Summary of the Senior Art Director job at AKQA

At AKQA Amsterdam, we use creativity to help brands and businesses move forward. Sometimes that means telling a better story. Sometimes it means designing a new experience, creating a new identity or imagining something that didn’t exist before. We follow the idea wherever it takes us, bringing different people and disciplines together to make it real.

As a Senior Art Director, you take ownership of ideas and the worlds they create. You find compelling ways into complex briefs, establish the creative and visual approach, and take responsibility for developing an idea from first thought through to final expression.

You think beyond the immediate ask, exploring what an idea could become and bringing the right people together to make it better. You bring a distinct point of view while making space for other perspectives, and know when to protect an idea, when to evolve it and when to find a better direction.

Your judgement raises the standard of the work, your direction creates momentum, and your craft makes ambitious ideas real.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Own the idea. Take responsibility for ideas within a brief, driving them from first thought through final execution while protecting what makes them strong as they evolve.
• Find the opportunity. Find compelling and unexpected ways into complex problems, looking beyond the immediate brief to explore where an idea could go and what it could become.
• Be versatile. Shape ideas across stories, identities, services and experiences rather than defaulting to a familiar format or output.
• Set the craft standard. Bring a high standard of conceptual thinking, art direction and design craft, creating distinctive visual worlds wherever the idea needs to live.
• Use the tools to go further. Work fluently across Figma, Adobe, Google Workspace and the wider creative toolkit, with AI embedded naturally into how you explore, validate, visualise and prototype ideas.
• Lead together. Bring multidisciplinary teams around a strong idea, creating clarity and momentum while making space for others to improve the work.
• Direct with purpose. Lead photographers, directors, designers and illustrators, as well as colleagues across disciplines, with a clear point of view, using their expertise to elevate the idea.
• Bring people with you. Present creative thinking with clarity and conviction, building trust with clients and teams as the work develops.
• Raise the standard. Take responsibility for creative quality from beginning to end, maintaining ambition through execution while helping less experienced creatives raise their own standard.

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• Ideas first. You’re a strong conceptual thinker who can find the opportunity in a brief and imagine what an idea could become.
• Entrepreneurial by nature. You see opportunities others might miss, take initiative and find ways to turn possibilities into something real.
• A strong visual point of view. You have excellent judgement across design, typography, image-making, film and contemporary visual culture, backed by the craft to make your thinking tangible.
• Curious beyond your craft. You’re interested in culture, technology, behaviour and disciplines beyond your own, and bring that curiosity back into the work.
• Comfortable in the unknown. You explore, experiment and challenge familiar ways of doing things when there might be a better answer.
• Generous with ideas. You make space for other perspectives, build on good thinking wherever it comes from and help the people around you do better work.
• Clear and convincing. You can articulate why an idea matters, bring clients and teams with you and respond thoughtfully when the work is challenged.
• High standards, low ego. You care deeply about the quality of the work without needing every answer to be yours.
• A maker at heart. You stay close to the work, the tools and the details, and know when getting hands-on will make the outcome better.