Brand Design Lead

Overview

City Cast is looking for a Brand Design Lead to spearhead the visual identity across its expanding network of local media outlets. This role emphasizes maintaining brand consistency, crafting compelling revenue narratives, supporting marketing campaigns, and enabling sales efforts.

The individual will own City Cast’s internal and external design guidelines, partnering with Marketing, Revenue, Editorial, Membership, and local teams to ensure a cohesive and polished brand experience at every interaction.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and maintain City Cast’s visual brand standards nationally and locally, covering editorial, marketing, membership, events, and digital domains.
• Approve final designs for external and multi-market materials aligning with leadership brand guidelines.
• Balance consistent brand representation with the flexibility for local team nuances.
• Translate brand strategy into practical design systems, templates, and creative directions.
• Collaborate with leadership and contractors to evolve the visual identity alongside organizational growth.
• Design and update sales materials such as media kits, pitch decks, one-pagers, sponsorship collateral, GTM assets, case studies, and partner presentations.
• Enable sales teams with scalable, compelling materials to effectively communicate City Cast’s story to advertisers and sponsors.
• Partner with Revenue and Marketing to convert audience insights and campaign concepts into refined external assets.
• Lead marketing campaign design under guidance from the Chief Creative Officer and Marketing Director across channels including email, social media, web, events, and paid media, ensuring brand alignment.
• Create adaptable campaign toolkits usable by multiple local teams.
• Develop reusable templates, toolkits, and design systems that empower local teams to maintain brand quality independently.
• Manage the design request workflow, clarifying project details, and prioritizing deliverables with stakeholders.
• Oversee contractors and freelancers, defining scope, quality standards, and timely approvals.
• Balance competing priorities with quality and efficiency.

Qualifications

• Minimum 6 years professional design experience with expertise in brand systems, marketing design, sales collateral, media, publishing, or consumer-focused mission brands.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating visual storytelling, excellent typography, layout, brand consistency, and multi-channel execution.
• Experience preparing sales enablement tools like pitch decks, GTM collateral, media kits, and partner materials.
• Deep understanding of design’s role in supporting business objectives including audience growth, revenue generation, brand trust, and partnership narratives.
• Excellent communication skills to articulate design goals and offer clear feedback to non-design stakeholders and contractors.
• Proficiency in brand system management across diverse markets and formats.
• Ability to work rapidly without compromising clarity or consistency.
• Confidence acting as brand gatekeeper with a collaborative and solutions-driven approach.
• Experience managing workflows, design requests, templates, and asset libraries.
• Comfortable with tools including Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, and Google Slides.
• Good judgment and diplomacy to negotiate scope and timelines professionally.

Portfolio Submission

• Showcase brand system projects that demonstrate adapting a brand across various channels.
• Include samples of sales, pitch, GTM, media kits, campaigns, or partner-facing designs.
• Examples of multi-format executions such as digital, social, email, web, presentations, or event collateral.
• At least one project illustrating the transformation of a business or marketing objective into a visual system or campaign.

Preferred Background

• Experience in media, publishing, local journalism, audio, entertainment, or multi-market brands.
• Work with revenue, sponsorship, advertising teams, or B2B partnership design.
• Creation of executive-level Google Slides or pitch decks.
• Managing freelancers or external creative partners.
• Developing self-serve design systems and templates for non-design users.

Compensation & Benefits

This is a full-time remote position offering a competitive salary ranging from $95,000 to $110,000 annually, based on experience. The company offers comprehensive benefits and fosters an inclusive culture encouraging candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply.

About City Cast

City Cast is a network of daily local news podcasts supported by newsletters and websites, active in cities across the U.S. It delivers community-focused news uniquely suited to its audience. City Cast is an affiliate of Graham Holdings and committed to diversity and inclusion.