Join to apply for the Art Director role at The Onset
Lead Designer | Sydney | Full-time
We’re looking for a Lead Designer to join a fast‑growing in‑house brand and creative team that’s scaling globally. You’ll shape the next evolution of our brand identity, lead campaign creative across digital, social and brand activations, and bring strong visual craft to everything we put into the world.
This is a hands‑on role where you’ll combine design leadership with execution - guiding projects from concept through to production while collaborating closely with marketing, product and content teams.
About The Role
You’ll be the creative heartbeat of the brand – helping define visual direction, translating strategy into impactful design, and maintaining a high bar of quality and consistency across all channels.
Working alongside the Head of Creative, you’ll lead day‑to‑day creative output and manage design projects that span content, campaigns, sponsorships and new brand initiatives. You’ll also mentor and coordinate work with a small offshore design team and external creative partners.
In the First Few Months, Success Looks Like
- Getting embedded in the brand and understanding its tone, audience and design systems.
- Leading early projects that set the standard for visual quality and consistency.
- Owning the design process end‑to‑end across campaign and content workstreams.
- Building trust across marketing, product and creative teams as a cooperative partner.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Lead creative concepting and design execution across campaigns, digital, social and motion assets.
- Translate marketing objectives and briefs into clear creative direction and design outcomes.
- Evolve and document the visual identity – building on a recent rebrand and developing brand systems as we scale.
- Partner with the Head of Creative on major sponsorships, events and brand activations.
- Work closely with an offshore design team to deliver campaign and content assets at volume and speed.
- Prepare storyboards and creative briefs for motion, content and video production partners.
- Collaborate with marketing and product teams to ensure alignment and smooth handoffs.
- Oversee production quality across shoots, content, and campaign rollout.
- Stay abreast of design, motion, and cultural trends – bringing new ideas and techniques into the brand.
What You’ll Bring
- 6+ years of experience in graphic or visual design roles – ideally across both brand and campaign environments.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating hands‑on design craft across digital, brand, motion and content work.
- Confidence leading design projects end‑to‑end, from concept to delivery.
- Experience working in‑house or within client‑side marketing teams.
- Excellent time‑management and prioritisation skills – comfortable handling a fast‑moving workload.
- Strong communication and stakeholder‑management skills – able to guide non‑designers through creative decisions.
- Understanding of masculine visual styles and tone – our brand and audience lean that way.
- Proficiency with Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma; experience in storyboarding or briefing motion work.
Nice To Have
- Motion graphics or animation skills – even better if you can storyboard and direct others.
- Experience in campaign production, shoots, or vendor management.
- Comfort working with offshore teams or distributed creative partners.
The Environment
You’ll join a brand that re‑launched six months ago and is growing quickly. The design system is still evolving – you’ll help define how it’s documented, scaled and expressed.
You’ll be surrounded by people who care deeply about storytelling and design craft, but who also value pragmatism, collaboration and fun. The creative and marketing teams sit together, and decisions are made quickly. It’s an environment that rewards initiative, ownership and curiosity.
Growth & Progression
This is an opportunity to step up from senior designer level into a leadership role with growing scope. As the team scales, there’s potential to evolve into more leadership – building out new specialisations in content, motion or brand experience as they expand globally and eventually you have a small team around you.
If you feel like it’s a good fit, please hit the Apply Now button. I can only consider applicants who have applied directly – I am moving quickly on this and need a streamlined process.
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