Creative Director, Brand & Packaging

Southern Graphic Systems, LLC; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care plans

Dental plan

401(k) Savings Plan

Job summary

Marks is seeking a Creative Director, Brand & Packaging Design to lead brand systems and packaging across channels. You will guide strategic thinking, scale brand Worlds, and lead multidisciplinary teams from concept to activation, ensuring strong craft and brand integrity.

You will partner with Strategy and Client Services to shape briefs, present with confidence, and champion innovative, responsible creative approaches across packaging, retail, digital, and social touchpoints.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in brand and packaging design with leadership experience.
• Portfolio demonstrating brand creation, identity systems, and packaging.
• Deep expertise in packaging and consumer journey across channels.
• Proven leadership of multidisciplinary creative teams.
• Strong ability to connect business, consumer, and brand objectives.
• Excellent presentation and visual storytelling at senior client levels.
• Understanding of packaging production, photography, CGI, and related tech.
• Fluency with Adobe Creative Suite and emerging creative technologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead creative vision for brands across identity, packaging, and consumer experiences.
• Guide multidisciplinary teams from strategy through execution and activation.
• Partner with strategy and client services to shape briefs and narratives.
• Elevate craft, balance brand equity, and drive brand systems at scale.
• Manage client presentations, workshops, and senior-level discussions.
• champions new technologies and responsible AI-assisted workflows.

Skills

Portfolio leadership

Brand identity

Packaging design

Leadership

Strategic storytelling

Adobe Creative Suite

Presentation skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite

Job description

life insurance, flexible benefit account, long term disability, 401(k)

Sep 10, 2026

Description About the Company

Marks is a consumer experience agency creating engaging moments across the entire brand spectrum-from brand design and packaging to content and consumer connections. Rooted in a deep understanding of human behavior, we help brands win in an age of constant change.

We are a global, collaborative network of 1,900+ team members across 25+ studios and 20+ countries, partnering with some of the world's most recognized brands to solve complex business challenges through design, strategy, and craft.

About the Role

As Creative Director, Brand & Packaging Design, you'll lead the creation and evolution of brand systems that are strategically sharp, creatively distinctive, and built to thrive in the real world. You bring deep expertise in brand identity and packaging design, but your thinking doesn't stop at the pack. You understand how an idea becomes a connected brand experience across packaging, retail, digital, social, content, campaigns, and beyond.

You'll set the creative vision, lead multidisciplinary teams, and partner closely with Strategy and Client Services to turn business challenges into powerful creative opportunities. You'll guide projects from early strategic thinking through design development, production, and activation—ensuring the original idea gets stronger, not diluted, as it comes to life.

You're a confident client partner, an inspiring team leader, and a champion of exceptional craft. You know when to challenge, when to listen, and how to bring people together around a clear creative vision.

Role Expectations

Creative Vision & Brand Leadership

• Set and champion the creative vision for brands across identity, packaging, and the broader consumer experience.
• Translate strategy, consumer insight, culture, and business objectives into distinctive creative ideas and brand systems.
• Think beyond individual executions to create ownable, scalable brand worlds with clear principles for how they behave.
• Protect the core idea from concept through execution, ensuring creative integrity across every expression of the brand.
• Know when to preserve brand equity, when to evolve it, and when to challenge conventions entirely.

Brand Systems & Omnichannel Thinking

• Lead the creation of holistic brand systems designed to work across packaging, retail, shopper, digital, social, content, campaigns, and emerging channels.
• Bring deep expertise in CPG and packaging design, including portfolio architecture, shelf impact, consumer navigation, and the realities of bringing packaging to market.
• Guide teams in translating core brand equities into flexible visual and verbal systems
• Connect the right disciplines and specialists from strategy and copy to photography, CGI, motion, production, and engineering, to build richer brand experiences.
• Ensure systems are both creatively ambitious and practical enough to scale.

Client Leadership & Strategic Partnership

• Serve as a trusted creative authority and senior partner to clients.
• Lead presentations, workshops, and creative conversations with clarity, confidence, and a compelling point of view.
• Understand the client's business deeply enough to challenge briefs, reframe problems, and identify opportunities beyond the immediate ask.
• Navigate feedback constructively, balancing client objectives with consumer needs and creative ambition.
• Partner with Strategy and Client Services to shape stronger briefs, approaches, and creative narratives.

