Overview
Design Director Jobs in London Area, United Kingdom at Havas SO
Havas SO exists to create meaningful solutions in health that earn real-world impact. We believe design is one of the most powerful tools we have to make that happen — turning complexity into clarity, science into stories, and ideas into experiences that move through culture.
As advertising and design undergo the biggest structural reset in decades, we are building a next-generation creative team: one driven by cultural intelligence, world-class craft, multidisciplinary experimentation and the belief that design can shape human behaviour for the better.
We are also a deeply kind, curious, optimistic team. Great humans make great work.
The Role
We’re looking for a Design Director who is a true hybrid: a craft-obsessed design thinker, a cultural maker, an innovation explorer, and an inspiring leader capable of shaping one of the most exciting design teams in health. You’ll lead a small, high-potential team (3 designers), with the opportunity to shape its future growth.
You’ll work across and elevate multiple design disciplines:
- Graphic design and campaign identity
- AI-enabled visual exploration and prototyping
- Social-first design and motion
- Digital design
- Experiential and spatial design
- Editorial and information design
Your remit is both creative and cultural: to set a new bar for design excellence in health, and to help build a team capable of producing work that shapes culture, not just communication.
What You’ll Do
1. Set the design standard for the agency
- Set and uphold an exceptional standard of craft across every output
- Be hands-on — shaping, refining and elevating design work
- Champion taste, restraint and clarity in a complex category
2. Lead multidisciplinary design across brands, campaigns and experiences
- Shape campaign identities, visual worlds and design systems
- Strong experience across digital, motion and social-first design
- Lead experiential concepts, social design, information design and motion
- Bring scientific, behavioural and cultural insights to life with emotional clarity
3. Push creative innovation
- Use AI tools to accelerate exploration, prototyping and visual development
- Identify where AI can enhance craft, not replace it
- Stay experimental — bringing new tools and approaches into the team
4. Build and nurture a world-class design team
- Mentor, inspire and elevate designers across all levels
- Hire with care: curious minds, kind collaborators, culturally aware thinkers, optimists by nature
- Foster a safe, ambitious environment where designers can do the best work of their careers
5. Partner across disciplines
- Collaborate seamlessly with creatives, strategists, scientists, copywriters and experience designers
- Contribute to ideas upstream — shaping behaviours, not just visuals
6. Ensure design excellence in every output
- Oversee final craft quality across Figma, Adobe Suite, motion, social, experiential and beyond
- Insist on clarity, beauty and originality in every detail
What You Bring
- Senior experience across multiple design disciplines (graphic, experiential, social/motion, editorial, identity, digital)
- A portfolio that demonstrates range, depth, emotion and cultural relevance
- Technical mastery of Figma and the Adobe Creative Suite, with comfort directing motion, animation and 3D workflows
- Demonstrated experience using AI tools for ideation, visual development, prototyping or production
- A love of culture, design trends, emerging aesthetics, movements, signals and behaviours
- Ability to turn scientific or behavioural complexity into visual worlds that feel human, modern and meaningful
- A leadership style rooted in kindness, curiosity, clarity and optimism
- A belief that design doesn’t just reflect culture but builds it
- Deep motivation to create meaningful solutions in health that earn real-world impact
Why Join Us
At Havas SO, you will help shape one of the most exciting creative teams in health today… a place where design, culture, science and innovation collide.
You’ll lead with craft and kindness.
You’ll build a team you’re proud of.
And you’ll create work that genuinely makes people’s lives better.
Title: Design Director
Company: Havas SO
Location: London Area, United Kingdom
Category:
