Director of Brand Design The RoleThe Director of Brand Design is responsible for building and evolving the visual expression of TimelyCare into a distinctive, recognizable brand that creates authority and trust across every audience and experience.
Reporting to the VP of Brand Strategy, this is a hands-on creative leadership role. You will both create and direct the work, overseeing execution across internal partners, freelancers, agencies, production partners, and AI-enabled creative tools. You will use AI thoughtfully to accelerate ideation, prototype campaign concepts, extend approved design systems, and increase the speed and relevance of creative development while maintaining human creative judgment, brand integrity, accessibility, and quality.
You will build a visual identity and design system with enough flexibility to serve TimelyCare's distinct audiences, from higher education and K-12 decision-makers to students and families, while remaining unmistakably one TimelyCare brand. You will also partner closely with Product Design leadership to create meaningful continuity between the external brand and product experience.
This is not a role where a creative team simply brings work to you for approval. You will be expected to get into the work, originate ideas, solve creative problems, improve what already exists, and build the systems and capabilities that allow great creative to scale.
LocationThis is a remote position. Reviewing candidates across the country.
What You'll DoBuild and Evolve TimelyCare's Visual Brand- Develop and continuously evolve a distinctive TimelyCare visual identity and design system that builds brand authority, recognition, and trust.
- Translate brand strategy and audience insight into a clear visual language across typography, color, photography, illustration, composition, information design, motion, and other expressions of the brand.
- Create a flexible system capable of expressing one TimelyCare brand across higher education decision-makers, K-12 decision-makers, higher education students, and K-12 students and families.
- Establish the principles, components, and standards that allow the brand to adapt across paid media, social, web, content, sales materials, events, experiential environments, video, motion, and emerging channels without becoming repetitive or inconsistent.
- Continually evaluate and improve existing creative rather than treating previous executions, templates, or conventions as fixed.
- Maintain exceptional standards for craft, accessibility, audience relevance, and brand distinctiveness.
Originate Creative Ideas and Brand Experiences- Turn business objectives, audience insights, and brand strategy into compelling creative ideas-not simply translate established concepts into layouts.
- Lead collaborative brainstorms that bring together diverse perspectives and turn the strongest ideas into strategically grounded creative territories.
- Develop integrated campaign concepts that can extend across brand and performance marketing, paid media, social, digital, web, events, experiential, and campus environments.
- Brainstorm participatory brand experiences and activations that create meaningful opportunities for students and other audiences to engage with TimelyCare and increase awareness, engagement, and utilization.
- Think beyond individual assets to design connected experiences across channels and moments.
- Present creative concepts to Marketing and company leadership with a clear articulation of the audience insight, strategic rationale, creative idea, and how it comes to life across channels.
- Connect creative recommendations directly to the strategy and business problem they are intended to solve.
Lead Creative Development From Concept Through Execution- Provide hands-on creative direction from initial concept through final production, regardless of whether the work is produced internally, by freelancers, through agencies, or with AI-enabled tools.
- Design and develop work directly when the project, problem, or moment calls for it.
- Direct designers, agencies, photographers, illustrators, animators, production partners, and other creative specialists with clear, actionable feedback.
- Evaluate creative holistically-not design in isolation. Push on messaging, hierarchy, content density, and copy when they weaken the communication, while partnering with Brand and Content leaders rather than serving as the primary copywriter.
- Build a culture of open creative exploration where strong ideas can come from anywhere and creative decisions are grounded in strategy rather than personal preference.
- Oversee multimedia creative development across photography, video, animation, motion, print, digital, and physical experiences.
- Maintain accountability for the quality and coherence of the work regardless of who-or what-produces it.
Build Scalable Design Systems and AI-Enabled Creative Capabilities- Build and lead the build of the templates, component systems, creative libraries, standards, and governance that allow TimelyCare teams to produce high-quality, on-brand work at scale.
- Establish AI-enabled creative workflows and identify opportunities to automate repeatable design production through Canva and other emerging creative technologies.
- Use AI-enabled tools to rapidly explore campaign territories, develop early creative prototypes, adapt approved design systems across channels and audiences, and reduce repetitive production work so more time can be spent on high-value creative thinking.
- Develop organizational capability around responsible AI-assisted creative development, including standards, training, tools, and guidance that enable Marketing, Sales, and other teams to create on-brand materials.
- Experiment with emerging creative technologies and determine where they can meaningfully improve creative quality, speed, personalization, or scale.
- Establish practical standards for responsible AI-assisted creative work, including appropriate human review, brand and accessibility quality checks, use of approved source materials, and clear guidance for internal partners using AI to create on-brand assets.
- Build and organize a robust creative asset library across photography, illustration, iconography, motion, templates, and other reusable brand components, establishing a system that can ultimately be maintained by more junior design talent.
