Director, Core Studio Color Design
Nike · Beaverton
NIKE, Inc. does more than outfit the world’s best athletes. It is a place to explore potential, obliterate boundaries and push out the edges of what can be. The company looks for people who can grow, think, dream and create. Its culture thrives by embracing diversity and rewarding imagination. The brand seeks achievers, leaders and visionaries. At Nike, it’s about each person bringing skills and passion to a challenging and constantly evolving game.
WHO YOU’LL WORK WITH
Your key design partners will include: Sr Footwear Design Director, Core and the Design Director, Core Footwear Materials design. Key cross-functional partners include: Business Product Directors and Business VP Leaders; Dimensional Merchandising leaders; Development Directors; Design and Product Operation Directors and Managers. This role will lead and manage a team of designer at a variety of levels
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
We’re looking for a Director of Color Design to combine their experience, versatility, problem solving abilities, and creativity to help lead the future of Core Footwear. The ideal candidate needs to elevate the Core Footwear product experience with a focus on both the art & science of Color. In this role, you will drive an emotional connection to footwear through the use of narrative and storytelling across performance, lifestyle and solar product.
You will use your design knowledge to create seasonal direction to align your functional team, and your cross functional business partners to consumer and trend relevant solves. You manage and mentor your team to success and work with the Senior Director to ensure product, color and materials are all telling a cohesive and compelling story through industry-leading product. You leverage your versatility and creativity to lead our color design team across the wide range of product in the sport performance and sport lifestyle footwear landscape. You will partner with innovation, materials development and our vendors to keep our product on the leading edge of performance and culture.
In this role, you will be accountable to build and define the future look of Core through color. You will be leading the Color Design team to implement and deliver a product color strategy that combines Nike innovation and athlete insights into a cohesive color vision across the Core consumer journey, while partnering with additional Color, Materials and Graphics team.
- Bachelor's Degree in Design or related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience, or training
- 10+ years of relevant working experience in color design
- 2 years in a management or leadership role preferred
- Ability to mentor staff, build opportunities for staff development, make hiring decisions, and drive performance management, recognition and rewards.
- Ability to build seasonal concepts, explore new color innovations, technologies and ideas, as well as short- and long-term vision.
- Ability to translate consumer knowledge/insights into narratives and product executions.
- Ability to plan and execute the product color details and review all samples, troubleshoot for achievability issues and clearly communicate changes in order to ensure timely completion of each project
- Strong communication and relationship leadership skills
- Strong knowledge of fashion, design, design and youth culture, current and past.
- Presentation/Communication style: Clear, Concise, and Thoughtful (strong verbal and written skills). Ability to present new insights or seasonal concepts to small and large groups, including presenting to executive leaders, and external partners or customers
- Passion for storytelling with the ability to translate narratives onto physical product
- Love of sport culture, curiosity for athlete insight and connection to street style trends
- Ability to conduct in-depth research on athlete insights in order to drive innovative design solutions
- Creates and delivers powerful presentations of seasonal design proposals that effectively communicate the concept behind the line for internal and external audiences
- Shows ability to self-manage and lead a team through change and ambiguity.
- Highly proficient in Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop) and Keynote on a Mac Platform
- A positive mentality with proven ability to flex and adapt to changing business needs while maintaining creative quality.
- A passion for the Athlete*, Sport* and Culture
WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON
As the Core Studio Color Design Director, You will work closely with the Sr. Design Director of Core Footwear and the Footwear Materials Design Director to set silo and seasonal direction for your team and oversee the success in how that comes to life for new creation model and seasonal expression footwear. You will closely collaborate with Innovation, Footwear Material and Product Design teams, to formulate new ideas with impact to our product, consumer and brand.
You will be responsible for providing color solutions that lead to product and marketing success, including trend research and selection of the seasonal color palette and its application on product. You will manage and provide input into succession planning and segmentation activities and be responsible for performance management, pay, and resourcing decisions for direct and indirect reports. This role will have direct ,and indirect reports.
You will:
- Lead the Color design direction and seasonal design strategy for Core Expression in conjunction with your Material Director counterpart and the Core Footwear Sr. Director.
- Build seasonal narratives and end-in mind ideas that are culturally and consumer relevant.
- Develop and deliver a strategic and relevant seasonal color palette that inspires, empowers drives the core material team to action
- Create compelling collections that integrate street fashion, art, culture, and sports.
- Partner closely with internal category design, merchandising, and brand teams to ensure consistency and authenticity.
- Drive cross category alignment between statement and core counterparts to ensure Nike's external appearance as a brand, and as categories, is cohesive.
- Partner in “Bluesky” and longer lead time development of opportunity spaces for texture, finish and graphic.
- Proactively identify new opportunities and translate them into consumer relevant design direction.
- Mentor and develop a high-performing team of designers and cross-functional collaborators.
We offer a number of accommodations to complete our interview process including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single location for in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications as needed. If you discover, as you navigate our application process, that you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please complete the Candidate Accommodation Request Form.