Mid-Weight Art Director

PENTLAND; London; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading active lifestyle company in London is seeking a Mid-weight Art Director to enhance brand storytelling through creative direction on various channels. The ideal candidate is a passionate professional with experience in premium sports, lifestyle, or fashion brands, bringing innovative ideas to life. This role offers a competitive salary, flexible working options, and numerous benefits to foster a dynamic work environment.

Benefits

Competitive Salary + discretionary bonus

25 Days Holiday

Brand discounts and perks

Generous parental leave policies

Health-related perks

Travel perks for eco-friendly commuting

Flexible working hours

Qualifications

• Experience in art direction for premium sports and lifestyle brands.
• Portfolio demonstrating creative concepts from idea to execution.
• Familiarity with digital content creation and social-first campaigns.

Responsibilities

• Deliver creative work with high standards and impact.
• Support senior creatives and develop TTL campaigns.
• Direct and coordinate photo/video shoots with planning.

Skills

Art direction

Creative storytelling

Collaboration

Time management

Job description

We're Pentland Brands; a dynamic, global family business, and proud owners and licensees of many iconic active and footwear brands. With a community of over 1,300 team members worldwide, we embrace diversity and inclusion, and champion growth and development. Our success is built on teamwork, courage, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to excellence.

WHAT'S THE MISSION FOR THIS ROLE?

As a midweight creative (Art Director) on Speedo, you will report to the Senior Creative, working closely with the wider creative and production team. The key purpose of this role is to support art direction and design, creating beautiful, culturally relevant, and emotive stories about our collections and product innovations — stories that bridge creative communications and creative selling. The end goal is to make our brands famed and desired through bold ideas with a premium aesthetic that gets noticed.

You have experience with premium sports, lifestyle, and/or fashion brands, with a portfolio of ideas-led work that takes creative concepts from TTL — from bold advertising to disruptive, effective social-first content. You will be obsessive about your craft in art direction and design for stills and moving image. Curiosity about image-generative AI and its use as a tool is a plus.

Confident in the shoot process, you'll collaborate with senior creatives, agency producers, and brand marketers to support seamless shoots from pre to postproduction. You can support large, complex commercial shoots and take the lead on smaller campaigns or social-first productions.

Working in a team, you'll inspire and motivate our brands to be creatively progressive through fresh, innovative, and strategically aligned thinking. Your work will help make our brands more desirable and relevant.

You thrive in high-energy environments, crafting ideas that connect with audiences and drive results. You instinctively know what works in art direction and design and can pitch concepts confidently to senior creatives.

Most importantly, you'll help build a culture of curiosity, craft, and creative energy — making the C&C team the epicentre of creative fizz at Pentland Brands.

WHAT DOES THIS ROLE DO?

• Deliver exceptional creative work — support art direction and design across all channels, ensuring high standards and commercial impact.
• Help develop TTL campaigns, especially digital, including websites and social media rollouts.
• Maintain expert-level skills in art direction and design, ensuring outstanding execution and brand guardianship. Support junior team members and freelancers.
• Develop digital-first work, staying ahead of trends, AI-generated imagery, and emerging technologies.
• Collaborate with commercial and shopper teams to ensure seamless content integration across channels.
• Support large creative briefs and lead smaller ones, pitch ideas clearly, build creative decks, and direct photo/video shoots with high-profile talent, ensuring meticulous planning and confident on-set direction.
• Constantly generate ideas for campaigns, social posts, and production propositions.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, creativity, and excellence, pushing for innovative solutions and challenging conventional thinking.

WHAT DO I BRING TO THE ROLE?

• An ideas-led creative mindset, loving bold thinking that gets brands noticed.
• A portfolio demonstrating beautiful art direction and disruptive ideas in sports, lifestyle, and/or fashion.
• Exceptional taste and awareness of trends within sports marketing and lifestyle brands.
• Understanding of product storytelling TTL, with emphasis on digital touchpoints.
• Engagement with sports, fitness, and active lifestyle brands and platforms.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, working smoothly with in-house teams and senior creatives.
• A passion for building a team culture that values everyone's creative voice.
• Proactivity in bringing outside influences to keep the team ahead of trends and cultural shifts.
• Skilled in time management and workload accountability.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?

• Competitive salary + discretionary bonus
• 25 days holiday, increasing with service, with options to purchase more
• Brand discounts, sample sales, and retail perks
• Generous parental leave policies
• Health perks including medical plans, critical illness cover, gym discounts, dental, eye care, and health screening
• Travel perks like season ticket loans, cycle-to-work, and electric car schemes
• Flexible and hybrid working arrangements
• Opportunities to join employee networks focused on charity, D&I, and sustainability

As an equal opportunity employer, we foster diversity and an inclusive culture. We encourage ownership, proactive problem-solving, open communication, respect, kindness, and individual creativity to shine within the Pentland Brands team.