Vans: Head Designer, Color & Materials

Now that you’ve found the job description, what’s next?

Vans is the original brand rooted in the authentic lifestyle of skateboarding. We are driven by our mission to inspire and empower everyone to live “Off The Wall” – embracing the youthful spirit of freedom, non-conformity, and relentless progression. Yesterday’s “Off The Wall” moment is today’s new normal, and at Vans, we believe in constantly outdoing ourselves. Together with our communities across the globe, our vision is to push culture forward because we believe that the pursuit of progression never ends. We are constantly inspired by the future generation of positive catalysts within our community.  

So, before we get to the job details, take a minute to learn a little more about us – our values and our culture. If you can see yourself working side-by-side with a team of people who think and live “Off the Wall,” Vans just may be the place for you.

To learn more about our values and our culture, visit Vans Careers or www.vans.com.

What will you do?

A day in the life of a Head Designer, Color & Materials at Vans looks a little like this.

In this role, you are responsible for collaboratively building the creative direction stories with the design leadership team. From these stories you will create the seasonal color and material palettes for footwear and Apparel. Addtionally you will provide tools to help support the application of color and material on to footwear and apaprel designs. This requires a background or education in color and material understanding and experience in providing design assets that are completed to the highest standards. This role will be working with many different design teams which will require adaptability, organization and strong communication skills to be successful.

Let’s break down that day-in-the-life a bit more.

• Manage the timeline and development of the seasonal footwear and apparel/accessory color and material palettes.
• Contribute to the Vans Global Creative Vision.
• Utilizing the Creative Vision, Consumer Insights, trend services, and working with the Vans designers, assemble color and material direction and stories collaboratively.
• From the Creative Direction that is generated, build the seasonal color and material palette that will meet the needs of all footwear and apparel/accessory categories.
• Produce the seasonal color and material presentation for all key seasonal milestones.
• Create color and material application usage guides in collaboration with categories to adjust and/or include seasonal alignment across footwear and apparel.
• Ensure the communication of color and materials throughout Vans by creating and distributing palettes, providing supporting materials (color and material swatch rings and presentations) and passing additional color and material information to both product management and development when needed.
• Responsible to work closely with other category design leads to cross pollinate ideas and maintain seasonal design direction.
• Support visual consistency in all product areas by maintain the palettes throughout the season.
• Organize and manage the color and material library in conjunction with material development team.
• Responsible for the creation of visual tools used in presentations for in-line reviews, product line meetings, and potentially pre-line internal and external meetings.
• Researches industry and trade shows for new ideas, insights and design trends.
• Partners with material sourcing to develop innovative fabrications using the seasonal palette.
• Develops and tracks a design schedule to ensure timely completion of color and material assets according to the development calendar.

What do you need to succeed?

We all have unique skills that we bring to work and celebrate every day. For this role, there are foundation skills you’ll need to succeed and excel. Additionally, while formal education in a related field is great to have, we are most interested in your 7-10 years of experience and professional achievements. 

The foundation skills you will need in this position are:

• Required to understand market structure, segmentation and distribution points for all collections, collaborations and categories.
• Proficient in managing a seasonal budget to deliver color and material assets.
• Experience  or understanding of Fiery XF for printing color assets.
• High level of Proficiency in Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Word, Keynote, and Powerpoint.
• Experience in research analysis and design trend cycles.
• Experience in presenting, communi