Creative Packaging Production Manager

**Creative Packaging Production Manager**

Your creative leadership, packaging expertise, and ability to build strong partnerships make you a great fit for our Creative Packaging Production Manager position. Join our dynamic team today and find a rewarding career with a company that values you and all you bring to the table.

**About Your Role:**

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Creative Packaging Production Manager to lead the creative and production execution of Dollar Tree's packaging and product artwork. This role combines creative leadership, packaging expertise, people leadership, relationship management, and operational excellence to ensure the delivery of high-quality, visually compelling, and on-brand packaging that meets customer and business expectations.

The Creative Packaging Production Manager will lead and mentor a team of production coordinators and graphic designers, providing creative direction, feedback, coaching, and development while establishing efficient workflows that enable the team to deliver high-quality work on time. This role will serve as a key connector across Creative, Merchandising, Sourcing, Marketing, Data Intelligence, vendors, agencies, and other internal and external partners.

A critical component of this role is the ability to build strong, trusted relationships across functional teams and external partners. The Creative Packaging Production Manager must be an effective collaborator who can understand different business needs, communicate creative and production requirements clearly, influence without authority, resolve challenges, and bring partners together to achieve successful outcomes.

The Creative Packaging Production Manager will help shape the creative vision for Dollar Tree's packaging portfolio, from initial concepts and creative direction through final production. The role requires a strong understanding of design principles, visual storytelling, consumer trends, typography, color, visual identity, brand strategy, packaging production, and the ability to translate business objectives into compelling consumer-facing work.

Joining our team as a Creative Packaging Production Manager offers an exciting opportunity to influence how Dollar Tree products show up on shelf and online, elevate the consumer experience through packaging, develop a high-performing creative team, and build collaborative partnerships that balance creativity, speed, quality, and operational excellence. Your day-to-day job duties include, but are not limited to, the following:

**Creative Leadership & Team Development:**

* Lead and mentor a team of production coordinators and graphic designers, providing guidance, creative feedback, coaching, and support to enhance their skills, drive accountability, encourage collaboration, and elevate the quality of the work.
* Provide creative direction and leadership for packaging and product artwork, ensuring work is visually compelling, commercially relevant, and aligned with Dollar Tree's brand and customer.
* Review, challenge, and elevate creative work by providing clear and constructive feedback to designers, merchants, vendors, and cross-functional partners while maintaining a high standard for design quality and brand consistency.
* Lead creative reviews and team critiques to encourage collaboration, share best practices, strengthen creative thinking, and establish a consistent creative standard across the packaging portfolio.
* Build and develop the creative capabilities of the team through coaching, mentoring, knowledge sharing, and ongoing feedback related to design principles, creative problem solving, visual storytelling, brand standards, collaboration, and production best practices.
* Facilitate weekly meetings with the packaging design team to review timelines, project status, creative opportunities, production needs, challenges, and best practices.

**Packaging Strategy & Creative Execution:**

* Lead the creative and production process from concept and ideation through final production, assigning tasks and responsibilities, balancing workloads, and ensuring efficient resource allocation aligned with merchant timelines.
* Develop and evolve a cohesive packaging and product art strategy that aligns with Dollar Tree's brand image, product positioning, customer needs, seasonal opportunities, and business objectives.
* Collaborate with Merchandising and cross-functional partners to shape creative briefs, understand product requirements, identify opportunities, solve creative challenges, and ensure packaging effectively communicates the product's value, benefits, and consumer story.
* Champion creative innovation and trend awareness by identifying and bringing forward relevant packaging, design, typography, color, visual, and consumer trends that can inspire new creative opportunities.
* Partner with internal and external teams to develop creative solutions that balance consumer appeal, product positioning, brand standards, production requirements, cost considerations, and speed to market.
* Ensure all packaging and product artwork aligns with Dollar Tree's visual identity, brand guidelines, quality standards, and production requirements, maintaining consistency in design elements, typography, color, imagery, and messaging.
* Balance creative ambition with production requirements, timelines, budgets, technical specifications, and vendor capabilities to deliver high-quality packaging at scale.
* Collaborate with the Data Intelligence and Merchant teams to understand product requirements, target audiences, consumer insights, and market trends to inform packaging and product art decisions.
* Educate stakeholders on current and future packaging, design, consumer, and industry trends and standards to strengthen understanding and encourage stronger creative outcomes.

**Cross-Functional & Vendor Relationships:**

* Build and maintain strong, collaborative relationships with Merchandising, Sourcing, Marketing, Data Intelligence, Creative, Operations, Legal, vendors, agencies, and other internal and external partners to successfully move projects from concept through completion.
* Serve as a trusted creative and production partner to cross-functional stakeholders, understanding their business objectives and translating those needs into clear creative direction, actionable plans, and effective packaging solutions.
* Establish strong relationships with external vendors, agencies, art houses, and production partners, providing clear direction, building trust, resolving issues, and ensuring partners understand and meet Dollar Tree's creative, brand, quality, and production expectations.
* Influence and align cross-functional partners without direct authority, effectively navigating competing priorities, communicating trade-offs, resolving conflicts, and building consensus to achieve project objectives.
* Establish and maintain productive relationships with external vendors and creative partners to ensure consistent communication, accountability, quality, and successful execution of packaging artwork.
* Represent the packaging creative team in cross-functional meetings and initiatives, advocating for creative quality while understanding and supporting broader business objectives.

**Production Operations & Project Management:**

* Develop and maintain efficient production processes, continuously identifying opportunities to improve workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, enhance productivity, and optimize resource utilization.
* Track and report project progress, identify potential risks and bottlenecks, and proactively implement solutions to ensure projects remain on schedule and meet quality expectations.
* Facilitate effective cross-functional communication throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring stakeholders understand project status, responsibilities, decisions, timelines, and next steps.
* Manage the corporate art file solution, ensuring packaging and product artwork is organized, accessible, maintained, and managed according to established standards.
* Ensure all final artwork is approved, uploaded to the vendor portal, and communicated to vendors in a timely manner.
* Other projects as assigned.

**Your Required Skills and Experience:**

* Bachelor's degree in graphic design or a related field. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered.
* Strong creative leadership and design expertise, with a deep understanding of design principles, color theory, typography, layout, visual hierarchy, packaging design, visual identity, and brand strategy, and the ability to translate these disciplines into compelling consumer-facing packaging.
* Demonstrated ability to provide creative direction, evaluate design work, deliver constructive feedback, and elevate the creative output of a team.
* Strong understanding of packaging design and production processes, including the ability to balance creative objectives with technical requirements, timelines, quality standards, cost considerations, and vendor capabilities.
* Exceptional relationship-building and collaboration skills, with the ability to establish credibility and trust with stakeholders across all levels of the organization and with external partners and vendors.
* Demonstrated ability to work effectively across multiple functions, understand differing perspectives and priorities, and bring teams together around a common objective.
* Strong influencing and negotiation skills, with the ability to influence without direct authority, navigate competing priorities, resolve conflicts, and build consensus.
* Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, prioritize competing demands, allocate resources, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
* Exceptional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to motivate, coach, develop, and guide a creative team.
* Strong collaboration and communi