Design Lead

Job Description

Location : London, GB

Condé Nast is a global media company, home to iconic brands including Vogue, GQ, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair and Wired, among many others. Our award-winning content reaches 84 million consumers in print, 367 million in digital and 379 million across social platforms, and generates more than 1 billion video views each month.

We are headquartered in London and New York, and operate in 31 markets worldwide, including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico & Latin America, Spain, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S., with local licence partners across the globe.

Our mission is to empower our brands for business and creative success by creating the next-generation suite of content publishing and consumption experiences. We are a group of designers, product managers, engineers, strategists, and researchers dedicated to building innovative, user-centric products.

The Role

Our digital products play a critical role in Vogue’s future. Bringing Vogue to life on digital platforms, in engaging, user-centric ways, which drive business value is key to Vogue’s continued success.

We are looking for a Product Design Lead, to help drive the design of our user experience and manage our international design team, across Vogue’s global portfolio of digital products.

The Product Design Lead is responsible for bringing to life industry leading, global experiences, which put our users’ needs at their centre and elevate the excellence of our editorial, in order to deliver business value, through a focus on features and initiatives that drive engagement.

The Team

We are a team of experience designers with expertise in visual design, UX, interaction design, content design, and research. We partner closely with editorial, product management, engineering, and business partners to strategize, design, and launch effective and beautiful digital products. We believe that a well-formed design culture is essential to delivering excellent products.

What will you be doing?

Contributes to and guides the execution of, Design strategy

Supports the Senior Director, Product Design in contributing to product strategy and oversees day-to-day execution, collaborating with their cross functional partners to articulate a compelling vision for Vogue’s user experience across its portfolio of digital products

Translates strategies into easily digestible tasks for ICs, clearly communicating scope

Ensures the team is consistently considering what success looks like for the business, anchoring design approaches in the agreed-upon metrics for their work.

Designs with an Insights driven approach

Develops a rich understanding of our products and users, proactively seeks to learn more to better tailor what we design to their needs.

Works with the Senior Director to ensure an insights driven, user centred design process, partnering with the UX Research team, Product Analytics and Audience Development – along with product and engineering

Collaborates with research partners, to draw actionable insights to inform design direction, as well as assess the success of initiatives – and helps support, guide and direct team members in doing so Drives design quality, feature execution and system implementation / evolution

Establish and maintain high design standards, that balance technical feasibility with innovation and a strong eye for detail

Connects the dots across workstreams to ensure the quality and consistency of our product at scale.

Contributes to, and helps shape global design systems and applies them in robust and scalable ways

Establish frameworks, documentation, guidelines and best practices to ensure consistency and coherency in design output

Works to uplevel the skills and craft of their ICs, ensuring design solutions adhere to the standards of the brand and brief while keeping the user at the heart.. A leading voice in critiques, and a mentor to those around them in upleveling their craft.

Cultivate, mentor and manage through team and design leadership

Works with the Senior Director to establish a vision for the team that motivates and inspires, fostering a culture of innovation and creativity.

Helps estimate, plan and manage short-term work loads and informs longer term projects and resource planning, ensuring features and projects are delivered to these timelines.

Fosters an environment that promotes growth, development and design excellence across the team, where team members feel valued and recognised for their contributions

Helps provide ongoing skill building opportunities for team members through mentorship, coaching, workshops and peer to peer training, whilst identifying broader learning and development opportunities

Supports team members in their individual career growth, through identifying and pursuing professional development opportunities and providing opportunities for advancement.

Contribute to the broader tone and shape of our organizational design culture and our broader design strategy at Condé Nast

Foster relationships and collaboration with cross functional partners

Works with the Senior Director to foster relationships and team-wideunderstanding of all aspects that affect the end user experience - from editorial workflow, to consumer revenue, to commercial

Has a deep understanding, built through relationships with editorial, of editorial workflow and the impact of front end design decisions on it

Collaborates successfully with the cross functional team, leading by example with open communication and constructive feedback

Presents complex concepts clearly in verbal and written form. Capable of getting in the weeds with their team and also highlighting top-level takeaways to senior leadership.

Actively coaches the ICs on their team toward stronger communication in cross-functional settings

Champion the brand

Collaborate closely with key creative partners within the Vogue team, to create a cohesive, cross platform brand experience

Build and nurture partnerships with brand stakeholders, to represent the spirit of Vogue in our design outcomes

Ensure that design system and platform developments reflect the needs and standards of the brand.

Who you are :

Experience leading large, complex projects, spanning both UX and UI

Experience working with design systems and scalable approaches

Experience managing multiple stakeholders and working in cross functional teams - in close partnership with Product and Engineering

Proven skills as a self-starter who can manage projects in a fast-paced environment and remain focused amidst frequently changing requirements.

Keen interest in fashion and storytelling

It would be a bonus to have :

Experience working in media / publishing or with a content rich product

Experience working for fashion and / or beauty brands

Experience working on e-commerce products, particularly in the fashion and beauty sectors

Experience designing for subscription acquisition and retention, and membership user experiences

Experience working in matrixed organisations with distributed teams across multiple time zones

What benefits do we offer?

25 days holiday and extra days of annual leave for life events

Core hours

Competitive pension scheme

Bupa Private Healthcare

Enhanced maternity leave and family leave

Season ticket loans

Cycle to work scheme

Employee Assistance programme

Bring your dog to work

A wide variety of wellness benefits including gym discounts

Discounts and Magazine Subscriptions

Employee Resource Groups to provide a platform for employees to identify shared objectives, exchange ideas, and work on community priorities for our global workforce

Condé Nast Learning Hub where you’ll find all Condé Nast-developed learning courses and training, and over 16,000 courses in seven local languages