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Lovepop is a venture-backed consumer brand ($300M+ lifetime sales, $30M+ annually) that creates premium 3D pop-up paper art cards and gifts. Featured on Shark Tank in 2015, the company ranks in the top 10 Shark Tank investments and maintains 29% national brand awareness.
As Art Director for B2B Product Design, you will own end-to-end merchandising, visual direction, and creative operations for Lovepop's B2B licensed properties and corporate gifting portfolio. This is a leadership role managing a distributed team of concept designers, product designers, illustrators, and graphic designers while bridging creative strategy with operational execution.
Key Responsibilities:
**B2B Concept Development & Sales Liaison:** Serve as the primary communication bridge between the B2B sales team and design team. Translate multi-industry client briefs into detailed product proposals and persuasive concept sheets that drive sales orders. Manage client communication from brief through delivery for orders ranging from 500 to 10,000+ units. Interpret corporate brand guides across multiple industries to develop compelling 3D paper sculpture concepts. Establish modular semi-custom and wholesale templates for repeatable client programs.
**B2B Design Operations & Project Delivery:** Lead strategy and execution of all B2B design operations, ensuring client-specific products and concepts are visually aligned, strategically sound, and feasible for production. Oversee all B2B project workflows from intake to delivery. Manage team capacity to run multiple projects concurrently at fast pace. Enforce quality, cost, and lead-time targets while maintaining 100% adherence to sales team SLAs and first-pass client concept approval rates.
**Team Leadership & Mentorship:** Recruit, develop, and direct a distributed roster of concept designers, product developers, illustrators, and graphic designers. Manage, critique, and mentor team members to translate corporate brand identities into Lovepop's signature 3D Slicegami™ pop-up products. Contribute to building a culture of excitement and accountability within the Product Design team.
**AI & Workflow Scaling:** Champion and scale AI integration and optimized team processes to handle multiple concurrent B2B projects at high velocity without compromising craft or manufacturability. Drive adoption of company-approved AI tools for rapid mood boarding, concept generation, and proposal visualization.
**3D Integration & Quality Control:** Partner daily with 3D paper-engineering and production teams to ensure corporate branded assets and concepts translate seamlessly into Lovepop's 3D product formats. Oversee corporate branded assets across product lines, working cross-functionally with NPD, Marketing Creative, and Operations on accompanying components (design sentiment cards, inserts, envelopes, packaging). Ensure 100% mass production success rate with zero NCRs post-production.
Requirements:
- Minimum 6+ years progressive experience in product design, graphic design, illustration, or art direction for physical consumer/corporate goods (greeting cards, paper goods, corporate gifting, stationery, or branded merchandise preferred), including 3+ years in an Art Director or creative leadership role
- Proven experience interpreting corporate brand guidelines across multiple industries, translating client briefs into detailed proposals, and leading creative teams running multiple concurrent projects at fast pace to meet commercial sales cycles
- Demonstrated ability to manage lane capacity and balance creative concepts against quality, cost, and lead-time constraints; understanding of end-to-end physical product development is a plus
- Required hands-on experience implementing and scaling AI design tools and workflow optimizations within a creative team to accelerate concepting and proposal generation
- Strong eye for product and illustration with exceptional command of composition, typography, color theory, spatial storytelling, and corporate visual identity systems
- Expert proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign)
- Working knowledge of Procreate or comparable digital painting tools
- Fluency in Google Workspace, Figma, Slack
- Understanding of how digital artwork translates to physical paper products—including CMYK and strict corporate Pantone matching, FSC-certified paper stocks, CO2 laser-cutting tolerances, folding mechanics, and specialty finishes (foil stamping, embossing, spot UV, die-cutting)
- Working familiarity with Rhino 3D or AutoCAD for reviewing 3D sliceform geometry with paper engineers (strong plus)
- Hands-on experience with Photoshop automation, scripting, and variable-data templates (strong plus)
- Clear, confident English communicator (written and verbal) who acts as seamless bridge between B2B Sales and Design
- Obsessive quality control over client brand accuracy, planning sheets, layered production files, typography, and physical final samples prior to mass production
- Required portfolio demonstrating B2B/brand campaigns with examples of corporate brand translations, client pitch proposals, dimensional/print product development, or factory handoffs
- Bachelor's degree (BFA/BA) in Industrial/Product Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Visual Communications, or equivalent practical experience
