Associate Creative Director, Information Design

Job Description:

Associate Creative Director – Information Design

*To be considered, you MUST HAVE POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS examples in your portfolio*** 

About the Role

Join Merkle’s Information Design team as an Associate Creative Director (ACD), Visual Design. Reporting to the Group Creative Director, help craft high-impact presentations for some of the world’s most recognized brands. This is a high-visibility role where your design expertise will influence major business decisions and elevate how Merkle presents itself to clients.

What You’ll Do

• Own the design of high-stakes pitch materials and executive-level presentations that drive strategic decisions and win new business.
• Collaborate with Sales, Strategy, Creative, Data Solutions, and Analytics teams to transform complex content into clear, organized and visually compelling materials.
• Organize and design content-heavy decks with diagrams, charts, and tables, while creating image-driven “TedTalk” slides to introduce or summarize the topic to a client.
• Apply Merkle’s branded capabilities while incorporating client branding to showcase partnership potential.
• Own projects end-to-end: set milestones, communicate progress, and ensure timely delivery under tight deadlines.
• Mentor and review other designers’ work, helping expand best practices and elevate design standards.
• Contribute to building a team of elite-level designers and, over time, potential to take on people leadership responsibilities, including guiding direct reports.

What We’re Looking For

Responsibilities:

• Develop RFP / pitch decks, product and thought leadership materials that elevate the brand and help us stand out from our competitors.
• Able to distill content and use best design practices to translate into purposeful presentations. 
• Demonstrates exceptional creative conceptualization, design, typography and layout skills
• Confidently lead meetings with subject matter experts to ask strategic questions that inform your design recommendations.
• Be an advocate of brand guidelines. Maintain and evolve our brand's graphic aesthetic and quality. 
• We are working with a variety of the world’s largest brands – be able to pivot to design in our clients’ brand aesthetics.
• Follow creative direction from the group leader, then provide creative direction to other team members if needed.
• Seek and apply the latest presentation design thinking; work collaboratively within a group dynamic; and participate in any given project or team to which assign.
   

Qualifications:

• 8-10+ years of experience required
• Expert-level skills in Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Creative Cloud
• Understanding of design applications in traditional and latest channels
• Strong typography, layout, and visual storytelling skills.
• Familiarity with publication-style design with heavy content per slide/page.
• Experience with graphics, charts, infographics, animations, transitions, video storyboarding, and more.
• Strong image making and typography skills is a must. Our work is similar to publication design but produced in PowerPoint.
• Ability to confidently lead meetings and present to internal executives and stakeholders.
• Proven experience managing projects, ability to adapt to changing priorities, deadlines, and directions
• A portfolio with examples of PowerPoint presentations is required

Nice-to-Have:

• Leadership experience with direct reports or mentoring designers.
• Portfolio includes data visualization and/or QBR or EBR projects

Why Merkle?

You’ll work on presentations that influence top global brands and reach CMO, CTO, and CEO desks. The variety of clients is unmatched, and the impact of your work will be seen at the highest levels. This is an opportunity to grow your career in a collaborative, fast-paced environment while shaping the future of our Information Design discipline.

Additional Information

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $94,000 - $152,375. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law. 

Benefits available with this position include: 

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance, 

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k, 

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.  #LI-RB1 #LI-Hybrid

Location:

Chicago - N. State

Brand:

Merkle

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent