CRUNCH FITNESS – Design Manager
Department: Marketing
Location: New York City, NY
Work Model: Hybrid, 3 days a week in office
Who We Are
Crunch Fitness is a rapidly growing fitness brand with more than 600 franchised and company-owned clubs across the United States and internationally. Our No Judgments philosophy creates a welcoming community where everybody can pursue fitness on their own terms. We make serious fitness fun by combining exercise, entertainment, innovation, and an unapologetically inclusive culture. This is an opportunity to help shape the next chapter of a high-growth brand, where development, advancement, and meaningful impact are part of the work.
Your Impact
Are you a digitally savvy creative leader passionate about design, health, fitness, and social media? Crunch Fitness is seeking an experienced, detail-oriented Design Manager to inspire a team, manage a high-volume creative workflow, and deliver bold, engaging work across digital, social, print, and in-club experiences.
This role oversees the design team's day-to-day operations, manages project assignments, prioritizes workloads, and ensures creative is delivered on time and to the highest standards. As both a manager and hands-on creative, you'll help conceptualize, develop, and execute integrated marketing campaigns while guiding the team to bring the Crunch brand's unmistakable personality to life across every customer touchpoint.
You'll work closely with Creative leadership, Marketing, Digital, and cross-functional partners to ensure seamless campaign execution across our corporate and franchise network. You'll also oversee the quality and consistency of scalable creative assets in our automation platforms, Storyteq Brandbuilder, and BrandFolder to help ensure campaigns can be efficiently localized while safeguarding brand integrity.
We're looking for someone who combines strong design instincts with exceptional organizational and leadership skills. Someone who stays ahead of emerging design and social media trends, brings out the best in a creative team, and thrives in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Workflow Management
- Manage the design team's day-to-day workflow, including project assignments, scheduling, prioritization, and workload distribution.
- Oversee multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring deadlines are met, resources are allocated effectively, and creative deliverables consistently meet a high standard.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for incoming design requests, helping assess project scope, establish timelines, and manage expectations with internal stakeholders.
- Provide creative guidance, constructive feedback, and mentorship to designers, fostering professional growth and a collaborative, solutions-oriented team culture.
- Review and approve creative work to ensure accuracy, consistency, and alignment with brand standards before final delivery.
- Identify opportunities to improve creative processes, streamline workflows, and increase team efficiency without compromising quality.
- Support Creative leadership in setting team priorities, developing talent, and maintaining a positive, productive creative culture.
Creative Development & Brand Management
- Lead and contribute to marketing asset development across digital, social, email, print, out-of-home, and in-club environments.
- Partner with Creative leadership to concept and execute integrated marketing campaigns that reflect Crunch's bold, inclusive, and energetic brand personality.
- Guide the creation of engaging, social-first creative that feels current, platform-appropriate, and is optimized for performance.
- Oversee campaign adaptation across multiple formats, sizes, and applications while maintaining visual consistency.
- Maintain and enforce Crunch brand standards across all creative executions to ensure a cohesive visual identity throughout the corporate and franchise network.
- Provide art direction and hands-on design support for high-priority projects, presentations, campaigns, and special initiatives.
- Stay current with emerging design trends, digital platforms, creative technologies, and best practices to continually elevate the team's work.
Creative Operations & Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Collaborate with Marketing, Digital, Operations, and other cross-functional partners to clarify project objectives, align priorities, and deliver effective creative solutions.
- Oversee the development, implementation, and quality control of scalable creative templates in Storyteq Brandbuilder, and BrandFolder to ensure ease of use, brand consistency, and efficient localization across the franchise network.
- Coordinate with designers and production partners to ensure files are properly prepared and delivered for digital, print, and environmental applications.
- Help maintain organized creative assets, file structures, and production workflows to support efficient collaboration and asset management.
- Proactively communicate project status, potential challenges, and resource needs to Creative leadership and key stakeholders.
- Balance strategic creative thinking with the practical demands of a high-volume, deadline-driven production environment.
Qualifications
- 5–7+ years of professional graphic design experience, including experience leading projects, mentoring designers, or managing a creative team.
- Expert knowledge of Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
- Strong portfolio showcasing exceptional design skills across digital, social, print, and integrated marketing campaigns.
- Strong understanding of digital design, social media creative, performance marketing, and emerging platform trends.
- Experience designing across multiple platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, display advertising, email, and web.
- Proven ability to manage creative workflows, prioritize competing deadlines, and oversee multiple projects in a fast-paced environment.
- Strong leadership and interpersonal skills, with the ability to provide clear creative direction, constructive feedback, and mentorship.
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams and managing stakeholder expectations.
- Familiarity with scalable design systems or creative automation platforms such as Storyteq, Bannerflow, Celtra, Smartly, or similar platforms is a plus.
- Experience in motion graphics, video editing, or animation is highly desirable.
- Excellent organization, communication, presentation, and project management skills.
- Exceptional attention to detail and the ability to balance creative excellence with speed and efficiency.
- Passion for design, fitness, culture, and emerging creative trends.
Ideal Candidate
You're a talented designer who has grown into a natural leader. You have a strong creative point of view and understand that great leadership is about bringing out the best in others. You're equally comfortable providing art direction, managing a busy production schedule, collaborating with stakeholders, or rolling up your sleeves to tackle a design challenge.
You're organized, proactive, and solutions-oriented, able to see the bigger picture while staying on top of the details. You understand that great creative isn't just beautiful. It's strategic, scalable, and designed to generate leads, sell memberships, and engage and retain members.
Most importantly, you're passionate about building a strong team, creating great work, and helping evolve one of the most recognizable brands in fitness.
*Crunch offers competitive salaries and benefits, including medical/dental/vision plans, life and accident insurance, educational expense reimbursement, employee assistance program, flexible work hours (availability varies by office and job function), free gym membership for active employees, and more.
Crunch believes that all persons are entitled to equal employment opportunity and does not discriminate against nor favor any applicant because of race, color, religion, sex, age, veteran status, disability, national origin or ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law or ordinance or regulation. Equal employment opportunity will be extended in all aspects of the employer-employee relationship, including, and not limited to, recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, transfer, demotion, compensation, benefits, layoff, and termination. In addition, Crunch will make reasonable accommodations to known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified applicant with a disability, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of our business.
Flexible work from home options available.
