Creative Director

Dearborn, MI

We're in the midst of the biggest change the automotive industry has ever seen. Just as cars changed the world over the last century, new technologies such as self-driving cars, electric powertrains, and connected vehicles will radically reshape how we live, work, and play in the next hundred years.

As a member of the Experience Design (XD) Team, you'll be at the heart of creating that future. Every day, Ford's vehicles, and services support millions of people around the world. You'll craft every touchpoint our customers encounter, designing people and society's needs into the heart of our next generation of out-of-vehicle products, services, and experiences.

What you’ll be able to do:

As a Creative Director within the Experience Design Team, you will lead and be a part of user experience studio and project teams made up of passionate multi-disciplinary creative designers, from industrial and environmental, to experience and digital designers that will create differentiating experiences for Ford.

You will bring big ideas to life with extraordinary design while providing inspirational leadership and thought partnership for the creative team, and guide teams as they partner with strategy and technology to ideate, visualize, and prototype Ford’s future customer experience.

Ford’s Experience Design Creative Directors have the ability to advance our practice of design, through a lens of equity, systems change, and co-design methodologies. They demonstrate, inspire, and model creativity, inclusivity, and co-creation in order to build impactful solutions. You’ll thrive at leading teams with diverse backgrounds, skills and opinions, and understand the unique contributions different individuals make.

As a Creative Director, you will..

Lead teams to ideate, visualize and prototype new innovative concepts that redefine the end-to-end experience
Lead and manage design vendors.
Manage your team’s workload, estimating timing and resources, and matching appropriate talent to the opportunity area
Seek to understand user needs and propose a design prototype, evaluate its usefulness, and determine next steps to ensure optimal experience designs.
Build a culture of trust and innovation where teams can do the best work of their careers.
Ensure prototypes are in accordance with company's brand guidelines and lead the invention/improvement of guidelines when existing guidelines are unclear.
Guide team to ensure solutions allow the user to complete the desired functions in the most elegant possible manner
Communicate visual design direction to leaders at all stages from intent to implementation to ensure alignment
Facilitate kickoffs, team reviews, executive meetings, and workshops, providing a consistent voice and setting the bar for facilitation, presentations, storytelling, and cheerleading the team as they present their work
Regularly review the work (strategies, journey maps, concepts, wireframes, prototypes, visual designs, research plans, etc), provide ideas and feedback, encourage your team to put forward brave ideas, and push past expected solutions
Lead vision and development of creative materials across every medium needed to bring experiences to life, and facilitate alignment with partners, executives, and customers.

The minimum requirements we seek:

Bachelors degree or a combination of education and equivalent experience
10+ years of experience design and/or creative direction experience
4+ years of experience leading a design team

Our Preferred qualifications:

Portfolio of projects that demonstrate your skills as a creative director and experience designer
Top-notch design craftsmanship, and ability to articulate the whys and how’s of user-centered design methods.
You have numerous outlets for which to express your designs and concepts – written briefs, hand sketches, digital comps, rapid prototyping, storyboarding, and more. You are a storyteller, a brand builder and are creative to the core.
Your love and experience rendering concepts, thinking with your hands, and sweating the details are all in service of making ideas tangible and inspiring teams around solutions.
Ability to create, demonstrate, evangelize, and oversee a variety of visual design deliverables including mood boards, storyboards, creative briefs, three-dimensional (3D) models, cardboard/foam-core models, product renderings/visualizations, color and materials design, motion studies, iconography, illustrations, layouts, and prototypes of varying levels of fidelity.
An interest in emerging tech, the latest creative tools, and burgeoning design trends.
Expert collaborator both in person and digitally, you thrive off working with other creatives, partners and subject areas
An openness for thorough critique — giving and receiving feedback with optimism, clarity, and calm.

Ability to jump-start projects without clear direction

Mastery of Adobe Suite and prototyping tools (Sketch, Figma, etc.)
Proficient in presentation software (Keynote)

What you’ll receive in return:

As part of the Ford family, you’ll enjoy excellent compensation and a comprehensive benefits package that includes generous PTO, retirement, savings and stock investment plans, incentive compensation and much more. You’ll also experience exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth and recognition.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a permanent basis. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a culturally diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status.

At Ford, the health and safety of our employees is our top priority. Vaccination has been proven to play a critical role in combatting COVID-19. As a result, Ford has made the decision to require U.S. salaried employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, unless employees require an accommodation for religious or medical reasons. Being fully vaccinated means that an individual is at least two weeks past their final dose of an authorized COVID-19 vaccine regimen. As a condition of employment, newly hired employees will be required to provide proof of their COVID-19 vaccination or an approved medical or religious exemption.