Job Pack

Creative Design Manager

Message from the President and Principal

Thank you for your interest in this role and in Queen Mary University of London. Working at Queen Mary means being part of a unique, world-class global University with a long, proud and distinctive history.

Our founding institutions, the London Hospital Medical College, St Bartholomew’s Medical College, Westfield College and Queen Mary College, were founded to provide hope and opportunity for the less privileged and otherwise under-represented.

Today, we remain true to the vision of our founders by continuing to improve lives locally, nationally and internationally through the seamless combination of our worldleading strengths in education and research.

The Queen Mary community – our staff, students and alumni – is the heart and soul of our University. We are proud to provide an inclusive and nurturing environment so that staff and students from all backgrounds can develop, flourish and achieve their full potential.

I look forward to welcoming you to our unique University and working with you to realise our ambitions.

Professor Colin Bailey, President and Principal

Our strategy 2030

In 2019, Queen Mary University of London launched a bold new Strategy with the vision to open the doors of opportunity. By 2030, we will be the most inclusive university of its kind, anywhere. We are doing this by building on our existing cultural diversity to create a truly inclusive environment, where students and staff flourish, reach their full potential and are proud to be part of the University. Continuing our long tradition of commitment to public good, we will generate new knowledge, challenge existing knowledge, and engage locally, nationally and internationally to create a better world.

We have five core values that will help us to reach this goal:

Job description

• We are inclusive, supporting talented students and staff regardless of their background, and engaging with our local and global communities.
• We are proud of the difference we can all make when we work collectively.
• We are ambitious, fostering innovation and creativity, disrupting conventional thought, and responding with imagination to new opportunities.
• We are collegial, promoting a strong community through openness, listening, understanding, co-operation and cocreation.
• We are ethical, acting with the highest standards, and with integrity, in all that we do.

To enable our staff to flourish and to reach their full potential throughout their employment at Queen Mary, we offer a range of benefits:

Staff benefits

• Annual leave – the full-time annual leave annual entitlement is 30 working days not including bank holidays).
• Season ticket loan scheme
• Pension scheme
• Reward and recognition schemes
• Cycle to work scheme
• Qmotion sport fitness centre
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Family friendly policies
• Flexible working practices
• On-site day nursery

Job context

Queen Mary University of London is one of the UK’s leading research universities, committed to improving social justice and achieving the previously unthinkable. The Marketing and Communications Directorate is responsible for raising the awareness and reputation of Queen Mary among its target audiences, and for increasing the quality and quantity of Queen Mary applicants. This role sits within the Communications team.

Job purpose

Working with the Head of Content and Brand, this role is responsible for leading the strategic approach to, and delivery of graphic design and Queen Mary’s brand (visual and verbal identity) across all channels, online and offline, including rich media.

Main duties and responsibilities

NOTE: This is a competency-based definition of the role and is aligned with the Government Communications Service competency framework (https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/professional-development/competency-framework/)

Insight

• Provide sound and relevant advice to colleagues and senior managers on branding and graphic design
• Examine the organisation’s needs and priorities to identify the role for design and brand management, and translate this into measurable objectives.
• Work with colleagues across the University to gather intelligence and help build an effective environment for the delivery of successful design and brand activities

Ideas 

• Lead the development, implementation and review of design and brand management strategies
• Use your knowledge of the design and brand landscape to develop innovative ideas in support of these strategies
• Support the development of the organisational infrastructure is in place across Queen Mary to deliver high-quality web services

Implementation

• Demonstrate excellent written communications skills
• Set the standard for excellent graphic designand brand management skills
• Manage the planning, delivery and evaluation of design and brand activities
• Lead the quality control of graphic design and brand management to ensure appropriate consistency in all Queen Mary communications
• Support the Head of Content and Brand in providing functional leadership across the University for design and branding

