Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams

by Peter Merholz

Unlike Design Directors, whose primary responsibilities are managerial and team-oriented, Creative Directors are leaders whose primary responsibilities are creative, and even with “Director” in the title, might have no managerial responsibility. This role emerges in recognition of a couple conditions: As teams scale, it can be difficult for the Head of Design, and even the Design Directors, to provide exceptional creative leadership alongside their managerial and operational duties. There are brilliantly creative people who warrant leadership roles with authority, but who are ill-suited to managing direct reports. A Creative Director works as a peer of design directors, and is responsible for articulating a creative vision and setting creative standards for the design team. Brand identity standards, style guides, experience principles, and other aspects that touch on the entirety of the end-to-end experience fall under this purview. In sufficiently large organizations, there may be multiple Creative Directors responsible for different parts of the service experience. For a marketplace, there may be a Creative Director each for the seller experience and buyer experience.