Design Director

Critical Playground LLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexi-hours

Hybrid working

Annual training budget £1,000

28 days holidays (plus public holidays

Private health insurance

Sick pay scheme

Team socials

Job summary

Human After All in London seeks an experienced designer and design leader to shape ideas, direct craft, and set the direction with our Creative Director. You’ll lead multidisciplinary teams across digital products, campaigns, and brand identities, turning strategy into distinctive, meaningful work for global clients.

You’ll collaborate with strategists, writers, designers, technologists and clients, presenting with confidence from boardroom to studio.

Qualifications

• Experience leading brand, digital and communication projects from concept to delivery.
• Strong ability to turn strategy into compelling creative direction.
• Proven ability to build and evolve design systems across channels.

Skills

Brand leadership

Digital & campaigns

Design systems

Team leadership

Communication

Typography & visuals

Culture & tech

Job description

When? Monday to Friday, 9.30am until 5.30pm

Where? Three days per week from our studio in Old Street

The Role

You are an experienced designer and design leader. You have a clear point of view on what good looks like and your days are spent shaping ideas, designing, creating the conditions for exceptional work to happen, and defining the direction of the work with your Creative Director.

You have experience in leading multidisciplinary teams across digital products, campaigns, visual narratives and brand identities. You’re able to bring clarity to complex communication challenges for global clients, helping teams develop creative opportunities, then guiding the work from early thinking through to delivery.

You care deeply about craft, but understand that great design is the outcome of a good idea, executed well, in collaboration with your team. You know when to push, when to challenge and when to simplify. You elevate the work through direction, feedback and mentorship, helping others do the best work of their careers.

You collaborate closely with strategists, writers, designers, technologists and clients. You are as comfortable presenting to a boardroom as you are sitting beside a designer refining a concept. You are driven by curiosity, inspired by culture and technology, and committed to creating work that is distinctive, meaningful and commercially effective.

Core Skills

• You have extensive experience leading brand, digital and communication projects from concept through to delivery.
• You are an exceptional creative thinker with a strong point of view and the ability to turn strategy into compelling creative direction.
• You know how to build, direct and evolve design systems, identities and experiences across multiple channels.
• You lead through clarity, trust and collaboration, bringing out the best in multidisciplinary teams.
• You are an excellent communicator, capable of articulating ideas and presenting work with confidence and conviction.
• You have a deep appreciation for craft, with a strong understanding of typography, composition, visual systems and storytelling.
• You understand contemporary culture, technology and business, and how brands create relevance within them.

Nice to Have

• Experience working across both brand and digital product design.
• Experience leading motion, content or campaign-led creative work.
• Experience contributing to pitches and client relationships.
• Familiarity with emerging technologies, AI-enabled workflows and creative tools.

Most importantly, you are ambitious, generous and deeply invested in the success of others. You bring optimism, perspective and a desire to raise the standard of the work, the team and the agency as a whole.

Benefits

• Flexi-hours: We offer flexi-time around our core working hours to allow for personal commitments.
• Hybrid working: Our team split their time between our studio in Old Street, central London, and remote working.
• Career development: We have a considered and robust framework for career development, as well as an annual training budget of £1,000 to further your skill set and knowledge.
• Holidays: 28 days per year (in addition to public holidays)
• Company sick pay scheme
• Private healthcare: We offer comprehensive, fully-subsidised private health insurance from Vitality. This includes an employee assistance programme, discounted gym membership, a reward scheme that offers Amazon Prime, cinema tickets, and fitness tracking devices.
• Family friendly: Enhanced maternity and paternity packages
• Socials: We organise regular studio socials and hold our own event series.

Who we are

Human After All is a creative agency based in London. We create brand-led communications for some of the world’s most influential organisations, predominantly across the tech and purpose sectors. At HAA our values shape everything we do. We’re a certified B Corporation, and we pride ourselves on being great humans. To fit in you’ll need to be empathetic, a team player and an excellent communicator. You’ll also need to be conscientious: there’s a good reason for everything we do and for every decision we take, so you’ll need to be someone who demonstrates this same degree of care — both in your work and your interactions with others.

HAA’s ambition is that just as we hope our work will go beyond expectations, we also hope it will achieve bigger things. We want our creativity to be a force for good. We want the communications we create to be instruments for change in the world. We ask that you consider social and environmental causes both in your day-to-day activities at Human After All, and through our purpose-focused client work.

Please be aware, as we are a UK based business we’re not in a position to employ candidates who're based overseas.