Impact

• Support the Head of Content and Brand to lead the management of brand compliance across the University, including the means of evaluation compliance and resolving issues
• Lead the identification of evaluation criteria for content, design and brand management
• Evaluate the effectiveness of design and brand activities against objectives, learning lessons and comparing with industry best practice to support the improvement of future work
• Contribute to the reporting on success and/or evaluation criteria to colleagues and senior managers, and share learnings for the benefit of future activities

Other duties and responsibilities

• Support the effective management of relevant budgets and procurement activities, ensuring value for money and the most effective use of existing resources to deliver more/the same with less with given budgets as required
• Support the delivery of Queen Mary’s major external events, including Graduations and Open Days. This may require out of hours working for which your time will be compensated as per your contract.
• Act as an ambassador for the University’s brand (both verbal and visual identity), championing its use across the institution as well as your own area of work.

The above list of responsibilities is not exhaustive and the jobholder may be required to undertake other duties commensurate with the level of the role, as reasonably requested by their line manager.

This job description accurately reflects the duties and responsibilities of the role at the time the job description was written. These duties and responsibilities may change over time without significantly impacting on the character of the role, the overall level of responsibility, or its grade.

Depending on strategic or operational needs, the jobholder may in the future be required to work for another existing or new organisational unit and/or at a different site within Queen Mary. This may be on a temporary or indefinite basis and may involve a change in line management and / or regularly working at more than one site.

Equal Opportunities

Queen Mary University of London is a Russell Group University with a difference. Our vision is to be recognised across the world as the most inclusive research-intensive University. We will strive to achieve that goal.

To all the communities at Queen Mary, inclusivity is key to who we are and to achieving all our ambitions.

We are a multi-faculty institution teaching undergraduates and postgraduates across all the major disciplines. We offer more than 280 undergraduate courses. We have world- leading research across disciplines and were ranked 5th in the UK in the last Research Excellence Framework (REF) for the quality of our research outputs, and continually challenge ourselves to ensure we have an environment where everyone feels included and can flourish.

We are very proud of our teaching and learning and were awarded a ‘silver’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) (2016-17). We are also deeply embedded in the local community and were the first UK University to be awarded an Engage Watermark Gold award for public engagement by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement.

Unlike many other Russell Group universities, we attract a very diverse student population. Of our 25,000+ students, over 30 per cent are from non-EU overseas countries, and 9 per cent are from the EU. Our international students are drawn from over 160 countries. 90 per cent of our home students are from state schools, 59 per cent are Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME), 42 per cent are the first in their families to go into higher education and over 30 per cent are from households where the household income, as assessed by Student Finance England, is less than £15,000.

We attract a lot of local students, owing to our strong relationships with schools in the surrounding boroughs, coupled with a strong reputation for inclusivity. 37 per cent of our students commute to our campuses daily. Our staff body is also diverse and is drawn from over 162 countries.

Inclusivity is one of our fundamental core values at Queen Mary: it is intrinsic to who we are. Our diversity of cultures and backgrounds is key to the vibrancy of our community and to the knowledge and ideas we are able to generate and pass on; without that diversity, we would not be who we are. We are extremely proud that we attract such a diverse staff and student body, and are fully committed to providing an environment where everyone is supported to flourish and fulfil their potential, irrespective of their background.

To be truly inclusive requires sustained, proactive, hard work, and we know there are areas where we have work to do. Our core objectives are focused on reducing the BAME attainment gap and increasing the proportion of female and BAME staff at the higher grades, both for academics and for Professional Services. We are looking to see how we can ‘hard-wire’ inclusivity throughout all our policies and practices: we do not see this work as belonging to one team or unit, but rather as being embedded in all that we do.

Being inclusive makes us better at everything we do, it improves our daily lives and the delivery and impact of our work.

Flexible working:

Queen Mary is proud of the diversity of its staff and students. We encourage inclusive practices in everything that we do, to ensure that everyone who works here feels valued and enabled to have a positive working experience. We are therefore open to considering applications from candidates wishing to work flexibly, balanced against business need. Our Flexible Working Policy includes examples of some of the flexible working arrangements that could be considered. If you feel that this is something that may be of benefit to you, please do ask.