Creative Director at Great Northern Corporation in Des Plaines, IL

Creative Director
Why Great Northern
Privately held, Great Northern Instore, a division of Great Northern Corporation, is a Multi-Million Dollar, Designer, Engineering, and Manufacturer of Custom Permanent Point Purchase Displays and Retail Fixtures.
Great Northern is committed to making a difference in the lives of our team members, customers, and the communities in which we live and work. Many of our team members were referred to by their friends and families who are already a part of the Great Northern team.

The Benefits of Great Northern
Competitive 401K match and a historically generous profit-sharing retirement savings contribution
Paid Time Off and IL Paid Leave after 30 days of employment
9 Paid Holidays
Medical PPO, Health Savings Account, Dental, and Vision insurance
Wellness Program
Life Insurance, Short Term and Long-Term Disability available
Health Fitness, Safety Prescription Glasses, and Safety Shoes Reimbursement annually
Tuition Reimbursement available after 1 year of service
Opportunities to advance your career and compensation level
Annual increases

Pay/Schedule
On-site Weekdays 8a.m.-4:30p.m.
Competitive Salary

Position Summary
The Creative Director is a hands-on creative leader, responsible for leading Industrial Design and Graphic Design while balancing creative strategy, business growth, and day-to-day project execution
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
• Leads, coaches, and develops the Industrial Design and Graphic Design teams; establishes expectations for design quality, collaboration, accountability, and performance.
• Reviews concepts and presentations to ensure solutions are visually compelling, strategically relevant, technically sound, manufacturable, and appropriate for the customer
• Leads brainstorming and concept-development activities to create differentiated solutions that address customer, brand, shopper, budget, and retail needs.
• Stays current on retail, design, material, manufacturing, and technology trends, including practical uses of generative AI for design exploration.
• Partners with Sales on customer meetings, project kickoffs, prototype reviews, presentations, and new business opportunities; helps qualify where creative resources should be invested.
• Provides creative and technical direction from initial brief and ideation through client presentation, engineering, prototyping, and production.
• Reviews the WebCenter schedule and active workloads to monitor deadlines, revisions, project progress, and resource capacity.
• Tracks key measures such as project throughput, development timing, win rates, freelance spending, and first-run orders; recommends improvements to staffing, tools, capabilities, and processes.
• Participates in preliminary estimating and design-to-cost discussions, balancing creativity with material, manufacturing, timing, shipping, installation, and budget considerations.
• Reviews new projects, determines the appropriate development path and deliverables, assigns work, balances internal and freelance resources, work capacity, and adjusts priorities as needs change.
• Provides hands-on project support when workload, timing, or project complexity requires it, using CAD, sketching, rendering, concept development, or other relevant design tools.
• Collaborates in “ballpark” estimating meetings to develop budgetary pricing ahead of engineering and formal estimating.
• Contributes creative insight to business strategy, growth priorities, resource planning, and operational decisions

Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree in industrial design or a related field, or significant equivalent experience in retail display, fixture, or in-store environment design.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience leading a design or creative team in a manager or director role.
• Strong working knowledge of product development, including CAD, sketching, rendering, rapid prototyping, materials, and manufacturing processes for displays, fixtures, or similar physical products.
• Recent hands-on technical experience and the ability to support design project execution during periods of high workload.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, set direction, provide constructive feedback, manage competing priorities, and develop talent.
• Strong understanding of how design decisions affect cost, manufacturability, timing, customer value, and business results.
• Excellent verbal, written, presentation, organizational, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and work effectively with different disciplines, personalities, and organizational levels.
• Experience in permanent POP displays, retail fixtures, store environments, shopper marketing, or a closely related industry strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office; familiarity with generative AI and emerging design technologies preferred.
• Ability to perform the essential functions of the position and maintain regular, punctual attendance consistent with applicable federal, state, and local requirements.

Physical Requirements
Ability to safely and successfully perform the essential job functions consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards, including meeting qualitative and/or quantitative productivity standards.
Ability to maintain regular, punctual attendance consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards

Opportunities for Growth
You will have the opportunity to gain experience, and new skills and acquire new knowledge that can be applied to grow into new positions with higher pay. Furthermore, you can grow your career with Great Northern through advancement opportunities available at our facilities locally and nationally.

Expectation
To be successful your teammates will depend on you to have pride in your work, be on time, work safely, work effectively with others, be optimistic, take ownership of your responsibilities, and look for continuous improvement opportunities.
Great Northern is an equal opportunity at-will employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of age, race, religion, color, disability, sex, sexual orientation, or national origin.