Visual Architect (Senior designer)
- brightsolid online publishing
- Reporting to brightsolid's Head of Product Design & Development
Overview
brightsolid is looking for an senior design professional to set the visual design vision across brightsolid Publishing and its portfolio of digital businesses, which include Genes Reunited, Friends Reunited and Find My Past in multiple territories. Our businesses deliver digital services to millions of mainstream consumers that centre on family history and memories. The majority of our revenues are generated directly from consumers, by providing them with paid services or selling them data packages.We aim to offer consumers highly useable and engaging access to a mass of digitised material via the application of sophisticated search technologies, elegantly packaged products and really useful online research tools.
This is an exciting and fast-changing market in which fabulous design is pivotal to the development of successful products. This new role is expected to develop and nurture world-beating visual design standards in everything we do. It requires expert collaborative abilities and strong branding, user interface, interaction and complex information design skills. The successful candidate will have the experience and talent to shape products to meet the needs of diverse audiences — mass to specialist, young and old, in multiple territories.
The right person for this role could come from a wide range of backgrounds — digital agency, media publisher, searches business etc. They will have a wide range of skills, the ability to lead and influence by doing, a love of packaging products for diverse target audiences, high levels of commercial and editorial acumen and be very keen to develop products based on solid data and research, alongside good instincts.
Overall areas of responsibility include:
• Direction of the development of brand, packaging, UI and UX approaches and solutions for each of BSOP's businesses, in association with the Product Architect, Product Managers and Development teams, to meet the business requirements defined by the Product Heads.
• Visual direction and vision for the development of core central platforms in terms of UX, UI and arbitrating between brand and universal visual design and interaction solutions.
• Working with Product Designers within development teams to maintain visual design standards in terms of agreed quality and approach.
• Ensuring that brightsolid adopts the appropriate blend of established and emerging design techniques in order to engage mass audiences while remaining competitive and future proof
• Integration of mobile / multi device development into the "business as usual" process
• Establishing and maintaining appropriate visual design guidelines to be applied by visual and product designers across the business
• Create and maintain standards and methods for testing visual design solutions within appropriate customer markets
• Leveraging of a variety of user testing methodologies
and including the following skills:
• Team leadership and influencing – resource allocation / prioritisation
• Ability to consider cost / benefit (i.e. know when to try something quickly and when to finesse)
• Written and oral skills at least as high level as their visual abilities
• Expert understanding of all digital production technologies and consumer behaviours
• Proficient in all relevant software tools for the job.