Recently by RebeccaSimpsonSteele
Creative Director, Reader's Digest & RD.com
Design 08.15.17
Trusted Media Brands is seeking a creative leader to direct the visual experience of its flagship brand Reader's Digest across all platforms. Reporting to the Global Chief Content Officer of Reader's Digest, the ideal candidate will have a record of producing digital and print content that is irresistible to users and readers because it is credible, memorable, and makes them feel good. He or she will understand all the ways contemporary readers and users touch, share, and produce content, how to measure that engagement across all platforms, and how to align costs with revenue for differing digital and print business models.
The position requires joint expertise in digital and print because Trusted Media Brands is focused on simultaneously strengthening the loyalty of our print consumers and very rapidly growing our digital audiences. Print design leaders who've picked up strong digital skills and digital design leaders who can draw on high-level past print experience both will be considered for this critical position.
The position requires joint expertise in digital and print because Trusted Media Brands is focused on simultaneously strengthening the loyalty of our print consumers and very rapidly growing our digital audiences. Print design leaders who've picked up strong digital skills and digital design leaders who can draw on high-level past print experience both will be considered for this critical position.
Key Responsibilities
• Manage the brand's 7-person cross-platform art and photo team, and partner with the Trusted Media Brands digital and consumer marketing teams, to help ensure the visual and commercial success of our content and products wherever they are found. Key direct reports are the Art Director and Photo Director.
• Oversee all digital photography, illustration, and video on RD.com to make it visually as distinctive for web users as Reader's Digest has been for readers since 1922.
• Work with the Digital Editorial Director and Photo Director to create a workflow to art 30+ articles a day on-site and across syndication partner sites.
• Work with licensing team to drive additional revenue from photography, illustration, and video assets.
• Over time, help Reader's Digest build an online eco-system that is many times larger and attracts a fast-growing daily audience.
• Take responsibility for the visual quality and consumer response to Reader's Digest, at 3 million-circulation one of the company's most important products.
• Oversee the look and feel of its 10 editions a year. Lead issue art meetings, approve assignments and layouts, help create the flow of the book, and manage the issue budget.
• Work with the Chief Content Officer and the art team to meet or exceed goals for newsstand sales.
• Master the research into what works best for the brand in retail; work with the Art Director and Photo Director to assign cover images; and partner with the consumer marketing team to finalize strong-selling covers.
• Freshen the design and architecture of Reader's Digest to inspire subscribers and other buyers to new loyalty. (The magazine underwent a major successful redesign and repositioning in 2014.)
• Work with the art staff and the Executive Editor to conceive and propose new design elements, departments, and other changes.
• Work with digital product team to apply relevant design changes to the digital portfolio.
• Partner with the Trusted Media Brands audience development and product technology teams and UX manager to establish guidelines (both style and technical) for photography, illustration, and other visual digital elements.
• Manage a continuous ramp-up of image/illustration production so that RD is producing distinctive digital content at speed, tracking its effectiveness according to specific KPIs, and targeting social, SEO, newsletters, syndication, and other critical distribution channels with different types of images, aligning costs with revenue.
• Participate in the RD.com roadmap managed by the Trusted Media Brands digital team. Help test new functionalities, tools, communities, and design elements that can trigger deeper engagement online.
• In partnership with the UX manager, introduce or modify typography, color palettes, and iconography to reinforce brand guidelines.
• Champion and initiate the imaginative repurposing of high-performing, high-quality RD.com content into Reader's Digest print content downstream, according to the brand's innovative digital-first publishing model.
• Manage the design of Reader's Digest-branded books and special interest publications that are regularly sourced from digital content.
• Work with editorial leaders at Taste of Home, Family Handyman, and other company brands to repurpose and recirculate sharable content across the network in both digital and print and otherwise take advantage of TMB's wider assets.
Qualifications
The ideal candidate has:
• Director-level experience in either print or digital design, and ideally in both 10+ years experience in consumer-facing design
• The ability to identify aspects of the position where you lack needed expertise, and to quickly master them
• Examples of outstanding design achievement on multiple platforms, including magazine print
• Exemplary eye for photography, use of typography, and creativity in layout A proven record of creating consumer covers that succeed on the newsstand
• A passion for interactive design as an experience, not just a graphical presentation
• A working knowledge of current digital design aesthetics and expertise in Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Comfort with website KPIs, A/B testing, and data-driven decision-making Fluent with responsive, multi-platform design on all screens.
• A firm understanding of HTML and Word Press.
• Ability to communicate with developers and technology managers in their language.
• Strong executive, analytical, problem solving, and communication skills
• Strong content instincts and the ability to communicate them
• Experience overseeing effective systems of content creation
• A gift for recruiting, managing, and inspiring a visual team
• A passion for connecting with a general-interest audience, and helping users connect with each other to make their lives better