Creative Lead, Brand Identity

Portland, OR (hybrid or remote)

Contract, full-time

Roughly 3 to 4 weeks

Overview

We spend our days helping clients become impossible to ignore. After thirteen years, we're turning that lens on ourselves.

Over the last several months we've been working to reposition Fort West for a future where the line between brand and performance has collapsed. The positioning is solid. It's built on what we've actually earned and aimed at the market realities our clients need to stay ahead of. Now we need to build a visual identity bold enough to carry the thinking.

The hardest brand to see clearly is your own, so we're bringing in outside eyes with fresh perspective. We’re looking for a creative leader with sharp instincts, a point of view, and the nerve to push us somewhere we haven't been.

The engagement

This is a focused engagement to establish the visual world that brings our positioning to life. We're looking for someone who thinks about the whole brand ecosystem from the start. Not just the core identity, but how it behaves and extends across web, social, motion, video, and pitch.

This is not a logo project. We like our wordmark, though we're open to evolving it if the work genuinely calls for it. The point of this project is everything around it, the visual language and the system that turns a sharp strategy into a brand people want to pay attention to.

The work covers:

• The core visual language: color, typography, imagery, graphic system, and the rules that hold it together.
• Art direction for how the brand lives and extends across our website, social, motion, video, and pitch.
• Enough applied examples to make the direction real and show how it comes alive in the wild.

Full production of those channels is a later phase. What we need first is the vision and big creative thinking that sets the course.

What we're looking for

You bring range. You can move from concept to application to system, and you're as comfortable setting a direction as you are executing it. You think in systems, not one-off deliverables, and you have a point of view you're willing to defend. You understand how a brand behaves across web, social, motion, video, and pitch. This project requires senior level thinking. Title matters less than the vision you are capable of making real. 

You'll work directly with our executive leadership team. Decisions are fast, the latitude is real, and the brief is as open as your thinking is good.

Logistics:

• Contract, full-time focus, roughly three to four weeks.
• Start as soon as we find the right person.
• Remote works. We're in the Portland area and strongly prefer someone local, or close enough for some time in person, but we won't let geography stop us from hiring the right creative.
• Compensation: let's talk. Tell us what a project like this looks like for you.

To apply, send your portfolio and a short note to creative@fortwest.com. Skip the cover letter. Instead, tell us one brand whose visual world you admire and what makes it work.