- Determine when work should be created directly, produced through scalable internal or AI-enabled systems, assigned to freelancers, or developed through specialist agencies.
Connect Brand and Product Experience- Build a strong creative partnership with Product Design leadership to create meaningful continuity between how audiences experience TimelyCare before, during, and after entering the product.
- Identify where brand principles, visual systems, assets, and experiences should extend into the product while respecting the distinct disciplines and requirements of product and UX design.
- Collaborate as a peer and creative partner with Product Design rather than treating brand and product as separate visual worlds.
- Partner across Marketing, Product, and other functions to ensure major company initiatives and launches feel coherent across the entire TimelyCare experience.
Build a Flexible Creative Model- Build and maintain a high-quality network of freelancers, agencies, production partners, and specialized creative resources that allows TimelyCare to flex capabilities and capacity as business needs evolve.
- Help determine the right mix of internal talent, external partners, technology, and automation required to scale TimelyCare's creative capability.
- Help shape the future structure and capabilities of TimelyCare's internal design function as the organization grows.
- Establish lightweight processes and creative workflows that improve quality, clarity, speed, and accountability without creating unnecessary barriers to creative development.
- Partner with Marketing project management on prioritization, intake, capacity planning, production timelines, and workflow rather than serving as the organization's creative traffic manager.
- Forecast creative and production resource needs and make recommendations for external investment based on priorities and capabilities.
Partner Across Brand and Marketing- Partner closely with the VP of Brand Strategy to translate TimelyCare's brand strategy into a distinctive and evolving visual expression.
- Collaborate with Content Marketing and Strategic Communications to connect visual storytelling, messaging, thought leadership, and campaign development.
- Work closely with Revenue Marketing, Product Marketing, Digital, Customer Marketing, and other teams to develop integrated creative solutions appropriate to their audiences, objectives, and channels.
- Participate in strategic brand and narrative development, bringing visual and experiential thinking upstream rather than waiting for completed briefs to begin creative work.
- Support major company initiatives, launches, events, and strategic moments with senior creative leadership and judgment.
What You Bring- 8+ years of progressive experience in brand design, design direction, creative direction, or related disciplines, with experience operating at a senior creative level.
- An exceptional portfolio demonstrating both personal design craft and creative leadership.
- Demonstrated experience building or significantly evolving a distinctive visual identity and translating it into a scalable design system.
- Portfolio evidence of integrated campaigns you helped originate and lead from concept through multi-channel execution-not simply campaigns you oversaw after the creative idea had been established.
- Strong conceptual thinking and the ability to turn business objectives, audience insights, and brand strategy into original creative ideas and experiences.
- Deep expertise in visual design, including typography, composition, photography, visual hierarchy, information design, and the principles required to build coherent brand systems.
- Experience designing across a range of environments such as digital, web, social, paid media, print, experiential, video, and motion.
- Demonstrated ability to adapt a core brand system across different audiences, channels, and objectives without sacrificing recognition or coherence.
- Strong presentation and storytelling skills, with the ability to articulate the strategic rationale behind creative work and confidently present recommendations to senior leaders.
- Experience directing agencies, freelancers, production partners, and multidisciplinary creative contributors.
- Experience partnering effectively with product and UX design teams, with an understanding of the relationship-and distinction-between brand design and product design.
- Strong editorial judgment and an understanding that copy, hierarchy, content, experience, and design work together to determine whether a communication is effective.
- Fluency with contemporary design tools and demonstrated experience using AI-enabled creative workflows to strengthen ideation, accelerate prototyping, scale design production, and improve campaign development. Sound judgment about when AI can support the work and when human creative expertise, review, and craft are essential.
- The ability and willingness to operate as a senior individual contributor and creative leader, whether or not the role has direct reports.
- Strong strategic judgment, intellectual curiosity, collaboration skills, and openness to ideas from people across disciplines.
Who You AreA maker as much as a leader. You don't believe seniority means getting farther away from the work. You are equally comfortable developing an idea, opening a design file, directing a specialist, challenging a weak message, presenting to executives, or building the system that allows others to execute without you.
A brand builder, not just a brand steward. You want to create the visual ideas, principles, and systems that make a company recognizable-not simply enforce existing guidelines.
A conceptual thinker. You don't begin every assignment by asking what the asset should look like. You start by understanding the audience, strategy, and problem to solve and explore what the brand could do, create, or enable.
A systems thinker. You can create exceptional individual work, but your instinct is to turn what works into a flexible system that others can use without making everything look the same.
A holistic communicator. You care whether the communication works, not simply whether the design looks good. When the hierarchy is confusing, the copy says nothing, or the experience doesn't make sense, you engage with the problem.
A generous collaborator. You believe the best idea can come from anywhere. You invite different perspectives, make ideas better through collaboration, and use strategy and audience needs-not authorship or personal preference-to evaluate the work.
A resourceful builder. 
