Design Director

Orangery® | B Corp™; Guildford; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Birthday day off

Pension scheme

Job summary

Orangery is a six-person B-Corp studio in Guildford seeking a Design Director. The role is a senior, hands-on creative who elevates ideas and drives them through to work we’re proud to put our name on.

Around half your time is with a global sports brand aligned to brand-first, social-first campaigns, and the rest covers rebrands and strategic design for technology and B2B clients. You’ll work with the ECD and oversee 2D/3D/film freelancers to ensure top quality.

Qualifications

• Senior, hands-on design leader with 8+ years in agency/studio settings.
• Proven ability to translate briefs into strong brand and campaign work.
• Experience briefing and directing freelancers (photographers, filmmakers, animators).
• Fluency in social-first, campaign craft across channels.

Responsibilities

• Lead creative direction across brand and campaign work.
• Develop multi-channel campaign ideas (social-first to print).
• Build and evolve brand identities, guidelines and toolkits for rollout.
• Direct freelance bench; photography, film and video direction/editing.
• Quality-check work to creative and technical standards; present to clients.
• Contribute to pitches and new business with the ECD.

Skills

Leadership

Brand strategy

Conceptual thinking

Freelancer management

Presentation skills

Tools

Figma

Adobe CS

Job description

We're a six-person B-Corp studio in Guildford looking for a Design Director. A senior, hands-on creative who can take an idea, elevate it, and drive it through to work we're all proud to put our name on.

Around half your time will be spent on a global sports brand moving into brand-first, social-first campaign work — brand guidelines, campaign toolkits, and regional and global rollouts. The other half is varied: rebrands, strategic design projects and campaigns for clients across technology and B2B.

You'll work closely with our Executive Creative Director, and you'll direct our freelance bench of 2D, 3D, animation, film and photography specialists, setting the standard and holding the line on quality. There's real scope to get out on shoots, directing photography and video. We're genuinely collaborative — ideas come from everywhere here, and the best one wins regardless of who had it. Leadership is earned, and it's there to take.

Everyone here is senior enough to manage their own work and their own diary, and is trusted to get on with it. No unnecessary layers, no agency politics.

We're also early in our AI journey, building it into how we brief, research and produce. If that interests you, it's a good moment to join.

The role

• Leading creative direction across brand and campaign work
• Developing campaign ideas that work across multiple channels — social-first content through to print and environmental
• Building and evolving brand identities, visual systems, guidelines and campaign toolkits for regional and global rollout
• Directing our freelance bench, including film, video and photography direction and editing
• Quality-checking work to both creative and technical standards before it leaves the studio
• Presenting and defending work directly to clients
• Bringing creative thinking into pitches and new business alongside the ECD

What we're looking for

• Around 8+ years in an agency or studio, with time at senior, lead or director level
• A portfolio strong on both concept and craft, showing brand and campaign work — and evidence of consistency across volume, not only one-off showpieces
• Strong conceptual thinking: you generate original ideas rather than jumping straight to execution, and you can turn a complex brief into a clear creative narrative
• Brand strategy awareness — positioning, audiences, and connecting business objectives to creative solutions
• Fluency in social-first, platform-native campaign creative
• An exceptional eye for detail and strong typographic craft
• Confident with print artwork and production
• Experience briefing and directing freelancers — photographers, filmmakers, animators and other specialists
• Experience with high-profile brands and/or complex campaign rollouts
• Figma as your day-to-day, alongside advanced Adobe CS. Motion skills an advantage

A word on sport

A meaningful part of this role is racket sports — tennis in particular. We're not just looking for a fan. We're looking for someone who can get properly under the skin of a subculture and make work that people inside it recognise as true. If that's tennis for you, brilliant. If you've done it with running, football, climbing, skate or music, we're just as interested.

What we offer

• Hybrid working — ideally 3 days a week in the Guildford studio, 2 remote
• 9–5. No evenings, no weekend heroics
• Exposure to a major global sports brand, alongside work in technology and B2B
• Structured personal development and training
• Pension scheme and salary sacrifice EV scheme
• Birthday day off and volunteer days
• Carbon reduction commitments and regular team culture days
• As a B-Corp studio, we look for people who share our commitment to responsible, thoughtful ways of working.

We value thoughtful, genuine applications that reflect your own experience and perspective. This helps us understand how you think and approach your work, which is more important to us than polished or generic responses.

We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, and we believe this makes our work and our business stronger.