Art Director

1. Position at a Glance

Role: Art Director

Reports to: Creative Director

Location: Remote within Canada (head office in Vancouver, BC), with occasional travel for client meetings, shoots and events.

Type: Full-time, 12-month contract with potential to become permanent

Salary: $75,000 - $105,000 CAD annually, based on experience

2. About Kidzsmart

Kidzsmart Communications Inc. is a Vancouver-based, purpose-driven creative agency that helps brands connect with kids and families. For over 25 years, we've turned brands into trusted family favourites through play-driven learning experiences, immersive activations and digital content parents’ trust.

Our work spans national restaurant chains, pro and amateur sports organizations, toy and consumer-products brands, and our own children's publishing and e-commerce properties. Past and current partners include Boston Pizza, Canada Soccer, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Boston Red Sox.

We're a small, senior team, so every designer here touches real client work from day one and sees it go out the door.

3. The role

You turn client goals into campaigns that kids love and parents’ trust. Working with the Creative Director and account team, you'll shape the strategy, find the big idea and lead the creative team that brings it to life across digital and print.

You're a strategic thinker and a natural creative lead, as comfortable presenting a campaign to a client as you are guiding designers, illustrators and freelancers to their best work. This role is about campaigns, people and strategy first — you don't need deep print-production expertise, just enough to brief it well.

4. What you'll do

Strategy and campaigns

• Build compelling, strategic campaigns for clients: from the audience insight and key message to the big idea and how it rolls out across channels.
• Work with the Creative Director and account team to turn client goals and briefs into clear creative strategies and channel plans.
• Present campaign concepts and strategy in client meetings with a clear rationale, and refine the work through feedback.
• Develop pitch concepts, RFP responses and presentation decks for new business.
• Review campaign results with the account team and bring what you learn into the next idea.

Leading creatives on projects

• Lead and manage creatives on projects, including designers, illustrators, copywriters, photographers and freelancers, with clear briefs, timelines and useful feedback.
• Keep projects on brief, on schedule and on budget: scope creative hours, track timelines in our project management system and flag risks early.
• Hold the creative bar across every touchpoint, and build brand systems and campaign toolkits for clients and for Kidzsmart's own brands, including licensed properties.
• Create concepts, key visuals and layouts yourself when it helps shape or sell an idea.

Digital and print

• Guide digital work across social, web, e-commerce, email, apps and short-form video, with a clear sense of what works on each platform.
• Guide print work such as activity books, kids' menus, packaging and event materials — briefing production partners on brand and creative intent and reviewing proofs with them before anything ships.
• Make sure kid-facing work meets advertising, privacy and accessibility standards for children.

5. What you bring

• 5+ years in graphic design or art direction, with experience leading campaigns and creative teams, ideally at an agency.
• A portfolio of strategic, integrated campaigns that shows the insight, the idea and how it played out across digital and print.
• A strategic mind: you can connect a client's business goal to an audience insight and a compelling creative idea.
• Confidence presenting to clients, and working through their feedback to a better result.
• Experience managing creatives and freelancers across several projects at once, keeping work on brief, on schedule and on budget.
• Strong, proven graphic design experience: you can take an idea from sketch to finished key visual yourself.
• Solid knowledge of digital channels and formats, plus enough print production know-how to brief partners and catch problems before they ship.
• Expert skills in Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign) and working knowledge of Figma.
• A collaborative style: you make the work, and the people around you, better.

6. Nice to have

• Illustration skills
• Agency or brand experience in kids, family, toys or youth sports.
• Experiential, sponsorship or in-school program campaigns.
• Concept writing or copywriting skills.
• Motion design or video direction (After Effects, Premiere Pro).
• Comfort with AI-assisted design tools (e.g., Adobe Firefly, generative features in Figma) to speed up concepting.
• Experience working with brand licensors and their approval processes.
• French language skills.

7. Why Kidzsmart

• Create campaigns for national brands that kids and families use every day.
• A collaborative team that shares ideas and builds on each other's work.
• Range: campaigns, experiential programs, publishing, e-commerce and our own children's brands.
• A 12-month contract with a real path to a permanent role.

8. How to apply

Send your résumé and a portfolio link with at least two campaigns you led, showing the strategy, the idea and how it rolled out across digital and print. For one of them, tell us how you led the creative team and what the campaign achieved for the client.

Apply: [email protected]