Art Director

ROLE: ART DIRECTOR

TEAM: THE KITCHEN NORTH AMERICA

About The Kitchen

The Kitchen is a team of creatives, strategists, producers, designers, content creators and social media managers working directly with brands to deliver breakthrough ideas. What makes us different is the way we work. We leverage our unique position inside Kraft Heinz to drive creativity and agility that’s only possible with trust and collaboration with our brand partners. Sometimes we’re focused on our brands’ biggest briefs and campaigns, and sometimes we’re creating our own briefs inspired by opportunities that arise from culture and current events. Together, we’re breaking down barriers and empowering more –more ideas, from more places, and more opportunities to earn our consumers’ attention, and learn more about them.

Position Summary

In the Art Director role, you and your writing partner will create a wide range of ideas and creative concepts that stand out and earn attention. Your work will range from brand acts that create conversations, to advertising across a range of mediums, to compelling visual stories that stand out on social platforms. You’ll be a key part of a creative process that makes ideas, acts, and experiences that get shared and talked about on social and in the press.

You’ll use your strong concepting and ideation skills to produce great creative ideas and use your strength as a visual storyteller to bring them to life. You’ll translate your ideas (and the team’s concepts) into visuals for social media, digital advertising, and traditional content. You’ll partner with producers to make sure that a wide variety of content is captured and edited in a way that fits the iconic brands you represent. You’ll need a strong understanding of the best-practice design principles for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, but you’ll also need to be comfortable breaking them with innovation that captures attention in new ways. Your experience in traditional mediums will help you raise the quality of work for social, but also work at a pace that fits the dynamic needs of the digital environment. You’ll use your unique skillset and trained eye to inspire the design team around you. Together, you and your team are building a design culture that moves food marketing forward.

Your work will make a meaningful impact with a multi-talented team in North America (Toronto & Chicago) that blurs the lines of what advertising can be in today’s always-on, socially connected industry.

Primary Responsibilities

• ART DIRECTION: Experienced visual expert who elevates the work and level of visual quality that meets high standards.
• INNOVATIVE & TRADITIONAL DESIGN: Work in a wide range of mediums ranging from traditional video and photo content, real world design (experiential) and social media content.
• BRAND DESIGN: Steward the design identity of iconic brands, ensuring they have a consistent look and feel online. You will translate brand strategy into powerful and purposeful creative concepts and are the final voice in ensuring these brands have consistently high-quality execution across all mediums.
• IDEATION: Actively participate in brainstorms with positive energy and dimensional thinking that leverages research and brand insights. Ability to articulate how we can bring ideas to life visually and able to think broadly about big ideas. Proactively seeks out current and upcoming new digital and design trends and best practices.
• PRESENTATION DESIGN: Manage a team to create compelling visual stories and get hands-on as required to design those presentation decks that sell through big ideas. Develops storyboards and presentation decks that help preview the creative ideas we want to make.
• COLLABORATION: Work as a part of a cross-functional design team, and as part of a larger creative team. Comfortable in an iterative environment.
• WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT: Can manage multiple priorities and assignments in a fast-paced, active environment to deliver high quality work, on time and with accuracy. Knows how to delegate work and manage a team’s capacity.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in advertising, with a focus on ideation and concepting for brand acts, stunts, and storytelling. You have experience as an Art Director with a proven track record of leading other Designers and stewarding brands.
• A diverse portfolio showcasing examples of work you have created yourself, as well as work created by a team you managed. Your portfolio includes examples of strategic/conceptual thinking, visual design, and storytelling, and innovative social work that elevates the medium.
• College or University diploma in Art, Visual Communication Design, Advertising and/or Art Direction
• The ability to execute concepts at a level that is among the top tier in the industry.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills – both written and verbal.
• Exposure to Art Direction, Photo Shoots, and UI/UX are an advantage.
• Proficient using Mac OS, Adobe Creative Cloud (Expert knowledge of Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign), SharePoint, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (or Keynote).
• Passion for food and food design with an insatiable curiosity to learn more about it
• A desire to do award-winning, internationally recognized work

The Kitchen, Kraft Heinz, and Salt are committed to Equal Employment Opportunity and to attracting and retaining the most qualified employees regardless of race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age or disability

The Kitchen