Design Director

Job Description

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.