Creative Director, Story Telling & Formats

Package Description

Band: D

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: London.This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.

Salary: Up to £58,000 p.a. plus London Weighting, depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Job Application Requirements:

• CV
• Questionnaire with opportunity to detail experience

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits- We offer a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days holiday (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

Freelancers are eligible to apply for an internal role if they are on a Worker Contract and they have worked continuously for 6 months. If they have worked for less than 6 months continuously or have a break of 3 weeks or more between engagements, they must seek Divisional HR approval to apply for an internal role prior to submitting an application.

If they are unsure which contract they are on, they can speak to their booker or the HR BP, however if it helps - both a PAYE freelance or Modus Gross contract is considered a Worker contract and covered by the Worker terms found here.

Job Introduction

The News Design team is a multi-platform, multidisciplinary team within BBC News.

We are responsible for the design and visualisation of a story end to end, across all platforms from our website and app to our flagship news broadcasts and social accounts. The team brings together digital designers, broadcast designers, and developers to provide compelling visual coverage of the biggest and most significant stories.

As our Creative Director - Storytelling & formats, you will report to our Design Director and will be responsible for concepting and creating best in class scalable editorial storytelling experiences and cross platform visual journalism. You will direct a team responsible for our early stage editorial design system, and will drive our component driven storytelling strategy.

Your role will encompass both hands on product design and leadership, together with mentoring a small team of designers to implement and iterate on our design system at the heart of our push for storytelling at scale and speed.

Portfolio or show-reel (and password link) needs to accompany the application.

Main Responsibilities

Leadership and Collaboration:

• Provide hands-on leadership to the design team, driving the strategic direction of design initiatives in alignment with the company's goals.
• Ability to inspire high design confidence in stakeholders, excellent at creating a compelling narrative to land a concept with C-suite stakeholders.
• Oversee and guide the end-to-end design process, from ideation to execution, ensuring a consistent and high-quality user experience across digital platforms.
• Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation, emphasising the importance of design in enhancing the user's experience with news content.
• Highly experienced with design reviews and providing constructive feedback to ensure innovation and bravery in storytelling design.
• Provide design insights and recommendations to inform roadmaps and strategic decision-making.

Team Management and Development:

• Manage and mentor a team of product designers, providing guidance, feedback, and opportunities for professional growth.
• Foster a collaborative and innovative team culture, attracting top design talent and ensuring the team's skills align with industry trends.

Design System Development with a Storytelling Focus:

• Lead the development and evolution of a comprehensive design system that ensures consistency, efficiency, and scalability across digital platforms.
• Implement and maintain design best practices, ensuring the design system facilitates a seamless and compelling user experience.
• Fluent in responsive design and a systems thinker adept at problem-solving at a macro and micro scale across multiple problem spaces.
• Collaborates with stakeholders effectively to gather requirements and feedback, aligning system choices with our cross-platform storytelling goals.
• Excellent experience in cross platform branding and product design. Very strong visual design skills, enabling the delivery of new concepts that elevate brand expression.
• Understands the big picture, but also when to focus on the details, and deliver accurate considered solutions for the user.
• Act as a custodian of consistent design and the build once, use everywhere narrative.

User-Centric Design:

• Advocate for a user-centric design approach, leveraging user research and data to inform design decisions and ensure that the user's needs and preferences are prioritised.
• Conduct usability testing and gather user feedback to continuously iterate and enhance the design of news-related digital experiences and the editorial design system.

Innovation and Emerging Technologies:

• Stay abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and design innovations, and incorporate relevant advancements into the design process.
• Encourage the exploration of new design concepts and technologies that can elevate the company's digital products.

Are you the right person?

• Experience in Digital design, HCI, or a related field.
• Experience in UX/UI design and design system development ideally with a strong editorial focus.
• Proven track record of successful product design in the digital media or news industry.
• Very strong portfolio showcasing a range of digital products and features, with an emphasis on news-related content.
• Proficiency in design tools (e.g. Figma, Sketch, Storybook).
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions and strategies to cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
• Passion for news media and a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of digital journalism.
• Finely tuned problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is a big plus.
• Good knowledge of accessibility and usability principles.

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.