MID-WEIGHT DESIGNER — LONDON

MID-WEIGHT DESIGNER — LONDON
Beauty. Cosmetics. Fashion. Polished, high-end brand work across print and digital, and the jobs are yours to own.

We’re Seen & Heard, a global creative agency with studios in Newcastle and London, making brilliant work for some of the world’s biggest brands. Two studios, one team, loads of great work. Now we’re looking for a Mid-weight Designer ready to take the next step. You’ll take a brief and run with it, deliver it finished and flawless, and help the designers coming up behind you do the same.

What you’ll get your hands on
· Page layout, lots of it, done beautifully (you’ll need strong layout skills)
· Digital: e-commerce, social and web banners
· Print: leaflets and brochures
· Digital publications: mobile, e-books and flip books

THE ROLE
We’re growing, and fast. A long-standing global programme is expanding into a number of new markets, and the business is scaling up to match. It’s a great moment to join.

This is a hands-on design role in the heart of the team, at the level where a designer starts to own jobs properly. Work lands with you as a whole job, not a task, and you bring it back finished.

Most of your week goes on one big account, designing and adapting global assets for markets and languages around the world. You don’t need a second language, but if you have one, we’d love to hear about it. Adapting and localising at volume is a big part of the job, but not all of it. You’ll pick up other studio work alongside it, and the mix will shift as the programme and the business grow.

This is a growth role. We have a strong track record of training and keeping our people, and we want someone who wants to grow with us, not pass through. You’ll live our values of curiosity, partnerships, insight, agility and integrity, and solve problems through beautiful design instead of treating design as an output.

WHERE YOU FIT IN
· Line manager: our Studio Manager, who looks after both sites
· Day-to-day creative direction: the Senior Designer in your studio
· Final quality check on global toolkits: our Lead Designer in Newcastle
· Scheduling and job planning: the PM team

We’re flexible on working patterns, but this is a studio role, and we expect you in the studio for most of the week. Expect the odd trip between London and Newcastle, and some flexibility for client meetings when they come up.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Design and craft
· Hands-on design across everything the studio makes: brand and campaign work, print and retail, digital, social and e-commerce, long-form documents and presentations
· Get under the skin of a brief. Ask the questions that need asking before work starts, then deliver simple, beautiful solutions to complex problems
· Finish artwork to production standard: specification, pre-press, formats, colour, print methods and retail specs
· Work inside established brand systems, with the judgement to tell a smart creative stretch from a breach of brand character
· Adapt and localise global assets across markets, formats and languages, and keep the standard the same from the first file to the last

Owning the job
Ownership is the step up from junior. Jobs come to you whole, and we expect them back finished and checked. The Senior Designer is there for the tough calls, not the routine ones.
· Take a job from brief to finished artwork, including the finer details
· Work to the schedule agreed with the PM team, and flag early if it won’t hold
· Check work against the brief, the brand guidelines and the spec before it goes anywhere
· Support the junior designers alongside the Senior Designer: review work in progress, explain your reasoning, and resist the urge to fix the file yourself
· Pass on your print and production knowledge, because that’s where less experienced designers most need someone beside them

Building for scale
Much of what we make is built once and used many times, in several languages and markets. That changes what a good file looks like, and we expect you to hold that discipline.
· Work inside masters and templates built for other people to use, and build new ones when a job calls for it: structured, named and consistent
· Design for adaptation from the first decision: text expansion, alternative formats, market variation, regulatory and legal copy
· Use creative automation and AI-assisted production fluently where it speeds up or improves the work, and be clear about where it doesn’t
· Feed what you learn in production back into how the studio’s tools and processes develop, instead of quietly working around them

Clients and briefs
· Take briefs directly from clients on smaller jobs, and ask the questions that make a brief workable before anyone starts
· Present work alongside a senior colleague, and explain creative decisions in terms the client cares about
· Be a credible presence in the room, and comfortable fielding a direct question
· Work with producers, project managers and directors, and flag timing or scope risks early

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

Essential experience
· Experience as a designer in an agency, a studio or an in-house creative team, with a portfolio that shows print and digital execution. We care more about the breadth and depth of your portfolio than your years of experience
· Artwork and print production to a finished standard: specification, pre-press, print methods, retail and POS
· Digital output: social, e-commerce, display and the right formats for each
· Working inside established brand systems and guidelines for large brands
· Adapting or versioning work across formats, markets or languages
· Creative automation and AI-assisted production: current and hands-on, with a clear view of where it helps and where it doesn’t
· Confidence across Adobe Creative Cloud, especially InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop
· Design education to degree level, or equivalent experience

Skills and attributes
· Typography and layout of a high standard
· Fast and accurate at volume, without treating volume work as beneath you
· As organised in the file as you are on the page
· You take critique well, and you can give it to someone less experienced so the work improves and they still want to do it
· You know the difference between a preference and a problem
· Generous with what you know
· Hungry to keep learning and developing with a supportive team
· Curious about the craft and the industry, and you bring new and unique ideas back to the studio

Bonus points for
· Strong print and production experience, and a willingness to teach it. This one counts for a lot at this level
· Global or multi-market brand experience, including adaptation and localisation across languages
· Scripting or automation inside Adobe apps, or experience with a creative automation platform
· Experience working across more than one site, or with colleagues in other countries
· Retouching and image preparation
· Art direction and/or photography
· Experience of a studio going through growth or structural change

WHAT WE OFFER
· Pension: 3% matched contribution
· Holiday: 23 days plus bank holidays, with time off between Christmas and New Year guaranteed
· Sick pay: 5 days at full pay each year
· Flexible working: flexible patterns that work for you and the team, with most of the week in the studio
· Wellbeing: free gym classes in Newcastle and rooftop sauna access in London (yes, a rooftop sauna)
· Learning and development: monthly lunch-and-learns, plus funding and time off for relevant courses

Sound like you? If you’re a mid-weight ready to own the work and help shape a growing studio, send us your portfolio and tell us why now’s your moment. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got.