Art Director
NYC agency$135K – $185K
Base + bonus
Vol. 01 · Talent Report · 2026New York · Los Angeles · LondonPrint & screen, est. 2026
02The brief
Where generalist recruiters and public job boards have gone slower in the creative vertical — and where stealth hiring increasingly routes talent through private networks — our edge is vertical depth. Art direction, brand strategy, performance marketing, motion, UX, editorial, content, and production, alongside engineering, platform, data, and security for technology teams, across agencies, in-house brand teams, and consultancies.
- Practice focus
- Creative, marketing, design, advertising, and IT / technology
- Senior reach
- Junior designer through CCO / CMO
- Search modes
- Direct, contract, freelance, confidential
- Candidate support
- Resume, LinkedIn, comp benchmark
- Employer support
- Vetted slate, calibrated comp, NDA
- Markets
- NYC · LA · SF · London · Remote
03Disciplines
One practice, dipped into every corner of the creative industry.
One team across every desk. Search the same brief whichever discipline it lives in — agency, in-house, or consultancy.
01
Art direction
CD, AD, ACD — agency + in-house
02
Brand strategy
Strategists, planners, brand directors
03
Performance marketing
Creative leads for paid + lifecycle
04
Motion design
2D / 3D, broadcast, editorial motion
05
UX & product design
Senior ICs through design directors
06
Editorial & content
Copy, content design, editorial leads
07
Production & design ops
Trafficking, production, design systems
08
Creative leadership
CCO, ECD, GCD, CMO, executive creative director
09
IT / technology
Engineering, platform, data, security — IC through CTO
04What the engagement includes
Career support and a real shortlist, both delivered like a brief — not a webhook.
For candidates
Always includedPackaged with every placement.
- Resume and portfolio review written by a creative director, not a parser.
- LinkedIn rewrite optimized for the way agencies and in-house teams actually search.
- Calibrated compensation benchmark built from our own placements — not Glassdoor.
- Interview prep with a recruiter who reads a portfolio and knows the hiring manager.
- Curated job board — only roles we have personally vetted.
For employers
On every mandateA pre-vetted slate with real numbers attached.
- Pre-vetted shortlist of 3–5 candidates, calibrated to your comp range.
- Brief written by us, not just forwarded — we sharpen the role before we search.
- Compensation positioning from our proprietary data set, refreshed each quarter.
- Confidential pipeline for senior and C-suite searches that should not post publicly.
- Direct hire, contract, freelance, and contract-to-hire under one partner.
05Compensation index
Calibrated ranges drawn from our own placements.
Refreshed every quarter. Vertical-specific, split by market, hire type, and company stage. Excerpted below.
Senior Copywriter
NYC in-house brand$125K – $165K
Base + equity
Creative Director
LA independent agency$185K – $240K
Base
Design Director, UX
SF product$210K – $280K
Base + equity
Head of Brand
London DTC£110K – £145K
Base
Chief Marketing Officer
Mid-stage SaaS$285K – $360K
Base + equity
Figures shown are anonymized ranges from closed placements in the last twelve months. Full index is shared privately with active candidates and employers.
06Confidential search
The searches that never post publicly — ECD, GCD, CMO.
When a company cannot publicly advertise a creative leadership role — and when the right candidate is employed, often at a competitor — the search moves into a private network. We sign the NDA, mask the company, and surface only candidates who have consented to a confidential conversation.
Confidential mandates typically run six to ten weeks, with three to five finalists presented at shortlist stage and the company name revealed only at that point.
07Field notes
Questions we get from candidates and hiring teams every week.
If yours isn't here, write halftone-talent@polsia.app.
ClosingEnd of volume
Bring us the brief — we'll sharpen it, build the slate, and sit in the room for the offer.
Halftone Talent is built for the place where vertical fluency matters: creative hiring where the recruiters actually read a portfolio, the comp ranges actually mean something, and the search can move quietly when it needs to.
Direct line
halftone-talent@polsia.appHiring brief, candidate intro, confidential mandate — one inbox, read every weekday by a senior recruiter.
Open the brief© 2026 Halftone TalentSet in the template display face · printed on-screenhalftone-talent@polsia.app