The Emancipator is seeking a Creative Director to develop and lead the visual experience of The Emancipator.  

About The Emancipator.

The Emancipator is a forthcoming digital publication that will reimagine the first abolitionist newspapers in the United States for a new day. Just as 19th-century anti-slavery publications reframed and amplified the quest for abolition, the new Emancipator centers critical voices, debates, and evidence-based opinion to reframe the national conversation on racial equity and hasten racially just outcomes. We are driven by a commitment to understanding how systems work to allow everyone to live and thrive. Joy and possibility underlie our ethos. 

About You. 

The Emancipator is looking for a driven, flexible collaborator to serve as a visual thought leader for the editorial and product development teams. You’re a highly motivated, innovative thinker who will develop branding and visual strategies for news, social media, product design, and community convenings. 

You will build and lead a team of experienced designers, data visualization specialists, and developers whose mission is to develop thoughtful and impactful storytelling, and to drive engagement through a powerful and memorable user experience. The ideal candidate has strong attention to detail and love of cutting edge typography, design, illustration and photography.  You have experience distilling and illustrating complex issues and themes. Must have the ability to work with experienced professionals and emerging practitioners, including students and freelancers. 

This is a unique opportunity to develop a new digital property’s brand identity from the ground up, bringing big ideas to life cohesively across platforms — from the digital world to IRL. You’ll be central to creating the kind of inclusive, joyful, can-do culture that symbolizes the mission of this startup. You are not creating for the moment; you are creating for the future. 

The Creative Director reports to the two co-editors in chief.  Our team is based in Boston but we are open to discussing a remote or hybrid schedule. This is a full-time position. 

Responsibilities:

• You will produce a significant amount of your own work, as well as manage and build a team, acting as a strategist, teacher, and maker to create experiences that inform, surprise, engage, and delight users. 
• Define and maintain a strong clear brand across all digital products, from desktop to mobile and beyond.
• Develop storyboards, wireframes, and functional prototypes to effectively communicate and validate design vision and user interaction specs.
• Drive the development and communication of design guidelines, patterns, and libraries.
• Design iteratively in step with a fast-moving, lean product process, conceptualizing and refining ideas with a close eye to trends in user data.
• Identify and continuously track appropriate metrics for measuring and gauging success of UX.
• Dictate hierarchy, consumer journey, and navigation through high-quality information architecture, providing a clear, consistent voice on end-to-end user experience to project teams and stakeholders.
• Effectively communicate research findings, conceptual ideas and detailed design rationale, both verbally and visually.
• Develop conceptual use cases, user flows, diagrams and working prototypes by considering market analysis, customer feedback, site metrics, and usability findings.
• Work closely with product managers to convert spec documents into concrete designs, and with front-end engineers to convert designs into clean front-end code.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience in web design, with a strong emphasis on user experience and usability.
• BA or BS with a design-related focus (Graphic Design, Journalism, Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, etc) preferred.
• Proven track record of creative design and strategy that anticipate market trends, meet user needs, product requirements, and business goals (both short- and long-term).
• Strong portfolio reflecting successful user-centered design practices in product development.
• Expert in the principles and practices of user centered design, responsive design and Information Architecture across both wired and mobile platforms.
• Ability to articulate the reasons for success or failure of past design.
• Fluent in the design process and the creation/use of storyboards, UI flows, wireframes, personas and functional prototypes to effectively brainstorm, communicate and validate design vision, leading to the creation of a compelling User Experience.
• Creative thinker, capable of thinking “out of the box” to create innovative products.
• Experience in a startup or entrepreneurial venture highly valued; must be a true self-starter with a propensity for execution.
• A highly organized individual, with close attention to detail.
• Extensive experience with Adobe Creative Suite and design and prototyping tools such as Visio, OmniGraffle, Keynote, Axure, Balsamiq, and Fireworks as they relate to documenting IA, interactions flows and high-fidelity screen level design.
• Basic experience with web technology such as HTML 5, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap.
• Comfortable with an iterative design process that includes accepting and managing feedback and constructive criticism.
• Familiarity with web analytics and related user research tools such as Google Analytics, Usertesting.com, etc.
• A willingness to adapt and be audience focused, with a curious mindset and a commitment to creating an inclusive work environment 

EEO Statement: Boston Globe Media Partners LLC is an equal employment opportunity employer, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, disability, national origin, citizenship or any other protected characteristic. 

Please apply at https://bostonglobemediapartners.applytojob.com/apply/SFwy1MdBlX/Creative-Director-The-Emancipator