Color Designer

Title: Color Designer

Location: Beaverton, OR

Duration: 1 year contract

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.

WHAT YOU WILL WORK ON

The nature of the work is focused on the appearance of product, communications, or collateral materials.

Color Design Execution

• Plans and executes color designs.
• Collaborates with design, product marketing, development and material consultants to focus color solutions for market success.
• Reviews all samples to achieve marketable solution review with design, marketing and development.
• Clearly communicates all changes for final confirmation.
• Displays advanced knowledge and practices in all phases of product execution - shares knowledge with others.
• Maintains color calendar/timelines/deadlines for category/division resulting in the timely completion of each product.
• Develops line art, color design server, GPIN, merchandising line, cutting samples & working with material consultant to coordinate materials for products.
• Finalizes product details and proactively follows through on execution of color on each product.

Color Solutions

• Creates innovative, retailable color solutions forcategory or gender-specific line.
• Researches and delivers color, design, market and lifestyle trends that influence and impact the product category process from product briefing to product concept to samples.
• Explores options and proposes with Color Design Managers and/or senior Color Designers a seasonal color strategy for products, line segments and initiatives.
• Creates seasonal category-specific direction of color, materials and graphics.
• In partnership with the Category and Design Director, creates and leads color merchandising strategies and stories seasonally.

Consumer Research

• Knows the consumer.
• Displays in-depth understanding of consumer, brand-positioning needs as it relates to category/division. of consumer, brand-positioning needs as it relates to category/division.
• Utilizes knowledge of category/division consumer & their culture to improve product performance & appearance.
• Demonstrates strong knowledge about competitor products, consumer retail habits, color, and market trends.
• Applies insights from consumer perspective into color solutions.

Presentations & Communication

• Presents and communicates category- specific color direction and color merchandising direction of the seasonal line to appropriate groups.
• Works with design/category to produce presentation materials that effectively communicate color direction related to the consumer, product concepts and creative strategy to internal audiences.
• Participates and delivers bi-annual category/divisional specific color needs for incorporation into footwear color committee preparation.

Skill Development

• Develops excellence as a color designer. Together with Color Design Manager, advances the value of color to Nike by bringing a high level of functional expertise (i.e. materials, special effects, technology, advanced development, presentation, tools) to the color design organization.
• Educates and mentors more junior designers in category or color design organization. Undertakes projects and opportunities to enhance knowledge of the business, color, and design.

WHAT YOU BRING

Must Haves: 

• 8+ YEO in color design for apparel design - NOT footwear experience 
• Color strategies across sport and distribution, strategic color usage - draft off of global inline expressions or high-end Nike lines
• Understanding of commercial products - “mall products”, for the everyday person

Nice to Haves: 

• Nike experience or similar industry 
• Managed multiple large projects at once and owned the commercial color design process
• Illustrator, photoshop, Viscom, GravitySketch, CLO