Creative Director

Claire's; Rosemont (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Claire's is seeking a Creative Director to shape and steward the evolving brand identity across every consumer touchpoint. This role defines how Claire's looks, sounds and shows up, creating a clear and ownable creative system for consistency while allowing teams to move quickly.

The Creative Director will lead brand identity, art direction and copy across campaigns, content, digital, stores and packaging. They will balance cultural relevance with commercial impact to make Claire's more

Qualifications

• 10+ years in retail creative leadership and brand design.
• Proven ability to build or transform consumer brands.
• Strong command of verbal identity and copy.
• Experience translating strategy into scalable brand systems.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Claire's brand across channels and markets.
• Lead brand identity, art direction and copy.
• Build brand guidelines and toolkits for internal and external teams.
• Drive consistency and relevant creative across campaigns, stores and digital.

Skills

Brand leadership

Art direction

Copywriting/Verbal identity

Team leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in design or related field

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite

Job description

We are seeking a Creative Director to shape and steward the evolving Claire’s brand identity across every consumer touchpoint. This person will define how Claire’s looks, sounds and shows up, creating a clear and ownable creative system that brings consistency to the brand while giving teams room to move quickly.

This is not a role for someone who simply maintains an established brand book. We need a builder: someone who can clarify the creative vision, strengthen our visual and verbal identity, translate strategy into compelling creative work and establish the standards and ways of working required to scale it.

The Creative Director will lead brand identity, art direction and copy across campaigns, content, digital, stores, packaging and internal brand expression. They will balance cultural relevance with commercial impact, helping Claire’s become more distinctive, modern and meaningful to today’s consumer.

What You’ll Do

Define and Evolve the Claire’s Brand

• Establish a clear, distinctive and modern creative vision rooted in Claire’s brand strategy and business ambitions.
• Codify the brand’s visual and verbal identity, including design principles, typography, color, imagery, art direction, tone of voice and copy standards.
• Translate the brand strategy into a creative platform that can flex across seasons, categories, channels and markets without losing recognition or consistency.
• Build practical brand guidelines and toolkits that enable internal teams, agency partners and external vendors to execute the brand effectively.

Lead Creative Across the Customer Experience

• Own creative direction across integrated campaigns, social content, ecommerce, CRM, paid media, stores, visual merchandising, and brand experiences.
• Partner with marketing, merchandising, digital, retail and visual merchandising to create one connected expression of the brand.
• Turn commercial priorities and consumer insights into creative ideas that drive relevance, traffic, engagement and conversion.
• Ensure creative work is designed for the channel and audience rather than simply resized across formats.
• Establish a high bar for concept development, storytelling, craft and execution from initial brief through final delivery.

Own the Brand Voice and Copy

• Define and lead Claire’s verbal identity, ensuring the brand has a recognizable, relevant and consistent voice.
• Oversee copy across campaigns, product storytelling, digital experiences, social content, stores and customer communications.
• Build a scalable copy system that clarifies how the brand speaks to different audiences, including young consumers, parents and gift-givers.
• Ensure the brand voice feels confident, culturally aware and age-appropriate without sounding forced or overly corporate.

Build the Creative Function

• Lead, develop and inspire a multidisciplinary design team.
• Assess the current creative organization, capabilities, processes and external partner model, identifying what should be built internally and where specialist support is needed.
• Create clear roles, decision rights, review processes and standards that improve both creative quality and speed.
• Foster a culture of constructive critique, collaboration, accountability and continuous improvement.

Drive Transformation

• Simplify fragmented creative approaches and establish greater consistency across regions, functions and channels.
• Bring teams along through change by clearly articulating the creative vision and making the brand system easy to understand and apply.
• Balance long-term brand development with the pace and commercial realities of a retail business.
• Use consumer response, channel performance and business results to continually strengthen the work.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of experience in retail creative leadership, brand design, art direction or a related field, including experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams.
• A portfolio demonstrating the ability to build or transform consumer-facing brands across multiple channels.
• Deep expertise in visual identity, integrated campaign development, storytelling and creative systems.
• Strong command of verbal identity and copy, with the ability to evaluate and guide both visual and written work.
• Experience translating brand strategy into creative expression that drives consumer and business impact.
• Experience working within retail, fashion, beauty, accessories, lifestyle, entertainment or another culturally relevant consumer category.
• A strong understanding of digital, social and content-first creative.
• Demonstrated ability to operate in a fast-moving transformation environment with evolving priorities and incomplete infrastructure.
• Confidence presenting creative strategy and work to senior executives while remaining open to collaboration and feedback.
• Strong commercial instincts and an understanding that exceptional creative must ultimately work for the consumer and the business.

How You Lead

• You are a builder, not just a curator.
• You can create clarity where there is ambiguity and momentum where there is complexity.
• You have a strong point of view without making the work about your ego.
• You know when to protect an idea, when to evolve it and when to let it go.
• You set a high creative bar while creating practical systems that help teams reach it.
• You are comfortable moving between vision and execution, from presenting a brand platform to reviewing a headline, layout or social asset.
• You believe consistency does not mean sameness. It means every expression feels unmistakably Claire’s.