Not your normal Senior Art Director?
Normal Senior Art Directors need to be lots of things – and they may even have to do more here at Moskito Design. If you’re a Senior Art Director – or thinking of becoming one – see how your experience matches up with what ours do here. (I’ve saved the most important for last!)
You can mix the perfect cocktail of your experience and ours
Campari and Cinzano may be the two main ingredients, but everybody knows that the perfect Americano is more than the sum of its parts. Senior Art Directors come with a wealth of experience, honed talents, workable routines and cultivated tastes, and we welcome it. But the next step is getting to know ours, and learning how to blend the perfect cocktail of our cultures.
You’re the Wizard of Oz – and Dorothy, too
The Wizard could creatively re-imagine what Dorothy’s friends asked him for – brains, courage, a heart – and in return deliver exactly what they needed to be their best. He understood the brief, and really made it his own. But the Wizard also surrounded himself with lots of smoke and mirrors, and it took Dorothy to pull back the curtain. She revealed who he was, and how the magic works. Our Art Directors are both Wizard and Dorothy, by helping their team deliver the creative results clients need, while making sure the inner workings are understood by both teams and clients.
You’ve got a head for numbers – and budgets
Senior Art Directors at Moskito Design know how to talk budgets with clients. More than just estimating person-hours, they actually talk money: costs, client contracts, and where there’s wiggle room in the budget when the unexpected inevitably pops up. Some may have experience at this working at smaller agencies, others have learned on the job. But in addition to brilliance and vision, having a head for numbers – or cultivating one – is an essential part of the job.
You can talk to the client – in English
Our Senior Art Directors work directly with a team of international clients. Which means they communicate in English. All the time. If you’ve got a certificate that says you can, that’s nice, but not essential. What is essential is that you can prove you have the language competence to gain confidence and sell your ideas and manage delicate situations from day one.
If you come with an accent, great. We all do. If your English comes with imperfections, fine. So does mine. But to do your job well, you need to be able to communicate clearly, persuasively, reassuringly, firmly, enthusiastically, confidently and understandingly as the context requires.
You can lead, teach and cultivate your team
At Moskito Design, we hire young. A lot of our new creative hires come right out of university, or after a couple of years in a first job. But we’re not just some intern churn house. We have low turnover rates, and many, many junior designers stay on to grow. Some of them – including the two CEOs who founded the agency fresh from university back in 2006 – have grown into roles as Art Directors as well.
But not everybody’s fit for this role. An Adobe Suite superstar isn’t necessarily the best person for the job – they could be, but only if they’ve got other skill sets to help juniors grown into seniors, and help the team as a whole perform at their creative best. It doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t come overnight, but a Senior Art Director coming into the agency needs to show they’re already well on the way.
You can manage your team’s projects, workflow and time
Our Art Directors are project managers, too. To keep a handle on the project and your creative output, you’ve got to know how to help manage your team’s workflow and time, when to shuffle and reassign, when it’s time to check in, and what you’re going to need to deliver on deadline.
Oh, and did I mention? At Moskito Design we’re looking for a Senior Art Director to join our team.
Which leads me to that last and most important point of all:
You can nail the brief
Every brief has objectives, a target audience, key benefits and RTBs to communicate, deliverables and more. If you think you’re a not-so-normal Senior Art Designer looking for a new challenge, we’d love to hear from you. But show us you can nail this brief.
Do your research on us in our site and blog, take a look at our work, and put together your three deliverables – 1) Portfolio, 2) CV and 3) Letter. From those it should be 100% clear why you’d be great at this role at this agency at this particular point in your career (and ours).
Make sure we know how you’re more than just a senior designer, and that we truly understand how you’re the Wizard and Dorothy, you’ve got a head for numbers, a talent for creative leadership, skills at managing others’ time, and that you can mix a cocktail of our experience and yours while speaking English.
If you can do all that, we’d love to talk to you. Take the next step and apply.
UPDATE: We’ve found just the right person for this position. Subscribe to the newsletter or follow us on social media to get further updates about people we’re looking for to join the team.
