Design Director

Department: Brands & Licensing

Reports To: SVP, Brands

Location: New York, NY Onsite

Best Brands is seeking a Design Director with deep home furnishings expertise to lead product design across windows, bath, bedding, and kitchen textiles. This role translates trends and brand style guides into full product collections tailored to specific retail channels and price points, while managing the design process from concept through artwork handoff for sample development. The ideal candidate combines strong creative direction with hands-on CAD proficiency, product development expertise, and the ability to manage multiple categories and design programs simultaneously.

Key Responsibilities:

• Translate brand style guides into full product design collections tailored to specific retail needs across windows, bath, bedding, and kitchen textiles.

• Design within defined price point and channel parameters, ensuring assortments are commercially viable for mass, off-price, club, grocery, drug, and e-commerce.

• Uphold brand guidelines across all design output, partnering with brand teams to ensure consistency with brand DNA, color palettes, and visual identity.

• Apply packaging design knowledge where relevant to support cohesive brand presentation across product and packaging.

Technical Design & Artwork

• Create full-scale print repeats, engineered designs, and surface design artwork across print, woven, texture, and embroidery applications.

• Develop 2D and 3D mockups of products as needed to support design reviews, sales presentations, and licensor approvals.

• Create production-ready artwork for factory handoff as well as polished artwork for sales presentations and sell-in materials.

• Organize and build a centralized design artwork library to support efficient retrieval, reuse, and version control across categories.

Retail & Sales Support:

• Create planograms for retail presentations and sales meetings, supporting category storytelling and assortment planning.

• Work closely with sales leads to translate channel and account-specific needs into design direction and product assortments.

• Support category sales presentations and catalogs with relevant design and artwork assets.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Partner closely with product development and sourcing teams to hand off artwork and design specifications for sample development.

• Collaborate with brand and licensing teams on interpretation of brand guidelines into product design.

• Manage multiple product categories and design programs concurrently, balancing timelines across brands and retail calendars.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design, Surface Design, Fashion/Home Design, or related field.

• 8+ years of design experience in home furnishings, with hands-on experience designing windows, bath, bedding, and kitchen textiles required.

• Strong product development background, with experience taking designs from concept through factory-ready artwork.

• Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator required; proficiency in textile-specific CAD software required, such as Adobe, NedGraphics, Lectra Kaledo (Print/Weave/Knit), Pointcarré, ProSpec, EAT or Wilcom (embroidery), and AVA CAD/CAM.

• Experience with 2D/3D mockup and rendering tools (e.g., Adobe Dimension, Browzwear, SketchUp, or similar) a plus.

• Experience creating retail planograms for sales and category presentations.

• Strong understanding of working with sales, product development, and brand teams in a licensed consumer products environment.

• Highly organized with the ability to manage multiple product categories, design programs, and deadlines simultaneously.

• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to translate brand and retail requirements into design direction for the team.