Deputy Design Director (Temporary)

The Los Angeles Times is seeking an ambitious, imaginative and collaborative deputy design director to join its award-winning creative department for six months. We’re looking for a creative leader with experience designing and art-directing across digital platforms for a variety of stories. We want weird ideas and big thoughts – and to make something that truly reflects the creativity of Los Angeles and the people who live here.

This person will design, art-direct, illustrate and oversee digital projects within our CMS, Graphene, as well as edit and mentor our team of art directors who work across print and digital. They will work closely with the creative director and senior deputy design directors to ensure we are following style guidelines and maintaining a high level of quality with our visual journalism. 

In order to excel at this position, you have to be as excited about workflow and process as you are about design and art direction.

Responsibilities:

• Design, illustrate and art-direct stories and packages for latimes.com and other digital platforms, like Instagram
• Work collaboratively with editors, reporters and department heads
• Present ideas to senior leadership, receive feedback and iterate 
• Create original quick turn and more involved illustrations for our stories 
• Work on everything from hard news and investigative stories to projects from our food and features teams
• Have the opportunity to design projects for our print products, including the newspaper, magazines and zines
• Assist with art-direction of photo shoots in fashion, style, still life and portraits
• Edit and mentor art directors on various projects
• Develop and maintain the style manual in conjunction with design directors
• Commission illustrators 
• Coordinate projects for both digital and print
• Bring people together across multiple disciplines (editing, photo, video, audio, etc.) to create cohesive experiences
• Continue to grow our database of illustrators and photographers, with a focus on finding L.A.-based contributors
• Lead meetings
• Create and maintain organizational documents
• Train and develop new hires, contractors and interns

Requirements:

• At least eight years of professional experience including digital editorial design, with prior management or equivalent leadership experience
• A portfolio of work that demonstrates excellence in illustrations, art directing, typography, and photo editing for a website with editorial content
• Strong multitasking, organizational and communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to lead long-term projects 
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
• Strong working knowledge of design software such as InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator
• Impeccable journalistic instincts and an unimpeachable commitment to ethics 
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to design for digital stories and social media
• Effective at working in a team environment
• Strong time-management skills

This full-time temporary position is expected to last six months. We will consider candidates who would work remotely as well as those based in our El Segundo, Calif., office. Occasional night and weekend work is possible.

Qualified candidates should submit a resume, cover letter and portfolio to Deputy Managing Editor and Creative Director Amy King and Senior Deputy Design Directors Jim Cooke and Faith Stafford at the apply link.