How To Become A Creative Lead: What It Is and Career Path

What is a creative lead and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Yash Egami

As a Creative Lead, you will be responsible for driving the design and creative aspects of a business or company project. You will need a bachelor's degree in art, graphic design, or a related field and many years of industry experience. You will need analytical skills, leadership skills, and creativity. Experience in project management and graphic design is also important.

As a creative lead, you will work on the aspect of artistic projects and help lead a team of artists and creators on projects. You should also have a working knowledge of 3-D art, UX design, and engineering. You may be the lead on developing a website, display, or a reality game.

You will also work closely with the creative or art director, innovate the latest in visual solutions, and present ideas to team members and editorial directors. If you want to be a creative lead, you can expect to make $95,000 per year.

What general advice would you give to a creative lead?

Yash Egami

VP, The One Club

A recent Forrester report says that the ad industry will lose 50,000 jobs through 2021, with 35,000 of them already lost since the pandemic. The traditional ad agency model was already in trouble, with many brands hiring away talent and creating their own in-house agencies. Add to that the recent reckoning with the Black Lives Matter movement, and what we're seeing is an industry that is being forced to go through monumental change in order to survive.

While traditional roles like art director or copywriter are on the decline, the good news is that, in an effort to reinvent themselves, agencies are seeking creatives with digital skills like UX design and programming. The rise of in-house creative departments has also meant more opportunities for job seekers within brands rather than agencies. And because of the demand for more diversity from clients and those within advertising, recruiters are making more of an effort to hire multicultural talent.

At The One Club for Creativity, we've been at the forefront of change in the industry through our diversity and inclusion, professional development and gender equality programs. We recently hosted our annual multicultural career fair, "Where Are All the Black People?" that brought together thousands of diverse talent with 40 agencies and companies looking to hire. We launched One School, a free online program for Black creatives who want to get into the industry but don't have a portfolio or the economic means to afford to go to ad school. And we're working on upskilling courses for professionals who want to reinvent themselves or keep up with the changing demands of our industry.

So if you're a recent graduate who specializes in art direction, our advice would be to keep an open mind about what kind of company you want to work for and think about expanding your skillset to include digital skills so that you can future-proof your career. Where you are isn't as important because, since the pandemic, agencies have become more comfortable with working remotely and they are more open to having a workforce not centered on the traditional agency hubs, like New York or Los Angeles.

ScoreCreative LeadUS Average

Salary

7.3

Avg. Salary $93,742

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 37.86%

male 62.14%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a creative lead

Explore creative lead education requirements

Most common creative lead degrees

Bachelor's

76.6 %

Associate

10.3 %

Master's

8.3 %

Start to develop specific creative lead skills

Skills	Percentages
Sketch	5.56%
Project Management	5.26%
Adobe Creative Suite	4.82%
Graphic Design	4.81%
UI	3.80%

Complete relevant creative lead training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New creative leads learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a creative lead based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real creative lead resumes.

Research creative lead duties and responsibilities

Manage multiple digital and rich media advertising campaign creative, teams & lifecycles including conception, production, QA and implementation.
Design websites that are visually appealing and effective using HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL.
Develop corporate identity, print material design, multimedia development and web development utilizing HTML, CSS, and ActionScript.
Develop strong skill set HTML coding for effective web page designs and layouts.

Get creative lead experience

Generally, it takes 8-10 years to become a creative lead. The most common roles before becoming a creative lead include art director, graphic designer team lead and creative director.

Prepare your creative lead resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your creative lead resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a creative lead resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable creative lead resume templates

Build a professional creative lead resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your creative lead resume.