Senior Designer, Workman Publishing, Children's at Hachette Book Group in New York, New York

Job description

• Workman Publishing’s children’s department is seeking a creative and collaborative Senior Designer to join our dynamic team. This role will focus on developing innovative trade books for children across a wide range of formats—including board books, novelty, middle grade, graphic novels, activity books, and workbooks.
• As Senior Designer, you’ll play a critical role in shaping our list by creating standout designs for both original IP and brand extensions of beloved backlist titles. You will partner closely with editors, art directors, illustrators, and production teams to bring high-quality, visually engaging books to market.
• Join us at Workman Kids, where we’re growing our list with bold ideas, smart design, and a commitment to innovation that honors our Workman roots. If you’re excited by the opportunity to design books that spark imagination and curiosity in young readers, we’d love to hear from you.

Responsibilities

• Design innovative, eye-catching covers
• Ideate and develop full interior layouts for new projects in any format
• Develop brands and logo designs
• Partner with the design staff, editors, and publisher to manage multiple book projects from start to finish
• Researches and oversees freelance illustrators and designers
• Prepare cover mechanicals, from initial layout to final production (working with production mangers on materials and setup; prepress, color correction, and file setup; reviewing, correcting, and approving proofs; and providing final files for print)
• Prepare galley covers, following a similar process
• Work with colleagues in the marketing department to create original promotional materials, including social media assets
• Open to mentoring junior staff

Requirements

• At least 5-7 years of design experience, primarily focused in book publishing
• A strong portfolio demonstrating an eye for design, typography, and color, as well as sharp conceptual thinking and visual storytelling
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate on creative projects, present work, and discuss feedback in group settings
• Able to take direction from written or spoken ideas and convert them seamlessly into high-design book interior layouts
• Adept at problem-solving when a book needs some extra TLC
• Experience in developing and designing series branding
• Creativity, originality, willingness to experiment, learn, grow and share knowledge with the design and editorial teams
• Understanding of the commercial market and design trends, branded series and commercial book covers
• Proficiency in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat
• Experience with prepress production, preparing files for 4-color printing using a PDF workflow
• Strong knowledge of typography including paragraph, character, object, and GREP styles; parent pages highly desired
• Professional experience designing and laying out long-form book interiors is required
• Knowledge of book structural elements and proofreading marks.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail
• Ability to work quickly and independently to meet deadlines

Skills

Required

• Adept at problem-solving

Benefits

• The compensation for this position is $65,000-$75,000. Salary can vary based on a number of factors including skills, experience, and location — talk with your recruiter to learn more. There may be times that you will be required (or requested) to work overtime due to the nature of your role or exceptional workload issues or special projects.