Creative Director

BRAVE Books; The Woodlands (TX); On-site; USD 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

BRAVE Books in The Woodlands, Texas is seeking a Creative Director to lead visual and storytelling efforts across children's books and adult nonfiction. This role includes setting the company's aesthetic, managing narrative worlds, and ensuring consistent quality across campaigns and publications.

The ideal candidate will have strong creative direction skills, an understanding of storytelling structure, and the ability to work collaboratively with various creatives. If you are passionate about design and storytelling, this position offers the opportunity to shape the visual identity of a growing publisher.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in visual storytelling and creative direction.
• Excellent communication and feedback skills.
• Ability to articulate design decisions clearly.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision for the company's visual identity and campaigns.
• Manage narrative worlds and ensure consistency across publications.
• Hire and direct creative freelancers effectively.
• Develop creative guidelines for designers.

Skills

Creative direction

Story structure understanding

Collaboration skills

Visual aesthetics

Campaign visual direction

Job description

Set the vision for how we look, sound, and feel across books, campaigns, and brand.

Brave Books publishes children's books and adult nonfiction books. We create subscription services. We run paid ad campaigns. We manage YouTuber relationships where the book is often their first brand extension. Right now, creative direction is distributed — different people making decisions in different directions.

We need someone who owns the aesthetic and makes sure every piece of the company reflects a coherent vision.

What you'll actually do:

• World Building. You're the keeper of narrative worlds across our publishing portfolio. For established worlds like Freedom Island, you maintain character bibles, world rules, visual language, and narrative consistency. For new worlds, you help conceptualize them from scratch — understanding the mythology, tone, character archetypes, and rules that make a world feel cohesive and real. You work with writers, illustrators, and product teams to ensure every book extends or reinforces the world it inhabits. Whether it's a YouTuber's first book that launches a new world or the 40th book in an existing universe, you make sure readers feel like they're stepping into something intentional and interconnected, not a random collection of stories.
• Storytelling Lead. You understand story structure, character development, and narrative arc. For both children's and adult nonfiction books, you'll work with our writers and AI tools to ensure every book has a compelling narrative throughline. For children's books, you'll make sure the story serves the values we're trying to teach. For adult nonfiction, you'll make sure the narrative hooks readers and creates resonance, not just information dumping. You'll give story feedback, shape manuscripts before they're "done," and know when something is working and when it's falling flat.
• Campaign visual direction. Every launch has a landing page, email sequences, ad creative, and social assets. You'll set the visual direction for each campaign — color palette, photography style, typography — and make sure the execution matches the vision.
• Brand evolution. Our brand is currently "values-driven children's publisher + adult nonfiction partner." As we scale, are we leaning into that? Are we creating sub-brands? You'll help us think through who we are and how we look.
• Creator collaboration. When we partner with a YouTuber, they have a visual world — their content style, their audience aesthetic. You'll help our teams understand that world and build book designs that feel authentically theirs, not "made by the publisher."
• Hire and direct creative freelancers. You'll work with illustrators, designers, photographers, and production vendors. You'll brief them, review their work, give feedback that makes it better, and know when to push and when to step back.
• Build creative guidelines. Our designers shouldn't have to ask you about every decision. You'll create a shared language — typography standards, color palettes, layout principles — that lets the team make good decisions independently.

What we're looking for:

• A point of view. You have taste. You can articulate why one design works and another doesn't — not "I like this" but "This version creates confidence, clarity, and trust. That one creates confusion." You can defend decisions with reasoning.
• Appreciation for craft but impatience with vanity. You respect good design, but you know it serves a business function. A beautiful book that doesn't sell is still a failure.
• Collaboration skills that actually work. You can take feedback without becoming defensive. You can give feedback without crushing people. You can argue for a design direction and then let go when the business case says otherwise.
• Fluency across mediums. You understand what works on a bookshelf, on an email screen, in an Instagram story, and on an Amazon listing. Different contexts require different approaches.
• Bonus: Publishing design experience. Children's book illustration knowledge. Direct response campaign experience. YouTuber/creator culture fluency.

Why you'd want this job:

• You get to build the visual identity of a fast-growing publisher. You're not constrained to "one style" — children's books and adult nonfiction require different aesthetics. You'll work with talented creatives (illustrators, designers, strategists) and you'll have real authority over how the company looks to the world. If you believe design matters and want to prove it in a business context, this is it.