Senior Designer - Retail

About The Role & Team

As a Senior Designer for Retail at Disney, you will play a key role in elevating and expanding our EMEA business through innovative, trend-led retail solutions. With a strong focus on maintaining our beloved character equity and storytelling, you’ll be instrumental in enhancing visibility for The Walt Disney Company’s diverse portfolio of brands and franchises. Your creativity will inspire and energise retailers, delivering engaging in-store and online POS and visual assets that highlight the full potential of our brands in retail spaces.

You’ll design captivating, on-brand retail experiences that drive product awareness and bring a sense of wonder and excitement to everyday shopping. Your responsibilities will include ensuring consistent brand messaging, developing retail assets, pitch concepts, POS materials, permanent displays, pop-up shops and digital content for key accounts. Additionally, you’ll craft bespoke retailer toolkits and comprehensive resources for retail marketing activations and campaigns, always delivering creative solutions that reflect Disney’s magic.

This is a permanent position located at our London office in Hammersmith, requiring four days of on-site attendance per week.

What You Will Do

• Develop creative assets that enable growth for all relevant TWDC franchises, supporting the process from initial concept through to artwork development and distribution. This includes, but is not limited to, conducting retail trend research, generating concepts, preparing final artwork, creating logo lock-ups, sell-in and retail visuals, retailer POS, and digital assets.
• Collaborate closely with colleagues across consumer segments and product design teams to ensure creative alignment and provide support on broader projects as needed.
• Ensure all assets are both creatively and technically accurate before submitting for approval by the Senior Design Manager, Retail or Lead Designer, Retail, and other key stakeholders.
• Contribute to the development of trend boards and new ideas that bring innovation and freshness to future projects, helping to build upon existing strategies.
• Maintain full compliance with corporate guidelines, consistently producing work that upholds character and design consistency and integrity.
• Foster effective relationships within the wider creative community, drawing on their expertise to create relevant designs that challenge boundaries and encourage new perspectives.
• Attend trade shows when required to broaden your understanding of the EMEA marketplace, seeking out ideas and creative solutions to fully inform business decisions.
• Actively participate in creative brainstorming sessions with internal and external teams, valuing diverse viewpoints and contributions.
• Provide comprehensive creative support, such as downloading, backing up, archiving, and creating digital presentations, as needed.
• Work collaboratively with product teams, designers, and artists to ensure character and franchise integrity are maintained, and that design and art styles are harmonised.
• Partner with the Design Manager/Senior Design Manager, Retail to ensure projects are thoughtfully planned and executed, meeting deadlines and adhering to budget requirements.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Degree-level education in Art and Design/Graphic Design or Fashion Design and/or equivalent work experience 
• Proven commercial design experience in a retail design, graphics and/or branding role
• Experience in creating in-Store and experiential 3D visuals
• Extensive understanding of our key partner retailer templates and guidelines
• A solid understanding of TWDC characters and storytelling and how it translates to product and packaging with the ability to integrate into trends inventively
• Expert understanding of all elements of design: illustration, pattern, page layout, colour, packaging design, pack engineering, cutter guide generation, retail design and trends with the ability to create new graphic design assets and packaging from scratch
• Ability to create both core design solutions as well as new interpretive and trend-right styles
• An awareness of current marketplace trends in the design and retail environment
• An ability to understand and apply colour theory and usage
• Proficient in Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Keynote, essential
• Knowledge of 3D software, Sketchup Pro or Cinema 4D an advantage.
• Ability to work as a team or individually to achieve goals
• Conceptual, innovative thinker 
• Able to clearly communicate and present vision/ideas
• Able to demonstrate strong technical skills 
• Resilient and nimble in an ever changing landscape 
• Strong attention to detail with the ability to work under pressure and prioritise workload
• Ability to communicate design ideas using freehand drawing, computer techniques and/or third party design resources to both internal and external stakeholders
• Written and spoken English for business use, essential; professional proficiency in other European languages, beneficial
• Cultural sensitivity and an understanding of local markets across EMEA

The Perks

• 25 days annual leave
• Private medical insurance & dental care
• Free Park Entry: the opportunity to enter any of our parks with your family and friends for free
• Disney Discounts: entitled to discounts on designated Disney products, resort F&B and ticketing
• Excellent parental and guardian leave
• Employee Resource Groups – WOMEN @ Disney, Disney DIVERSITY, Disney PRIDE, our new disability & neurodiversity focused group - ENABLED, and our Mental Health & Wellbeing Group, TRUST.

The Walt Disney Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We strive to be a diverse workforce that is representative of our audiences, and where all can thrive and belong. Disney is committed to forming a team that includes and respects a variety of voices, identities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.