Head of Artist Design – Amazon Music, Santa Monica, CA
DESCRIPTION
Amazon Music is looking for a talented and passionate Head of Artist Design to play a vital role in shaping the future of music through 360 campaigns for artists -- ones that encompass digital, fashion, retail, merchandise, and architectural design -- and consistently the Amazon Music experience to new heights, in service of artists and their fans.
Our ideal candidate has the ability to delight customers with their thoughtful conceptual design work and their ability to inspire, motivate, and lead diverse, multi-faceted design teams - by solving artists and customers' needs and creating vehicles where creativity and music culture come to life.
You must be a critical, inventive thinker with clear design chops, digital and product design, but also fashion-and architectural design expertise, and an excitement for pushing the emotional and cultural relevance of one of the world’s marquee brands, all in the service of music and the epic artists and fans behind it. Being a big music fan or an aspiring design entrepreneur is a big plus, as is being interested in how you can push design with data and hit new levels of impact and delight.
Responsibilities
· Set artist (including digital, fashion, merchandise, and physical space) design visions in collaboration with a cross-functional team of Artist & Label Management, Editorial, Programming, Marketing, and Engineering teams.
· Create frameworks for how fans and artists think about digital, fashion, physical products, and architecture in broader music cultures and in the end-to-end Amazon Music experience.
· Do hands-on designs, prototypes, and experiments to drive exploration of what fans and customers most love about music, other digital content, fashion, merch, spaces, and more.
· Hire Art Directors, Designers, Producers, freelancers, and agencies to execute on strategies and projects from the start and more as the team grows.
· Lead large, strategic design projects that present multidisciplinary challenges and span multiple departments.
· Be a key voice in defining the evolving Amazon Music brand and its role in music culture.
· Identify ways to enable the team to scale, experiment, and diversify their approach to thinking about fashion, merchandise, and physical experiences – through mechanisms like guidelines, ethos, tools, templates, processes, and even machine learning and the like.
· Stay current on emerging design trends, fashion design guidelines and behavioral research, music innovations, and broader inspirations and innovations – and proactively identify opportunities to incorporate best current thinking into designs, strategies, and projects.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
· 7-10+ years’ experience as an ECD, Design Director, Principal Product Designer or related role.
· Strong online portfolio and specific results in fashion or physical (especially connected to entertainment categories) design work.
· Experience leading diverse design teams through fast-paced, conceptual, strategic design work.
· Experience designing within a large, diverse global brand.
· Passion for creating inventive designs that elevate existing brands and experiences.
· Passion for design thinking and the strategic, business impact of design.
· Excellent communication and organizational skills.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
· Deep passion for defining the future of music.
· Experience working with musicians, entertainers, artist and label management, and other creative professionals.
· Passion for fashion, industrial design, architecture, and emerging opportunities that blend all of these types of design.
· Experience driving strategic design for consumer and media brands and tech-driven innovations for those brands.
· Experience with scaling conceptual design direction in a globally distributed organization.
· Masters in Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Cognitive Psychology, Graphic Design, Fine Arts, Communications, Animation & Motion Design, Visual Journalism, or related field.
· Self-starter with the passion, ability, and energy to work in a fast-paced start-up environment.
· An inclination to prototype and experiment.