Art Director
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Key skills for this role
About the Role
M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment Middle East is seeking a senior Art Director to lead visual and conceptual development for sport and events campaigns. The role involves creating campaign identities, event experiences, and activation assets across all channels.
Key Skills for This Role
Responsibilities
- Lead creative development from brief to delivery across sports and events campaigns, ensuring all work is on brief, on brand, and commercially sound.
- Translate strategic briefs into visual creative territories, mood boards, campaign frameworks and creative rationales.
- Develop and present multiple creative routes with clarity and confidence, both internally and in client facing settings.
- Oversee creative quality and visual consistency across all client touchpoints and across the full campaign lifecycle.
- Design and develop event identity systems, environmental branding, wayfinding, fan zone concepts and large format experiential assets.
- Create campaign visual assets for major sporting events, sponsor activations, athlete partnerships and fan engagement activations.
- Produce creative across OOH, digital, social, print, broadcast and environmental formats as required by client campaigns.
- Support the development of new business pitch decks, credentials presentations and agency marketing materials.
- Brief, direct and review work from freelance designers, illustrators, photographers and video producers.
- Manage multiple projects simultaneously, maintaining quality and meeting deadlines.
- Support and mentor junior members of the creative team.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as an Art Director, Senior Designer or equivalent creative role
- Strong portfolio demonstrating sport and/or events work
- Exceptional design craft with sharp eye for typography, layout, colour and visual storytelling
- Expert level proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign
- Strong conceptual thinking and ability to develop ideas from sketch to final delivery
- Experience working in a fast paced agency environment managing multiple client briefs simultaneously
- Excellent communication and presentation skills
- Understanding of the GCC and Middle East market, cultural sensitivities and visual communication norms
Full Job Posting
About The Role
- The Art Director is a senior creative delivery role within M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment Middle East, responsible for leading the visual and conceptual development of sport and events campaigns across the agency's client portfolio.
- Reporting to the Senior Client Director, the Art Director will take briefs from strategy and account teams and translate them into compelling creative territories, campaign identities, event experiences, and activation assets that perform across all channels and touchpoints.
- This is a hands on, high output role suited to a creative who understands the energy, pace, and visual language of sport and live events.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead creative development from brief to delivery across sports and events campaigns, ensuring all work is on brief, on brand, and commercially sound.
- Translate strategic briefs into visual creative territories, mood boards, campaign frameworks and creative rationales.
- Develop and present multiple creative routes with clarity and confidence, both internally and in client facing settings.
- Oversee creative quality and visual consistency across all client touchpoints and across the full campaign lifecycle.
- Design and develop event identity systems, environmental branding, wayfinding, fan zone concepts and large format experiential assets.
- Create campaign visual assets for major sporting events, sponsor activations, athlete partnerships and fan engagement activations.
- Produce creative across OOH, digital, social, print, broadcast and environmental formats as required by client campaigns.
- Support the development of new business pitch decks, credentials presentations and agency marketing materials.
- Brief, direct and review work from freelance designers, illustrators, photographers and video producers.
- Manage multiple projects simultaneously, maintaining quality and meeting deadlines without compromising standards.
- Support and mentor junior members of the creative team, helping to build capability and a culture of high standards.
Essential Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as an Art Director, Senior Designer or equivalent creative role, with a strong portfolio demonstrating sport and/or events work.
- Exceptional design craft with a sharp eye for typography, layout, colour and visual storytelling.
- Proven experience across multiple formats: campaign identities, event branding, social content, large format production and presentation design.
- Expert level proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign.
- Strong conceptual thinking able to generate original ideas and develop them from sketch to final delivery.
- Experience working in a fast paced agency environment managing multiple client briefs simultaneously.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills confident in client facing situations.
- Understanding of the GCC and Middle East market, cultural sensitivities and visual communication norms.
Desirable Requirements
- Proven experience on major sporting events rugby, football, motorsport, tennis, athletics or equivalent.
- Motion graphics and video editing skills: After Effects, Premiere Pro.
- Experience working with government entities, tourism boards, rights holders or sports federations in the region.
- Bilingual creative capability in English and Arabic.
What Great Looks Like
- Success in this role means producing creative that is confident, original and purposeful work that wins pitches, elevates client campaigns and makes the agency proud.
- You are the person who brings energy and clarity to a brief. You concept quickly, execute with precision, and know how to read a room when presenting.
- You work well with strategy and account teams without needing to be spoon fed.
- You are as comfortable art directing an event identity system for a major sports property as you are turning around a social asset for a sponsor activation at pace.
Application Deadline
- Applications close on Friday, June 26, 2026.
About M+C Saatchi Group
- M+C Saatchi Group is a creative federation of companies who navigate, create, and lead meaningful change for clients across five specialist divisions.
- Headquartered in London, M+C Saatchi Group have circa 2,500 employees globally. Our global operations span 23 countries with major hubs in the UK, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Australia.
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