Creative Design Manager

Company Description

Kaplan Language Group (KLG) is a leading business in the language travel industry, providing high quality, language-travel programs across the world. The group consists of some of the biggest names in educational language tourism: Alpadia Language Schools, ESL Languages, and Kaplan International Languages.

With more than 130 combined years of experience and thousands of happy and satisfied alumni, KLG offers a wide range of language and cultural programs in more than 100 countries across the world, allowing students to embark on a unique, life-changing journey specifically tailored to their needs and goals. As one of the largest providers in the sector and as part of Kaplan Inc, a large US-listed business, the Kaplan Languages Group is ideally placed to meet the high demand from students now wishing to travel abroad and get back into the classroom to build their language skills.

**Job Description**:
**Job Purpose**

The Creative Design Manager is a critical role within a graphic design team focussed on ensuring KLG’s products, campaigns and marketing materials are designed to a high quality. Initially the role will be focussed on managing a team of two designers with focus on one brand in the KLG portfolio, with the aim to innovate new designs, standardising our current processes with the other two brands, and deliver graphic design requests coming from marketing, products, and other business units. We have ambitious plans to deliver on our vision of the KLG group and the role may evolve to a more senior level as brand guardian for the creative direction of our three brands portfolio.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- Effectively manage all design led projects across the business.
- Develop the design team both creatively and professionally to ensure they have clear objectives.
- Overseeing the production of artwork including campaign visuals, print collateral, and broader marketing material.
- Innovate and design new marketing materials to enhance our products.
- Maintain accuracy and attention to detail throughout the creative process.
- Understand the customers across different markets and brands and produce graphic assets which are highly effective at engaging audiences.
- Working with the product/schools/marketing departments to ensure assets are produced to a high-standard.
- Highly-organised to ensure assets are produced respecting deadlines.
- Strong leadership leading the creative vision for the brand(s), inspiring the team with exciting creative ideas.

**Qualifications**:
**Experience / required skills**:

- Graphic design: 5 years (preferred).
- Able to work well as part of a team.
- Proven record of successfully managing projects and a team.
- An outstanding design portfolio demonstrating all types of graphic design, preferably working for an agency.
- Expert use of Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.
- Experienced with using SharePoint, Trello, and Canva.
- Extensive knowledge of relevant graphic and print processes.
- Outstanding sense of design with a strong eye for layout and appreciation of brand guidelines.
- Strong project management skills and an ability to prioritise workload effectively to ensure all deadlines are met.
- Multi-tasker that can respond to changes quickly.
- Proven ability to enhance and elevate existing designs and processes.
- Strong skills in managing internal and external stakeholders.
- Motivated to challenges the way things are currently done.
- Keen interest in the latest Internet trends & technologies.

**Language skills**
- English: full professional proficiency (spoken & written)
- Italian, French, German are a plus.

***Other**
- Excellent written & verbal communication skills.

Additional Information
**What we offer you**
- The opportunity to develop your skills in an international environment, in the exciting field of language travel
- A young and dynamic work atmosphere
- An environment where corporate ethics and sustainable development matter
- Competitive benefit package
- Ticket Restaurants
- Free breakfast on Mondays and fresh fruit on Thursday
- Language courses abroad
- Free coffee and tea
- Discounts with medical insurance

**Contract**: Permanent Contract

**Activity rate**: 100%

**Start date**: ASAP

**Place of work**: Barcelona (SPAIN)

**Reference**: Marketing