Designer

Closing date: 15th May 2025

Salary: £30,000 - £38,000 dependent on experience and location (+bonus +benefits)

Location: This role can be based at our London or Sheffield office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Do you love beautifully designed coffee table books? Are you looking for your next step in a career as the designer of covers and book interiors? Would you like to learn how to hone your skills from a talented team and become one of the best?

Headline was founded in 1986 with a single promise at its heart: to publish the books people want to read. Sometimes, the simplest ideas are best. Headline has spent over three decades creating books people want to read and we are home to some of the UK’s biggest-selling authors and continue to invest in new talent with bestseller potential. Our Welbeck Illustrated list has a mission to create beautiful books that fit perfectly into readers’ lives. Our talented team innovates in covetable design – you will find our illustrated reference and gift titles adorning shelves and coffee tables around the world because we publish in more than 30 languages and 60 countries.

We’re experts in the categories of fashion and lifestyle, food and drink, history of art and design and work with brands from Chanel to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and from F1 to FIFA. Our recent publications include New York Times bestseller, Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs, the Little Books of Fashion series and Sunday Times bestseller Formula One 2025.

We’re on an exciting growth trajectory right now as a business – in terms of external profile, with our authors appearing on the most prestigious prize longlists and shortlists and our staff winning industry awards for their marketing and publicity campaigns. And also, in terms of our sales growth (‘2022 was Headline’s best 52-week BookScan result in a decade’ – The Bookseller) and our emphatic emergence in recent years as one of the most dynamic publishers going. We were shortlisted for Publisher of the Year at the 2023 British Book Awards.

• “Welbeck is a buzzing imprint where everyone has a voice – you can channel your creativity and at the same time become integral to the team. Not only do we get to make beautiful books that entertain, engage and inspire, but we get to work with the most talented people in the industry. What’s not to love?”

Heather Boisseau, Editorial Director

• “I know it’s a cliché, but no two days at Welbeck are the same, with such a unique range of titles on all the subjects we love, like music, fashion, sport and cookery. It’s this variety of titles that make it such a fantastic place to work, with the challenge of shaping the books to appeal to our stylish readers.”

James Empringham, Art Director

What you'll be doing

• We want someone who can create designs for books from a brief, maintaining design and technical standards, someone who enjoys working to deadlines and takes pride in making sure their design is commercially relevant for book buyers.
• You’ll be happy preparing layouts and visuals for presentation and approval by the Art Director and confident in marking up and checking jacket and page proofs, under guidance from senior colleagues.
• You’re well organised and able to file and archive all design work appropriately, ensuring processes and systems are kept up to date.
• And you’ll thrive as you develop the skills to work with and commission artists and photographers, managing photo shoots where relevant under supervision.

Who we are looking for

• We are looking for a talented designer who is confident in the management of book layouts and jacket design and eager to learn more.

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

To apply

Please include your CV, Cover Letter and Portfolio (which is enclosed in the Cover Letter section).

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.