Senior Designer, PLAY

PLAY is USA TODAY's emerging unified platform for casual entertainment, featuring puzzles, games, horoscopes, comics, quizzes, and interactive experiences. It's a daily destination for audiences seeking smart, engaging leisure downtime. As the brand grows across digital platforms, the designer position will be essential in defining how users discover PLAY, engage with it, and form meaningful connections to the USA TODAY PLAY brand.

Job Summary

We are seeking a passionate senior designer to serve as the lead visual storyteller for our brand, PLAY. In this role, you'll transform ideas into bold, high-impact creative that sparks curiosity and connection. You'll define how PLAY appears across every touchpoint, crafting immersive visuals guided by our brand style guide to elevate features, highlight new game launches, and celebrate leisure as a daily essential. Your work will shape first impressions, drive lasting engagement, and keep PLAY fresh, modern, and instantly recognizable.

All applicants must have a portfolio linked in their resume or provided at the time of application to be considered

This position reports to the Creative Director of the Creative Studio under the Consumer Marketing Division.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of multichannel creative across onsite experiences, app, social, email, and digital campaigns to introduce and reinforce PLAY's brand identity.
• Create compelling visuals that bring PLAY's brand, features, and value to life through clear, distinctive concepts that align with the brief.
• Collaborate closely with Creative Directors, Art Directors, Motion Designers, Copywriters, Product, and Consumer Marketing partners to align vision, consistency, execution, and the end-to-end user journey.
• Translate audience insights into creative strategy, using performance data to refine work and drive engagement, retention, and user growth.
• Adapt creative to support feature launches, new games, and tentpole initiatives, keeping PLAY fresh, relevant, and competitive.
• Guide the evolution of PLAY's visual system as the product grows, incorporating feedback from users and cross-functional partners.
• Establish and maintain high standards of craft and brand integrity, championing a cohesive visual language and clear storytelling across every touchpoint.

Qualifications

• An exceptional portfolio showcasing work across various platforms. All applicants must have a portfolio to be considered.
• Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design or equivalent education or experience in a related field.
• At least 5+ years of experience as a designer in an agency or in-house team.
• Extensive knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite - Photoshop and Illustrator is a must, Adobe After Effects and Figma are a plus.
• Experience designing for motion and animation, especially storyboarding for video and animated brand campaigns, is strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office including Outlook, Teams, and Power Point, Asana, and Keynote is a plus.
• Illustration skills are preferred but not mandatory.
• A positive attitude and the ability to reframe challenges and feedback as opportunities and pivot accordingly.
• Impeccable attention to design detail, ability to multi-task, and execute jobs on time in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience supporting consumer-facing digital products or entertainment brands preferred.
• Good oral and written communication skills.
• All-around team player with experience collaborating with product, marketing and other cross-functional teams.

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The annualized base salary for this role will range between $85,000 and $95,000. Base compensation is reflective of many factors, including, but not limited to, the market in which one lives/works, individual education level, skills, certifications and experience. Note: variable compensation is not reflected in these figures and based on the role, may be applicable.

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