Manager, Post-Production - West Elm

About the Role 

The scope of the Manager, Post-Production position requires proficiency in the following areas: color and printing, brand management, production, data asset management, people management and budgeting.

The Manager, Post-Production role involves close collaboration with the Brand/Lifestyle Photo Teams, Digital Studio Team, Asset Production Team, and Data Asset Management Team to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and maintain consistency in a high-quality image production environment. You will ensure that the images on the website and in print reproductions are of the highest color quality and accurately represent the products consistently. You will direct teams, projects, and assets to support these goals.

Responsibilities 

• People & Projects
  • Creative manager for three creative post-production teams:
    • Color re-touchers (brand, digital studio, freelancers, and outside vendors)
    • DAM asset librarian
    • Asset Coordinator
  • Allocate projects to individual team members and outside vendors to ensure quality reproduction, to meet project deadlines, and stay within budget.
  • Negotiate costs, maintain relationships, and manage contracts with outside vendors.
  • Update and distribute photo submission guidelines seasonally to DTs to ensure files received meet image quality and naming standards.
  • Foster a collaborative and high-performance culture, building strong relationships with cross-functional teams, and provide training and support to maximize all team efforts.
• Technology and Innovation 
  • Develop, evolve, and implement workflow optimizations for efficiency to reduce turnaround times and improve creative execution.
  • Direct the color process, requiring a creative eye and clear communication with production teams to meet high-quality brand standards.
  • Collaborate with outside vendor to develop and implement necessary upgrades to our color viewing software.
  • Direct the DAM team to drive automation and improvements in process and system integrations, metadata management, version and permissions control to enhance image searchability and accessibility within the Digital Asset Management system.
  • Collaborate with IT and stakeholders to streamline and automate workflows, integrate tech platforms and improve data integrity and speed in asset delivery.
• Color Expert
  • Own the color process for large volume of brand and digital studio assets (about 25k/year).
  • Conduct visual assessments of color with product samples, requiring excellent color acuity.
  • Review assets from several teams to ensure color accuracy and consistency from image to image; mark up all rounds of color and approve all assets.
  • Manage team of 3 in-house retouchers, 1-3 freelance retouchers, and 1-3 outside vendors.
  • Work closely with art directors to execute their vision in lifestyle brand shoots.
  • Collaborate closely with photo and production teams to determine necessary clone work.
  • Maintain constant communication with asset, production, and merchant teams to ensure awareness and execution of additional or late changes.
  • Strong ability to create and follow schedules and meet deadlines.
  • Markup color proofs and manage printing of catalogs and any additional collateral produced by creative services teams.
  • Create and maintain libraries of assets for backgrounds and cloning options.
  • Research and implement new color technologies; stay current with industry advancements.
• Budget
  • Create, monitor, and manage budgets for retouching projects - including color correction/pathing expenses, and software costs.
  • Coordinate with production teams to determine any changes that will affect costs.
  • Work with finance partners on month-end close.
• YOU:
  • Pride yourself on the quality of your work and are a stickler for the details.
  • Love inspiring customers with beautiful and color-accurate photography.
  • Have excellent communication and collaboration skills.
  • Have experience working cross-functionally with creative, production, and technical teams.