Digital Designer

Role: Digital Designer
Reporting to: Director Digital and Product
Department: ITP Media Group Luxury

Role Description:
ITP Media Group seeks a Mid-Level Digital Designer with a strong publisher or creative agency background to join the Luxury Group's design team. You will have the opportunity to shape the digital experience for luxury titles such as Harper's Bazaar Arabia, Dazed MENA, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, ICON, Arabian Business, and more, as well as work on high-profile co-branded and white-label projects for prestigious brands from the region and beyond. This is a unique opportunity for a designer who is passionate about digital-first design, understands the luxury publishing market, and is adept at creating elevated user-friendly experiences that drive user loyalty and engagement. You will work closely with developers to bring your design vision to life, manage a junior designer to help you execute projects quickly, and act as the key point of contact for all digital visual assets across the Luxury Group's titles. You will be keenly interested in how aesthetics and functionality can drive digital performance and have some skills in animation/motion, plus an interest in the application of new technology and generative AI tools like Midjourney.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Collaborative UX/UI Design: Work hand-in-hand with developers to implement frontend design and UX/UI fixes, prioritizing changes based on data from paywall, GA4, and heatmap insights, ensuring that best practices are applied to improve user experience and functionality.
2. New Digital Products: Lead the design and frontend development of new websites and digital destinations (including apps, experiences, newsletters, and social activations), incorporating innovative features and functionality to ensure output is visually compelling and aligned with brand goals.
3. Subscriber Optimisation: Oversee ongoing research, testing, and redesign of the visual aesthetic for our subscriber products, as well as improve the digital journey and funnel activity based on insights and best-in-class design trends.
4. Paid and Organic Digital Assets: Overhaul and create a comprehensive suite of paid and organic digital assets to support social media growth, drive traffic to the website, and contribute to an always-on visual strategy for long-term engagement.
5. Co-Branded & White-Label Projects: Contribute to high-profile ad hoc design projects for co-branded and white-label initiatives as and when required.
6. Brand & Visual Consistency: Ensure that all digital assets maintain a high level of visual quality consistent with the luxurious nature of our editorial brands and are aligned with brand guidelines across all platforms.
7. Team Management: Manage and mentor a junior designer, offering guidance and constructive feedback, ensuring that the team consistently delivers high-quality designs while meeting deadlines.
8. Cross-Department Collaboration: Be an evangelist for all things digital design and product development in the business, including collaborating with development teams, SEO and data analytics, editors, content teams, clients, and senior leadership.

Qualifications:

1. Minimum of 4-5 years of digital design experience, ideally in a publishing environment or within a creative agency.
2. Strong background working on or with content-rich sites with extensive archives and complex creative considerations.
3. Skilled in user-centered design with a solid understanding of UX/UI principles, responsive design, and web accessibility.
4. Basic skills in animation and motion graphics with the ability to make engaging assets using dynamic digital movement.
5. Proficiency with wireframing, prototyping, and frontend design best practices.
6. Advanced proficiency in design tools such as Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, XD), Sketch, Figma, or similar. Knowledge of HTML/CSS or familiarity with web development processes is a huge plus.
7. Interest and experience in generative AI for design and increased efficiency for design teams.
8. A keen eye for creating high-end visual design with the ability to balance aesthetics with functional user-friendly design.
9. Experience in managing or mentoring junior designers.
10. Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, working across complex environments including staging, dev, and live sites plus tools including Slack, Jira, GitHub, and Trello.