Team Leadership & Creative Excellence

• Lead and inspire multidisciplinary creative teams, establishing clear direction while creating space for others to do their best work.
• Develop Designers, Design Directors and other creative roles through coaching, feedback, and meaningful ownership.
• Lead creative reviews that sharpen ideas, resolve ambiguity, and move the work decisively forward.
• Maintain a high bar for conceptual thinking, storytelling, design craft, and execution.
• Create a culture of curiosity, accountability, generosity, and creative ambition.
• Stay close enough to the work to recognize when it needs intervention and roll up your sleeves when your contribution can meaningfully elevate the outcome.

Creative Innovation & Technology

• Champion new technologies and ways of working that improve how creative ideas are developed, explored, and delivered.
• Drive thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted creative workflows to expand exploration, accelerate visualization, and reduce low-value friction without replacing creative thinking, judgment, or craft.
• Encourage experimentation while helping establish responsible standards and best practices.
• Continuously look for opportunities to make the creative process smarter, faster, and more ambitious.

Business & Agency Impact

• Partner with Client Services and creative leadership to align creative ambition with scope, timing, resources, and business realities.
• Recognize opportunities to deepen client relationships and proactively bring forward ideas that create value beyond the brief.
• Play a meaningful creative leadership role in pitches, proposals, and new business.
• Collaborate across Marks disciplines, studios, and capabilities to bring the best of the agency to each challenge.
• Contribute to the creative reputation, culture, and continued evolution of Marks.

The Ideal Person

You are a brand thinker with a designer's eye and a leader's mindset.

You can look at a business challenge and see the bigger brand opportunity. You understand packaging as one of the most powerful expressions of a brand. And you can envision how that same brand idea comes alive everywhere else.

You have a strong creative point of view without needing to be the person who has every idea. You know how to recognize great thinking, make it better, and build consensus around it.

You are energized by complexity: different categories, different channels, different disciplines, and different personalities. You bring clarity to all of it.

And above all, you care deeply about the idea, the craft, and the people making it.

Minimum requirements

• 12+ years of progressive experience in brand and packaging design, including significant creative leadership experience.
• A standout portfolio demonstrating brand creation, identity systems, CPG packaging, and broader brand activation across channels.
• Deep expertise in packaging and a sophisticated understanding of how brands operate across the consumer journey.
• Proven experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams and developing senior creative talent.
• Strong strategic instincts and the ability to connect business, consumer, and brand objectives to creative solutions.
• Exceptional presentation and visual storytelling skills, with experience leading senior-level client conversations.
• Strong understanding of packaging production, photography, CGI, content creation, and the realities of bringing creative ideas to market.
• Fluency in Adobe Creative Suite and presentation tools; curiosity and fluency with emerging creative technologies.

About Propelis: Propelis is a portfolio of global marketing services and technology companies with a combined legacy of 150+ years, 2,000+ clients, 9,000 employees, and operations across 30 countries. Propelis provides the scale and support of a global organization while preserving the unique culture and identity of each company in its portfolio.

For more information visit: www.MakeMarks.com

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets. The U.S. pay range for this position is $150,000 USD - $160,000 USD annually. Ultimately, in determining pay, we will consider the successful candidate's location, experience, and other job-related factors.

Group benefits currently include a selection of health care plans with prescription drug coverage, dental plan, vision plan, basic and supplemental life insurance, a flexible spending account for medical and dependent care expenses or a health savings account based on plan selection, short/long term disability and 401(k) Savings Plan.

Qualifications Education Bachelors (required)

Experience Fluency in Adobe Creative Suite and presentation tools; curiosity and fluency with emerging creative technologies (required)

Strong strategic instincts and the ability to connect business, consumer, and brand objectives to creative solutions (required)

Proven experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams and developing senior creative talent (required)

Deep expertise in packaging and a sophisticated understanding of how brands operate across the consumer journey (required)

A standout portfolio demonstrating brand creation, identity systems, CPG packaging, and broader brand activation across channels (required)

12 years: Years of progressive experience in brand and packaging design, including significant creative leadership experience (required)

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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