleled attention to detail.
• Ability to articulate ideas verbally and digitally; be clearly understood by creative, product management, and development staff.
• Ability to deliver strong design rationale and supporting files in a tight timeframe.
• Ability to thrive in a challenging, fast-paced, creative workplace.
• Figma, Creative Suite and PowerPoint expertise, including file organization, and preparation of pixel-perfect files for design team use.
• Clear communication and presentation skills that speak to both creative and technical audiences

The Talent Team at Critical Mass is focused on ensuring we provide the best training, onboarding, and employee experience possible! Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.

Critical Mass is an equal opportunity employer.

The Critical Mass Talent Acquisition team will only communicate from email addresses that use the URLs criticalmass.com, omc.comandus.greenhouse-mail.io . We will not use apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts for communicating with you. We will never ask you to send us money, technology, or anything else to work for our company. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, please review your local government consumer protections guidance and reach out to them directly.

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

How did you hear about this job? *

What city are you permanently located in? *

Are you legally authorized to work in the Country you are applying for? * Select...

Do you need sponsorship now or in the future? * Select...

If you will need sponsorship, please explain.

Do you currently work for an Omnicom agency? Select...

What company do you currently work for? *

LinkedIn Profile:

Portfolio and Password (if applicable):

Voluntary Self-Identification

At Critical Mass, we are dedicated and determined to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities in which we live and work. It is crucial that every team member can thrive and reach their full potential.

With that said, we’d like to know a little more about you. We ask all applicants to fill out the below voluntary self-identification questions in order to evaluate and improve our recruitment and diversity efforts. Answering is completelyvoluntary and will not affect the outcome of your application.

The data collected may be reviewed by the Critical Mass Talent Acquisition Team, Human Resources, our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion team, and our executives, but they will neither be reviewed by nor disclosed to anyone else. All the information that you share with us pursuant to this survey will be stored on our secure network servers located within Canada and the United States. We will only retain this information so long as it is necessary for the purpose that we have described here or as may be required by applicable laws. Thereafter, we will either anonymize the information or delete it entirely. If you elect to complete this survey, and at any point in the future you wish to retract or amend your responses, or otherwise have any questions about your data, you may contact our Talent Acquisition team at [e-mail] .

As set forth in Critical Mass’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Aboriginal Peoples Definition:

Aboriginal Peoples means persons who are defined as: Indians (more commonly referred to as First Nations), Inuit, or Métis.

Members of Visible Minorities Definition:

Members of Visible Minorities means persons, other than Aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in color.
Examples:
Black (e.g. African, Caribbean, Other)
Arab (e.g. Middle Eastern, North African, etc.)
Asian and Southeast Asian (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Thais, etc.)
West Asian (e.g. Armenian, Iranian, Persian, Egyptian, Turkish, etc.)
Other (e.g. Latin American, Pacific Islander, etc.)

Persons with Disabilities Definition:

Persons with Disabilities means persons who have a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition.

How do you identify (gender identity)? Select...

Do you identify as LGBTQIA+? Select...

Based on the definition above, are you an Aboriginal Person? Select...

Based on the definition above, are you a member of a visible minority? Select...

Based on the definition above, do you consider yourself as a person with a disability? Select...

Are you a Canadian Armed Forces Veteran or Reservist? Select...

Are you the spouse of a CAF Veteran or Reservist? Select...