Creative Director

NPR · New York, New York, United States; Washington, District of Columbia, United States

  • Senior
  • Full-time
  • $147,000 – $165,000
  • Posted 2026-09-17
  • Confirmed live on 25 September 2026

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Job description

OVERVIEW

A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.

Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR. This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.

Application Deadline: Please submit your application by 5:00 pm EST on Friday, October 2nd, 2026.

Application Instructions

In addition to a resume, please submit:

• Instead of a traditional cover letter, provide a brief statement outlining your approach to creative leadership, team mentorship, and how you balance artistic innovation with organizational goals.

Intro to Position

NPR is one of the country’s most trusted brands, but its reputation was built in a media landscape that no longer exists. Audiences have scattered across owned platforms, social video, and a dozen competitors fighting for the same attention. The organizations winning that fight are the ones willing to look and sound different, not just distribute more. This role exists to help NPR make that shift real.

This is, and is not, a caretaker role for an established brand. It's a build and evolution role: new formats, new visual language, a creative team stood up for video at a scale the organization hasn't operated in before.

You'll report to the SVP of Brand & Communications and work closely with Product, Audience Insights, Marketing, and Editorial to shift a beloved legacy brand into one that can compete with new creators and challengers.

Responsibilities

Drive a more distinctive cohesive brand in a saturated market

• Establish technical brand standards, visual principles, and digital design systems that make NPR’s visual expression instantly recognizable across direct-to-audience platforms.

• Build platform-native video formats and visual frameworks that drive industry-leading differentiation, compelling audiences to choose NPR over thousands of alternative journalism and entertainment options

• Push beyond generic institutional and media-industry conventions to create work with greater personality, clarity, emotion, and cultural relevance.

• Translate organizational values, editorial priorities, and public service mission into standardized motion assets, video packages, and platform-native visual frameworks.

• Analyze market landscapes and digital competitor trends to ensure NPR’s video and motion visual language remains distinct, modern, and culturally relevant.

Build creative capacity for an owned-and-operated future

• Define the technical visual frameworks and motion standards required to integrate video seamlessly across NPR’s owned digital ecosystem (websites, mobile apps, newsletters, and membership portals).

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Editorial teams to establish a cohesive UI/UX and motion experience across owned platform touchpoints.

• Build modular, scalable design systems and template kits that enable teams across the organization to independently publish brand-aligned digital content.

• Ensure that creative work supports a deeper direct relationship with audiences rather than treating owned platforms simply as distribution channels.

• Help develop the visual and verbal conventions that make the organization’s digital experiences feel distinctive, intentional, and connected.

• Identify opportunities to use design, storytelling, video, motion, and other creative tools to increase engagement with owned experiences.

• Utilize audience analytics and engagement data to continuously optimize digital assets and direct-to-audience visual experiences.

Build a modern video and motion capability

• Establish production standards, camera/lighting guidelines, motion graphic templates, and editing signatures for short-form, social, explanatory, and talent-led video formats.

• Procure, maintain, and manage specialized video studio hardware, camera packages, lighting setups, field audio gear, and editing suites

• Partner with Editorial and other teams to determine where technical brand video and motion graphics complement editorial production.

• Develop recognizable approaches to motion, editing, typography, graphics, sound, pacing, and visual storytelling.

• Ensure that video is treated as a core creative medium rather than an adaptation of work conceived for print or static

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