Creative Director

~ At the Trust for Public Land, we don't just save land—we save land for people to enjoy, from neighborhood parks to national parks. We depend on the ongoing support of individuals to make sure our work carries on well into the future. ~

Our mission is to create parks and protect land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. Every park, playground, and public space we create is an open invitation to explore, wonder, discover, and play. We're proud to say that we've been connecting communities to the outdoors—and to each other—since 1972. Today, millions of Americans live within a 10-minute walk of a park or natural area we helped create, and countless more visit every year.

Position Overview

About the marketing team:
 
We’re The Trust for Public Land’s storytellers and brand stewards. We land national headlines, maintain a robust social media presence, publish an award-winning donor magazine, and produce print, digital, and multimedia marketing material. It’s an exciting time to work for us: with several new hires and new initiatives in the works, our team has a startup feel: we welcome innovative approaches and blue-sky thinking.
 
About the role: 

Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, the Creative Director at The Trust for Public Land is an experienced design strategist, responsible for stewarding our brand look and feel. The Creative Director collaborates with other leaders in marketing and across departments to devise smart design solutions for an eager and evolving organization. This is a hands-on role where you will be responsible for everything from strategy to the fine details as well as growing and mentoring a team of designers. 
 
Responsibilities

70% strategic leadership:

• Design leadership: steward the brand by driving simple, smart design for the organization across all mediums and multimedia channels: print, digital, social, video, experiential, merchandise, etc. Serve as thought partner to marketing leaders and senior leadership across departments. Orient and educate staff across the organization on brand standards via regular presentations and educational outreach.
• Team leadership: Proactively mentor a team of graphic designers, inspiring and motivating them in order to build capacity, improve skills, and facilitate career growth. Responsible for orienting, training, assigning, scheduling, and coaching direct reports as well as maintaining positive relationships with existing vendors and conducting RFP process for new vendors and freelance talent.
• Production leadership: Lead resource management, budgeting, and process improvements in collaboration with marketing leaders in content development, digital design, and production. Lead regular design reviews and project status meetings/stand-ups. Work closely with the marketing traffic manager to assign the right design resources to each job and ensure correct input/approvals are received throughout design process

30% design:

• Lead the intake and interpretation of creative briefs from kickoff to design presentations, ensuring all deliverables are always on time and on brief
• Serve as lead designer on major projects, developing and presenting creative concepts and design recommendations. Consistently deliver holistic and integrated campaigns that are strategic, thoughtful, engaging, creative, and on-brand.
• Steward The Trust for Public Land visual identity system, keeping brand guidelines current and advising other designers in its implementation
• Create (or coach creation of) new templates for collateral, presentations, digital assets, SWAG, etc., that the rest of the team can implement for consistency
• Provide design guidance to the production manager to develop and select photo and video assets
• Partner with the communications team to design and assign resources to develop layouts and ads as needed for organization’s nationally-distributed magazine, Land&People
• Partner with the digital team to develop assets for use on TPL digital and social media channels 

Qualifications

• BFA in design or commensurate experience in agency or design firm required
• Print, digital, and multimedia design experience required. Experience art directing for photo and film shoots a plus  
• Strong mentoring and management skills to develop direct reports’ skills and capacity
• Mechanical building and production experience (including communication with printers) and knowledge of printing processes
• Strong typography skills (print and html)
• Strong experience with Mac platform and fluency in design applications such as InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator. Ability to distinguish file types and their use for both print and web. Jira, Basecamp, Powerpoint, Word, Dreamweaver and HTML experience preferred.
• Strong project management skills to direct resources, budgets, priorities
• Flexible work habits; ability to work under pressure with attention to detail and minimal supervision
• Excellent interpersonal skills and written and verbal communication skills to articulate strategic design intent and options
• Ability to work on a deadline
• Desire to work in a collaborative, creative, idea-sharing team atmosphere

Note: For assistance completing the application process, please contact us at 415-495-4014 or jobs@tpl.org.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourage diversity in the workplace. We welcome people of all backgrounds and seek to foster a culture of respect, openness, learning, integrity, and fun. We strive to make our job postings accessible to all prospective applicants.