Exploration Director Jobs in Washington (NOW HIRING)

 At RP3, we believe wildly original ideas are the most powerful force in marketing.

The Associate Creative Director, Art is responsible for turning strategy, audience insight, and culture into original visual ideas that earn attention, build brands, and drive measurable results.

This role sits at the intersection of conceptual leadership, art direction, design, and hands-on making. The ideal candidate can lead teams and client conversations while still shaping the visual world, building a convincing comp, and improving the work through specific creative direction.

The Associate Creative Director, Art is a creative catalyst across the agency—partnering closely with copy, strategy, account leadership, media, and production; mentoring talent; and using AI and emerging tools deliberately to expand exploration without replacing taste, craft, or accountability.

What Success Looks Like

• Leads teams to develop original, strategically grounded campaign platforms—not just polished executions.
• Creates integrated work that earns attention, strengthens brands, and drives measurable business impact.
• Raises the standard of concept, visual storytelling, and craft across multiple accounts and teams.
• Builds distinctive visual worlds that remain cohesive as ideas stretch across channels, formats, and moments.
• Earns client trust as a persuasive strategic and creative partner.
• Develops art directors, designers, copywriters, and emerging creative leaders through clear direction and generous feedback.
• Balances creative ambition with audience needs, business objectives, budgets, timelines, and production realities.
• Uses AI responsibly to accelerate visual exploration, comps, storyboards, and image development while protecting originality,      confidentiality, intellectual property, and brand integrity.  
• Contributes to work that strengthens RP3’s creative reputation and is worthy of industry recognition.

What You'll Do

Lead Concept-First Creative

• Lead integrated concept development across multiple clients, industries, and business challenges.
• Partner with copywriters and multidisciplinary teams to translate a sharp human insight into a clear, ownable campaign platform.
• Guide teams through divergent thinking, selection, refinement, and execution—pushing beyond the first expected answer.
• Ensure every visual choice serves the central idea and every execution connects back to the strategy.
• Contribute original thinking to pitches, organic growth opportunities, agency initiatives, and thought leadership.

Shape Visual Worlds and Craft

• Define distinctive visual directions across composition, typography, image-making, motion, interaction, and experience.
• Create and direct moodboards, styleframes, storyboards, comps, and prototypes that make ideas tangible and help teams and clients see the possibility.
• Maintain a coherent brand world as work adapts across social, digital, video, print, experiential, and emerging channels.
• Review and refine work with clear, specific feedback that improves both the idea and the execution.

Inspire and Develop Talent

• Mentor art directors, designers, copywriters, and emerging creative leaders while adapting guidance to each person’s strengths and growth goals.
• Create an environment where collaboration, curiosity, experimentation, healthy debate, and continuous learning thrive.
• Set clear expectations, give timely feedback, and help team members build confidence, judgment, and greater creative ownership.
• Lead by example through curiosity, accountability, resilience, professionalism, and generosity.

Build Client Confidence

• Frame, present, and sell creative ideas with a compelling visual narrative, strategic rationale, and confidence about how the work will come to life.
• Serve as a trusted advisor who understands the client’s business, brand, audience, competitive landscape, and appetite for creative risk.
• Navigate feedback and complex stakeholder dynamics while protecting the idea, improving the work, and building trust.
• Guide clients through visual choices, production approaches, and emerging technologies with clarity and sound judgment.

 Champion Responsible Innovation

• Use generative image and emerging visual tools to accelerate moodboards, styleframes, storyboards, comps, look development, and pre-production exploration.
• Direct prompts, references, and iteration with strategic intent; push beyond generic output and refine promising material through design, compositing, retouching, or traditional craft.
• Apply responsible-use standards for accuracy, bias, disclosure, brand safety, client confidentiality, intellectual property, talent      likeness, and usage rights.

Stay Hands-On and Production-Minded

• Step into the work when needed—sketching directions, building comps, shaping decks, refining frames, or helping a team unlock the next iteration.
• Partner with producers and makers to evaluate feasibility, select the right craft and production approach, and protect the idea through delivery.
• Know when AI adds value, when traditional design or production is the stronger choice, and how to distinguish exploratory imagery from approved final assets.

Stay current on visual culture, platforms, production techniques, and creative technology; share useful learning across the department. 

Why RP3?

Here's what we offer:

• Hybrid flexibility - RP3 is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, so if you are DMV-based, that is definitely a bonus — but not a barrier. If you can get here by train, plane, or automobile, you are in the running. We want the right person, wherever they are.
• A culture built on curiosity, kindness, accountability, and wildly original thinking
• Company-paid health, life, short-term disability, and long-term disability insurance
• Employee-paid dental and vision plans
• 401(k) with immediate employer match
• Inclusive, world-class family leave policy
• Generous PTO - including Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Paid Holidays, Personal Time, and Karma Days
• Summer Fridays - we shut down at 2 PM every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day
• Voluntary benefits including commuter benefits and pet insurance   

Compensation

Salary Range: 115,000-135,000 Annual DOE

We believe in paying people fairly and transparently. Final compensation will reflect individual experience, qualifications, and internal equity considerations

Equal Opportunity Employer

RP3 is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team that reflects the clients and communities we serve. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. Different perspectives make better work.

• A portfolio demonstrating breakthrough conceptual thinking, distinctive visual worlds, exceptional art direction and design craft, and leadership across integrated campaigns.

• 8–12 years of agency or integrated marketing experience, including meaningful team and client leadership responsibility.

• Proven ability to lead multidisciplinary creative teams and guide campaigns from brief through production.

• Deep expertise in art direction, design systems, typography, image-making, motion, and visual storytelling—paired with strong copy and narrative judgment.

• Experience presenting and selling creative work to senior clients and stakeholders.

• Demonstrated success mentoring creative talent and raising the quality of a team—not only individual assignments.

• Strong understanding of how strategy, craft, channels, production, and measurement work together to create business and brand impact.

• Curiosity about culture, technology, platforms, and evolving audience behavior, paired with the judgment to separate signal from novelty.

• Hands-on experience using generative image and emerging visual tools for comps and concept development, with sound judgment about consistency, feasibility, disclosure, licensing, and final-production quality.

• Exceptional communication, collaboration, presentation, prioritization, and leadership skills.

• All applicants must live in and be legally eligible to work in the US. Must live in Central or Eastern time zone. 

The RP3 Difference

We’re not looking for someone who simply manages creative work.

We’re looking for someone who helps teams see what’s possible and knows how to make it live.

The best Associate Creative Directors, Art at RP3 are equal parts conceptual thinker, visual storyteller, mentor, and maker. They turn human truths into distinctive brand worlds, partner closely with copy leaders to sharpen the idea, and create the conditions for talented people to do the best work of their careers.

They combine strategic thinking with creative ambition, leadership with humility, innovation with responsibility, and speed with craft. Most importantly, they create work that drives results, earns attention, and helps shape what’s next.