Head of Creative Direction and Design

Selfridges; London; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading luxury retail company in London seeks a Head of Creative Direction and Design to deliver innovative and impactful creative solutions. You will lead a multidisciplinary team, ensuring brand consistency and excellence across all platforms. The ideal candidate has a strong creative background in high-impact environments, with a focus on collaborating and inspiring teams. This role comes with flexible working options and numerous benefits, aimed at fostering a positive team experience.

Benefits

Flexible working options

Generous annual leave

Paid volunteering days

Defined pension scheme

Generous bonus scheme

Team member discounts

Gym membership subsidy

Training programs for career development

Qualifications

• Proven creative and design leadership experience.
• Track record of delivering complex creative projects.
• Deep understanding of conceptual and graphic design.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Translates the creative direction into tangible outputs.
• Owns and develops the design language and guidelines.
• Leads brand campaigns and cultural storytelling.
• Oversees creative research and innovation function.
• Inspires and develops a diverse creative team.

Skills

Creative leadership

Project management

Collaboration

Strategic thinking

Art direction

Job description

Job Introduction

The Head of Creative Direction and Design at Selfridges plays a pivotal leadership role in interpreting and delivering our creative vision through world-class design, storytelling, and direction setting across all touchpoints.

Working in close partnership with the Creative Director, they will lead the direction of Selfridges’ brand expression—physical and digital—ensuring every creative output is bold, relevant, future-facing, and emotionally resonant.

This role is essential in translating our creative strategies into actionable, impactful, and culturally meaningful work that drives our ambition to Reinvent Retail and fulfills our purpose to Imagine and Create a Sustainable Future. They will be both a guardian and innovator of Selfridges' design language—championing creative excellence while embedding effective systems, processes, and standards to enable cross-functional collaboration and executional brilliance.

They will lead a multidisciplinary team responsible for delivering forward-thinking outputs spanning: Creative concepts, Creative Direction, Research and Innovation, Ideas development, Design Direction, Strategy and masterplan, Product direction, Campaign Direction, Experience, Art, and Build direction—always ensuring our creative output is elevated, distinctive, and on brand.

The Role Requires The Following Experience

• Proven creative and design leadership experience within a high-impact, brand-led environment—ideally in fashion, luxury, lifestyle, editorial, or cultural institutions;
• Track record of delivering complex creative projects across digital and physical environments at scale;
• Deep understanding of conceptual design, art direction, graphic design, spatial/environmental design, and digital content creation;
• Experience of developing and maintaining brand systems, creative processes, and governance structures;
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, foster collaboration, and inspire high levels of creative thinking and execution;
• Skilled in building cross-functional relationships and influencing at senior levels;
• Strategic and commercial mindset with an instinctive understanding of customer behavior and cultural context;
• Affinity with Selfridges’ brand values, aesthetic, and cultural positioning.

Key Areas Of Accountability

• Creative Execution of Vision: Translates the overarching creative direction set by the Creative Director into tangible, high-impact creative and design outputs across all brand channels—physical and digital.
• Design Leadership: Owns and develops the Selfridges design language and graphic guidelines, ensuring consistency, quality, clarity, and distinctiveness across all formats—from editorial content to windows, signage, environmental graphics, and experience design.
• Campaign & Content Realization: Leads the concepting and execution of brand campaigns and cultural storytelling, ensuring these resonate emotionally with our customers and reflect our fashion and lifestyle point of view.
• Strategy and Masterplan: Leads the concepting of future-facing Selfridges projects that keep the brand at the forefront of retail in its ever-changing landscape.
• Art & Culture Strategy and implementation: Own and deliver the Selfridges Art and Culture Strategy, ensuring Selfridges has a leading point of view on Arts and Culture—always maintaining relevance and poignance with its commissions.
• Research and Innovation: Oversees the Creative research and innovation function, ensuring that the Creative Direction team is kept at the zeitgeist and sharing the latest movements in art, fashion, culture, food, design, customer, social, and beyond.
• Creative Systems & Standards: Establishes the frameworks, systems, and processes to support creative development and delivery at scale, while maintaining high creative standards and supporting efficient cross-functional working, e.g., toolkits, guidelines, concept decks, strategic briefs.
• Multidisciplinary Team Leadership: Inspires, directs, and develops a team of designers, conceptors, strategists, and ideators—ensuring creative excellence and a high standard of output across all projects.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Works closely with key stakeholders across Buying, Retail, Windows, Property/Design, Brand Partnerships, Design, Experience, Digital, Marketing, PR, and VM to ensure integrated creative and design alignment across all brand experiences.
• External Collaborations: Supports the Creative Director in identifying and partnering with world-class creative talent, agencies, and cultural institutions—bringing fresh provocation and global perspectives into our creative output.
• Talent & Team Development: Builds and nurtures a high-performing, diverse, and inclusive creative and design team, ensuring the right capabilities, structures, and culture are in place to drive innovation and excellence.

Selfridges has always been much more than a shop. We’re a social space where everyone is welcome and feels a sense of belonging, a creative playground where culture and commerce collide, and an experimental hub where you can discover the most innovative and sustainable ideas in retail. We’re here to help make the world brighter. And you can be an important part of this. We’ll talk more about the role below, but before we get to that, let’s share with you the good stuff…

Rewards And Benefits

Life at Selfridges is dynamic, exciting, and always evolving. As well as working with some of the most cutting-edge, iconic, and boundary-pushing brands, designers, and creatives, we also offer our team members opportunities to help make a positive difference through our network of communities, both within and outside Selfridges. Here are just a few of our rewards and benefits that help make our team experience that bit more extraordinary.

• Flexible working options to benefit you, your family, and your wellbeing that can include part-time, flexi-time, job sharing, or hybrid working
• Generous annual leave that increases with length of service
• Up to five paid volunteering days – from beach cleans to coordinating food and clothing donations
• Family leave that suits your setup including Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, Surrogacy, and Shared Parental leave policies
• Defined pension contribution scheme
• Generous bonus and/or commission scheme
• Enviable team member discount including sale previews and double discount days
• Exclusive local discounts on a range of restaurants, bars, beauticians, and entertainment
• Subsidized gym memberships
• Annual travel pass and cycle-to-work schemes
• A sustainable car salary sacrifice scheme
• Several internal communities to get involved in who are leading the charge on D, E&I, and sustainability
• Workplace Options, our confidential team member assistance program for when life gets tricky or you need a little guidance
• Access to a wide range of training programs to help your career development

Selfridges