Senior Art Director

AKQA; Paris; Hybrid; EUR 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

AKQA, part of WPP, designs adaptive digital services and experiences that engage audiences and deliver results. Senior Art Directors shape strategy, conception and design, providing leadership and pushing ideas from brief to end user.

You’ll bring a strong point of view on social-first creativity and mentor junior team members, ensuring output meets AKQA standards for creative excellence. A hybrid in-office model is in place.

Qualifications

• Portfolio showing high-quality art direction and concepting across projects.
• Portfolio includes social media campaigns with native, shareable ideas.
• Experience leading a team and working directly with clients is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor the design team, ensuring creative excellence across outputs.
• Create and direct original, persuasive work for campaigns, content and experiences across clients.
• Conceive social-first concepts and campaigns with strong platform culture understanding.
• Collaborate with clients and internal teams to deliver projects from brief to end user.

Skills

Art direction

Creative concepting

Social media campaigns

Leadership

Client management

AI experimentation

Job description

At AKQA (part of WPP), we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital services and experiences that capture the imagination, delivering impressive returns for our clients.

Creatives at AKQA apply artistry and craftsmanship to strategic insight, to create and bring to life beautiful ideas that move the world. As skilled storytellers and conceptors, they work in a multidisciplinary environment to develop labours of love that delight customers and deliver results for clients.

Senior Art directors play essential roles in the strategy, conception and design of beautiful ideas, products and services. They bring exceptional creative thought and they craft output, developing and delivering projects from the brief to end user.

As a Senior Art Director, you will provide leadership for the brands you work on, create innovative concepts and push the idea through to the final outputs

You will bring a strong point of view on social-first creativity, conceiving ideas designed to live and travel natively across social platforms.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Possess not just exceptional art direction skills, but the ability to implement strategic and conceptual thinking as well.
• Create and manage original, persuasive and conceptually compelling work for campaigns, content and experiences, across a variety of clients.
• Conceive and art direct social-first concepts and campaigns, with a deep understanding of platform culture, formats, creators and what drives engagement and conversation, not just reach.
• Leads by example to inspire colleagues to originate pioneering ideas that deliver successful solutions.
• Listen to and respond to briefs, and question where there are gaps.
• Collaborate with the client and with various teams within AKQA.
• Embrace challenges and inspire new ways of thinking.
• Have expertise with AI and know how to use or divert it.
• Responsible for driving projects with some supervision, along with and mentoring junior members of the team.
• Be accountable for the project design deliverables and manage the quality of all design deliverables to ensure they meet AKQA standards for creative excellence.

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• You have a compelling portfolio of work that demonstrates high-quality art direction and concepting across a variety of projects.
• Your portfolio includes campaigns built for social media, showing that you can turn a strategic insight into ideas that are native, culturally relevant and shareable.
• Proven creative success working in collaborative, multi-functional teams.
• Strong information presentation skills, visual and written.
• You have a breadth of cultural reference points.
• You have a drive to break boundaries and craft the best ideas of their kind in the world.
• You are passionate, driven and obsessed about your craft and stay on top of best practice in your field.
• Experience in leading a team and working directly with clients is advantageous.
• Extensive experience using the most common software.
• Experience of nurturing client relationships.

AKQA is committed to developing wellbeing and supporting life choices for our team. We provide an extensive range of benefits.

We believe great work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach including required in-office days. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

AKQA is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.