Design Director

JOB DESCRIPTION | Design Director

ABOUT LABBRAND

LABBRAND, a Labbrand Group company, is a leading global brand consultancy founded in China in 2005.

As your guiding partner for brand innovations, LABBRAND channels the power of your brand towards accelerated growth. With expertise in Naming, Branding and Innovations, LABBRAND drives your brand forward amidst shifting business environments.

Through seamless coordination of Insights, Strategy, Naming and Design, LABBRAND creates brand identity and brand innovations that strengthen brand equity.

DESCRIPTION OF THE POSITION

As the Design Director based in our Shanghai headquarters, you will lead to transform conceptual brand ideas into strategic design creations and authentic brand experiences. You will be actively involved in landing impactful design solutions that bring to reality the brand objectives, combining the expertise of identity, packaging, communication, digital and environmental practices. You will be contributing to the consultancy team process, ensuring the successful realization of design deliverables and achieving project excellence. You will engage effectively with stakeholders and brands, going beyond expectations with passion to ultimately create impact through design.

You will advocate and inspire great ideas, engage team to deliver authentic, state-of-the-art work product in a timely and professional manner, perform cross-department project collaborations and develop current and new accounts supporting our growth strategy in Design.

Through your journey in Labbrand Group, you will become a brand expert in tune with the latest state of the art in the branding field.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Project Excellence │ We see beauty in each project: we aim to make every human and enterprise uniquely brilliant and beautiful, how about you?

• Support Executive Creative Director on departmental management and supervision of project operations.
• Lead creative processes, develop strategic design solutions with cultural relevance and distinction in the market, addressing to the strategic needs and objectives of our clients' businesses.
• Inspire creative authenticity, strong analytical clarity and a spirit of collaboration within the team.
• Representing our consultancy culture, help clients project the brand's visual universe brought forward by our creations.
• Advocate performance of excellence with a great sense of accountability, integrity, and results-orientation.
• Be responsible for the quality of deliverables and final checks before sharing with the client
• Prepare strong presentations with story-telling skills in order to communicate effectively to clients our design thinking and solutions
• Collaborate with other departments on cross-department projects and comprehensive branding journeys.

Client Engagement │We build journey with clients, guide them through unique, various and exciting projects. Are you ready to build a new journey, too?

• Collaborate with Business and Account Management team to activate existing clients and develop new clients. Supervise or take charge of designing proposals, attending pitch meetings and presentation meetings.
• Support Business and Account Management team for account management. Communicate with client, during and after project completion to enhance client loyalty.
• Develop and grow long-term design-specific accounts.
• Manage client expectation by showcasing the value of our process, approach and culture of design
• Provide hybrid design realizations/implementation that illustrate the robustness of our design solution
• Support marketing initiatives to promote Labbrand Design offerings, including attending events, forum and networking activities.
• Organize the development of compelling case studies from completed projects, as well as relevant articles to promote Labbrand Design service and showcase the value of our work.

Thought Leadership │ You will become a brand expert in tune with the latest state of art in the branding field.

• Use Labbrand branding tools as invisible tool to guide the presentation of our design.
• Frame the business challenge beyond design – show we have the expertise and experience to envision further.
• Collaborate in capturing internal best practices as well as develop/learn and apply innovative methodologies to expand the design capabilities of the team and company.
• Demonstrate strong insights in design trends and keeping updated on newest trends, to reflect in both project excellence and thought leadership articles/pieces.

Team Development │ You have the opportunity to experience freedom to explore and embark on new territories, shall you take it?

• Coach and inspire the team in design thinking and strategy, creation and client management, etc.
• Implement quality improvement, including organization, process, and tools.
• Guide team to learn new knowledge and techniques, providing strategic guidance on identity, service, and experience design including all aspects of application and touch points.

Note: this responsibilities list is non-exhaustive.

REQUESTED COMPETENCIES

General Competencies:

• Result and customer oriented
• Strong sense of accountability and responsibility with integrity and trust
• Ability to progress autonomously and strong learning ability
• Collaborative sense
• Cross cultural Sensitivity with proficiency in English as well as Mandarin

Design Specific Competencies:

• Bachelor degree or above, major in Graphic Design, Visual Communication Design or related field is a plus
• At least 8-10 years' work experience in branding agency or design agency, mainly experience in brand visual identity and packaging design for both local and international brands. Other expertise is a plus.
• Excellent skill in Adobe cs5, include: illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign
• Skilled at design thinking and highly solution driven