Associate Creative Director

The Sage Group; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 138,000 - 158,000; Part time

Job summary

The Sage Group’s client, a multinational technology company, seeks an Associate Creative Director to join the Brand Experience team on a contract basis. The role guides live events, experiential activations, and digital assets, translating brand strategy into cohesive experiences.

You will collaborate with Creative Directors, designers, and event teams, learning brand standards quickly and delivering high-quality creative leadership across multiple projects in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in graphic design, art direction, experiential design, advertising, or related creative discipline.
• 10+ years of professional creative experience with proven agency and/or in-house experience.
• Significant experience providing art direction or creative leadership for live events, experiential activations, environmental design, or integrated brand experiences.
• Health-related branding and events experience, including healthcare, health technology, life sciences, or related industries.

Responsibilities

• Provide creative leadership and art direction across a portfolio of live events, experiential activations, environmental experiences, and supporting digital and marketing assets.
• Partner with Creative Directors, designers, event producers, program managers, agencies, and marketing partners to translate business objectives into compelling brand experiences.
• Quickly learn and apply brand standards, event design systems, creative toolkits, and existing event assets.
• Guide creative development across physical and digital event touchpoints, including environmental graphics, signage, large-format displays, stage and screen content, activations, presentations, and supporting collateral.
• Review agency concepts, layouts, renders, and production artwork to ensure work meets brand and creative standards.
• Maintain consistency across multiple events while allowing each experience to reflect its audience, location, objectives, and format.
• Present creative direction and recommendations to stakeholders and clearly articulate the rationale behind creative decisions.
• Partner with program management to coordinate creative priorities and delivery with program management, accounting for schedules, dependencies, and risks across concurrent projects.

Skills

Creative leadership

Brand strategy

Experiential design

Stakeholder management

Presentation skills

Live events

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in design/creative

Job description

Contract, 7 Mo | Remote w/in U.S. | $100-115/hour

Job Description

The Sage Group’s client, a multinational technology company, is seeking an experienced Associate Creative Director to join their Brand Experience team on a contract basis. This team focuses on brand stewardship and creative development and execution of experiences across events, experiential activations, campaigns, and marketing initiatives.

This role will work closely with Creative Directors, designers, program managers, event teams, agencies, and cross-functional partners to translate brand strategy into compelling, cohesive experiences across physical, digital, environmental, and event touchpoints.

Here’s the kind of person we’re looking for

You understand experiential design and live events. You know how a brand comes to life across environments, signage, digital displays, stage and screen content, activations, presentations, and supporting marketing materials.

You thrive in a fast-moving, highly collaborative environment. You can move between multiple events at different stages of development, quickly understand the business objective, audience, scope, and creative needs, and provide thoughtful direction without requiring extensive ramp-up.

You know how to balance strategy with execution, combining business strategy, brand strategy, and customer insight to create experiences that are compelling, cohesive, and practical.

You are an experienced creative partner who can provide clear, actionable creative directions to designers and agencies while building strong relationships with stakeholders, event producers, program managers, and creative teams.

You are comfortable with ambiguity and change. You can assess new information, establish priorities, solve problems, and keep work moving while maintaining a high creative standard.

And importantly, you follow through and deliver. You know how to manage competing priorities and provide confident creative leadership across a demanding portfolio.

Key responsibilities

• Provide creative leadership and art direction across a portfolio of live events, experiential activations, environmental experiences, and supporting digital and marketing assets.
• Partner with Creative Directors, designers, event producers, program managers, agencies, and marketing partners to translate business objectives into compelling brand experiences.
• Quickly learn and apply brand standards, event design systems, creative toolkits, and existing event assets.
• Guide creative development across physical and digital event touchpoints, including environmental graphics, signage, large-format displays, stage and screen content, activations, presentations, and supporting collateral.
• Review agency concepts, layouts, renders, and production artwork to ensure work meets brand and creative standards. Provide clear, actionable creative feedback and help teams resolve design challenges efficiently.
• Maintain consistency across multiple events while allowing each experience to reflect to its audience, location, objectives, and format.
• Present creative direction and recommendations to stakeholders and clearly articulate the rationale behind creative decisions.
• Partner with program management to coordinate creative priorities and delivery with program management, accounting for schedules, dependencies, and risks across concurrent projects
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in graphic design, art direction, experiential design, advertising, or a related creative discipline.
• 10+ years of professional creative experience with proven agency and/or in-house experience.
• Significant experience providing art direction or creative leadership for live events, experiential activations, environmental design, or integrated brand experiences.
• Health-related branding and events experience, including healthcare, health technology, life sciences, or related industries.
• Strong understanding of experiential activation and how brands translate into physical and digital environments.
• An award-winning portfolio demonstrating exceptional creative thinking, craft, and art direction.
• Ability to combine business strategy, brand strategy, and customer insight to design compelling creative.
• Demonstrated ability to learn new brands, businesses, and creative systems quickly and apply that knowledge effectively.
• Proven ability to manage creative direction across multiple simultaneous events, projects, stakeholders, and deadlines.
• Ability to adapt quickly and work effectively in both structured and rapidly changing environments.
• Comfortably providing creative direction to internal teams and external agency partners.
• Strong presentation and communication skills with the ability to articulate creative rationale to stakeholders.
• Experience creating and directing work across physical, environmental, print, digital, motion, and presentation formats.
• Self-driven and able to operate both strategically and hands-on when needed.