Location
London

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Up to £55,000 per annum

About the Role
At Immediate Media Co, we are home to some of the UK's most beloved consumer brands, including Radio Times, Good Food, Gardeners’ World and History Extra. Our trusted, quality content reaches millions monthly across digital, print, video, podcasts, apps and live events. We inspire audiences by deepening their knowledge, skills and passions to enjoy more of what life offers.

The Multimedia Design Director will lead the visual direction for Gardeners' World, bridging its celebrated legacy with a digital future. This role requires a craft-obsessed, systems-minded creative who can preserve the warmth, authority and distinctiveness of the brand while building frameworks, templates and guardrails to enable great design at scale.

You will oversee the brand’s presentation across all touchpoints — magazine, web, social, motion and beyond — establishing tools, asset libraries and a production culture to deliver consistent, high-quality design. A genuine love of gardening is essential to instinctively understand the audience and maintain brand authenticity.

Key responsibilities include:
- Visual Brand Guardianship: Own and evolve the Gardeners' World visual identity across print, digital, social, motion and experiential channels. Define and maintain the brand design system including typography, colour, iconography, grid and motion principles. Set and document design guardrails to ensure consistency and quality.
- Systems, Templates & Scalable Production: Build and manage libraries of templates, components and reusable assets in Figma, InDesign and After Effects to speed up turnaround without compromising quality. Champion intelligent reuse of the Gardeners' World archive and maintain well-organised, version-controlled asset infrastructure.
- Leading Print & Digital Design: Lead design for Gardeners' World Magazine and brand marketing collateral, collaborating closely with editorial teams. Direct visual output across digital platforms including website, newsletter and app, adapting design for audience segments such as Established Gardeners, New Gardeners and Hobbyists.
- Social & Audience Sensibility: Bring fluency in social media formats (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Apple News) to create native, social-first creative. Oversee motion graphics, animated social content and short-form video production. Collaborate with social and editorial teams on visual content calendars.
- Team Leadership & Creative Direction: Line manage a team of designers and motion artists, providing creative direction, mentoring and performance support. Brief and quality-control freelance designers and retouchers. Foster a culture of creative ambition, craft pride and brand coherence. Represent design in cross-disciplinary planning and contribute to wider creative strategy.

Experience
- Expert-level proficiency across the full Adobe Creative Suite, particularly InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects
- Strong working knowledge of Figma, including component libraries, design tokens and collaborative workflows
- Demonstrable experience leading design output across both print and digital channels
- Proven track record of building and maintaining design systems or brand guardianship frameworks
- Experience managing or mentoring junior designers and briefing freelancers
- Deep understanding of social media platforms and their distinct visual grammars
- Highly organised with a systematic approach to file management, asset libraries and production pipelines
- Excellent eye for typographic detail and image quality

About you
- A craft-obsessed, systems-minded creative with a genuine love of gardening or horticulture
- Strong leadership skills with the ability to inspire and develop a design team
- Natural collaborator who earns trust quickly, explains decisions clearly and confidently holds the line on quality and brand standards
- Passionate about maintaining brand warmth, authority and distinctiveness while innovating for digital growth

Qualifications
- Desirable: Experience working on a media brand with a strong heritage identity
- Familiarity with video editing tools such as Premiere Pro or similar
- Experience with Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems
- Understanding of accessibility standards in digital design
- Personal interest in gardening, horticulture or the natural world