Communications Designer

John Lewis Plc; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 36,000 - 55,000; Part time

Job summary

A renowned retail partnership is seeking a Communications Designer to create innovative and engaging visual communications. In this part-time position, you will play a key role in developing communications strategies while collaborating with various teams. The role offers a competitive salary and the flexibility of hybrid working, making it ideal for candidates with a strong background in design and effective communications skills.

Qualifications

• Proven experience with creating effective visual communications.
• Ability to manage and deliver multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience in design/communications, either agency or in-house.

Responsibilities

• Create effective, innovative visual communications.
• Develop and deliver the ongoing communications strategy.
• Work collaboratively with partners in various teams.

Skills

Effective people engagement through visual communications

Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator)

Detail orientation

Excellent communication skills

Education

Degree or equivalent in Art and Design

Tools

Adobe Premiere Pro

Job description

Overview

As a Communications Designer within the Content Hub, your role is to create effective, innovative, and engaging visual communications. In doing so, you will help to tell the Partnership's stories, joining the dots so that our Partners don't have to. The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office in Bracknell and London, and home based upon your personal needs while balancing the needs of the business. The team attends the office once every fortnight as a minimum to connect and attend key meetings on a more ad‑hoc basis.

Responsibilities

• Act in accordance with the Partnership's purpose, behaviors, and democratic principles, constructively participating in co‑ownership, and demonstrating to customers and each other that it is a better way of doing business. Share your knowledge, experiences, ideas and opinions to improve the Partnership, speaking honestly and frequently.
• Communications and engagement strategy – play your part in delivering and developing the ongoing agreed communications and engagement strategy.
• Collaboration – embrace team working to support your team‑mates with workload, ideas and well‑being whenever possible and work with other communication teams and the Content Hub to ensure alignment of message and activity.
• Culture – help create the conditions for all Partners to thrive and consistently make their best contribution.
• Work in a matrix team of Partners from across communications and in other business areas – acting in accordance with the Partnership behaviors.
• Actively share your skills and experience to broaden thinking and upskill technically.
• Development – invest in your personal and professional development to achieve your potential, by doing more, doing better, or doing different.
• Listening and influencing – ensure you connect with key stakeholders and Partners so you can create, inform or influence the best outcomes to deliver our engagement strategy.
• Planning – contribute to our Jira planning tool and regularly review to ensure the activity happens at the right time.
• Feedback and measurement – ensure feedback is used to continuously improve your work and demonstrate to stakeholders that objectives are being met.
• Creativity – ensure you draw from internal and external innovation to ensure our approach is not static and continues to excite our audiences.
• Partnership knowledge – ensure you have a solid understanding of the Partnership Plan, performance against plan and the narrative and you understand and share back with the team the priorities and challenges of the business areas you support.
• Communication/engagement/technical innovations – use and build your internal and external networks, online and elsewhere, to keep abreast of the latest communication and engagement advancements, including technology, and feed these into the strategic thinking of the team.
• Work collaboratively with Partners in the Content Hub and the Strategic Communications team across a number of projects at the same time. Be used to working to tight deadlines and prioritise your work effectively.
• Apply an audience‑first approach to planning and design of your communications. Ensure accessibility to all by applying up‑to‑date accessibility standards to all of your work. Bring specialised graphic design experience and provide innovative ideas to engage our Partners in what’s happening in their business.

Qualifications and Skills

• You will have proven experience of these key skills, outcomes and deliverables.
• Effective people engagement through professional visual communications and graphic design, ensuring engagement is appropriate to the audience, content and business priority.
• Provide the visual look and styling of key strategic pieces where strong visual communications and specialised graphic design is required.
• Create a variety of materials for all audiences and channels; such as infographics, illustrations, branding, posters, leaflets, animated GIFs etc.
• Develop creative ideas and concepts that uphold the JLP Brand Guidelines, choosing the appropriate medium and style to meet the outcomes and objectives.
• Generate ideas, alternatives, or possibilities to solve problems and leverage opportunities.
• Excellent working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite – especially InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Explores possibilities and acts on instinct to generate well‑formed concepts, theories and ideas, and understands how these contribute to business objectives.
• Influencing decisions and stakeholders – work collaboratively through active listening and assertive communication to reach win‑win outcomes.
• Adapt style to influence stakeholders and keep Partnership interest as the forefront of decision making.
• Detail orientation – pay close attention to all the small particulars when working on a task or project by focusing closely on each project, constantly finding ways to finish tasks efficiently.
• Excellent communications skills – ability to understand, digest and present ideas and concepts to a variety of stakeholders.
• Ability to take often complex information and help communicate it in an engaging and accessible way.
• Highly proficient in the use of design software (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) – need demonstrable visual design skills and a strong portfolio.
• Degree or equivalent in Art and Design.
• Ability to manage and deliver multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience of working collaboratively with a multi‑disciplined team.
• Experience in design/communications, either agency or in‑house.
• Understanding of people engagement principles.
• Basic understanding and use of Adobe Premiere Pro.

Salary and Hours

• Salary: £36,500.00 – £54,800.00 FTE per annum, based on skills and experience. This is a part‑time position; therefore the salary will be pro‑rata.
• Contract type: 12‑month secondment/fixed‑term opportunity.
• Hours and location: 17.5 hours per week. Preferred working pattern: Monday full day, Tuesday full day, Wednesday AM half day. Flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter contracts are supported where possible.
• Night premium: any time worked between 22:00 – 06:00 attracts a premium at £4.50 per hour. This also applies to existing Partners who have enrolled onto Enhanced Hours Premium arrangements.