Senior Designer

Established in 2004, OLIVER is the world’s first and only specialist in designing, building, and running bespoke in-house agencies and marketing ecosystems for brands. We partner with over 300 clients in 40+ countries and counting. Our unique model drives creativity and efficiency, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions that resonate deeply with audiences.

As a part of The Brandtech Group, we're at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to revolutionise how we create and deliver work. Our AI solutions enhance efficiency, spark creativity, and drive insightful decision-making, empowering our teams to produce innovative and impactful results.

Role: Senior Designer

Location: Chiswick, England, United Kingdom

About the role:

This is a pivotal role in our creative team, leading on specific brands of our client as a Brand Guardian, managing other designers and forming part of a cohesive senior design team that works directly with clients in the UK office and advocates for quality and creative ambition. The right candidate is motivated, comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, able to adjust on the fly, experienced in managing designers, artworkers, or motion designers, and can quickly learn and understand a brand’s visual identity while empowering a team of designers in bringing it to life in accordance with brand standards. The Design Lead must have demonstrable experience of conceptual design, in addition to adaptation/amplification of existing Key Visuals to different media, including Print, Digital, Social, OOH/DOOH, CRM etc. You will have a mastery of the Adobe Creative Suite and capabilities with both print and digital executions. Experience and interest in design automation and AI integration into your design work is also a plus. Attention to detail is paramount, and as a Design Lead, it is the expectation that all work is QC compliant and delivers to all brand guidelines and that client feedback is adhered to. Effective communication is critical to success in this role, both internally and in client-facing conversations. The right candidate is just as comfortable working with an individual designer as they are presenting to a group of clients or managing up to Regional and Global Creative Leads. Experience in client-facing communications is a must for this role as well as being proactive in doing so. You will lead on the development of visual design strategy and the development of visual design creative projects, ensuring consistency with the overall brand and marketing strategy to ensure the clients’ marketing strategies manifest through best-in-class execution. You will be based in London working alongside our key UK clients, our Account leads, and other designers, content creators, animators and writers.

What you will be doing:

• Brand Guardian for specific brands of our clients, responsible for the overarching quality of output on these brands in the team.
• Responsible for the full design adaptation lifecycle from concept to execution.
• Working closely with clients during kick-offs and for the duration of projects to align on and adhere to creative expectations.
• Producing beautiful and innovative designs that can work across multiple channels.
• Developing a deep understanding of target audiences and the client’s marketing strategy to deliver high-quality results that have an instant, positive impact on the consumer, promoting the product or brand.
• Pitching creative solutions in response to marketing strategies.
• Tactfully challenging and developing the brand guidelines in concert with the brand and clients to ensure the creative work is delivered to the highest standard.
• Providing leadership and direction to the design and artwork team for the best creative output.
• Overseeing the execution of design concepts to final delivery.
• Creative QC.

Ensuring the highest quality of creative output by conducting regular reviews, providing feedback, and maintaining attention to detail. Develop robust QC processes within the Creative team, ensuring accountability of QC runs through the team from most junior to most senior. Ensures all creative output complies with:

• The client brief
• Platforms/Media/Technical specs
• Brand & Campaign toolkits, assets and guidelines
• Feedback all adhered to and/or responded to

• Supporting the Regional and Global Creative Leads in ensuring that the quality of design and artwork in the team is maintained to a high standard.
• Developing individual designers’ technical skills, providing mentorship, and coaching them professionally while providing project-level and long-term individual feedback.
• Practising strong brand guardianship across all work, ensuring adherence to strict brand guidelines and educating teams internally on them.
• In addition to adaptation briefs, there are creative origination opportunities, and you will be pivotal in ensuring that clear briefings occur with clients, and conceptual designs are created with the team and effective campaigns are created for the specific markets.

What you need to be great in this role:

Essential

• Creative expertise.
• Strong Art Direction and concepting skills.
• The ability to take and positively influence client briefs with innovative ideas.
• Confidence in bringing ideas and creativity to projects while working within a broad range of design guidelines across a variety of artwork collateral.
• Strong client liaison, with a proven track record of developing strong client relationships and a consistent record of taking, interpreting, and delivering design projects within agreed timeframes.
• Effectively organising and prioritising workloads to manage client delivery while simultaneously influencing clients with their own ideas and conceptual creativity.
• Excellent Adobe CS skills (InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator).
• Ability to take ownership of projects from concept through to completion.
• Attention to detail with the ability to work under own initiative.
• Excellent understanding of the printing process and the accurate presentation of final artwork for production.
• Excellent project management skills.
• A knowledge of design for digital, print and web.
• Specialised knowledge of methods and techniques of graphic design and layout.
• Experience in digital, web banners, and social assets.

Desirable

• A basic to medium knowledge of social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
• Motion design experience (with proficiency in AfterEffects and/or PremierPro).
• The aptitude to learn new software and programs efficiently and effectively.
• Experience working with international clients or on international projects where you’ve demonstrated your ability to create designs for global audiences. Experience in Automation and/or AI experience in adaptation.

Client culture

As you will be working onsite at our clients’ offices, it is important to understand and embrace their culture to feel truly immersed. Their key values are outlined below:

• Approachable.
• Strategic, and comfortable taking briefs from clients and interrogating them to give them what they need, and not always what they initially want while getting to the truth of what they are trying to achieve (even if they can't initially articulate it).
• Clear, proactive, open, and helpful with clients, contacts, and colleagues.
• Speaking up when needed - critical thinking is imperative.
• Bold, volunteering opinions, questioning conventions, and being open to others’ ideas.
• Prepared to invest time and energy into developing opportunities and learning from the experience, regardless of the outcome.
• A ‘can do’ attitude.
• Mentoring and developing junior members of the team, recognising that this is the path to excellence.
• Connected, building and maintaining strong relationships while taking time to really get to know clients, colleagues, and contacts.
• Trusting people to do a good job, giving them information and direction without imposing unnecessary controls.

Req ID: 11134

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Our values shape everything we do:

Be Ambitious to succeed

Be Imaginative to push the boundaries of what’s possible

Be Inspirational to do groundbreaking work

Be always learning and listening to understand

Be Results-focused to exceed expectations

Be actively pro-inclusive and anti-racist across our community, clients and creations

OLIVER, a part of the Brandtech Group, is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive working environment where all employees are encouraged to reach their full potential, and individual differences are valued and respected. All applicants shall be considered for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, neurodivergence, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by local laws.

OLIVER has set ambitious environmental goals around sustainability, with science-based emissions reduction targets. Collectively, we work towards our mission, embedding sustainability into every department and through every stage of the project lifecycle.