Middleweight / Senior Designer

About us

We are Ave – a branding and design studio based in Islington, London. We specialise in working with the charity and not-for-profit sector. With an ethical outlook and a creative edge, we provide strategic brand, print and website design consultancy services to a range of clients. Collaborating only with the organisations we love, we work hard to push, evolve, and reshape our clients’ brand identities and communications with our holistic, bespoke approach. Our work combines beautifully crafted graphic design with strategic, targeted messaging, in a way that delivers real, measurable results.

The role

We are very busy, and so are looking for a middleweight or senior designer to join our team. The role is varied and hands on; you’ll be responsible for working on a variety of projects at the same time; working solo on some as well as working within a larger team on others, taking projects through from initial briefing to final artwork delivery. We would expect you to be equally experienced in design for web as you are in design for print; this would include producing concepts in XD as well as templating websites and preparing developer handovers. Illustration ability would be useful, but not compulsory, as we work on a lot of animation projects.

Contract: Initially a six month contract, with the potential to become contracted full time

• Salary: £35,000 - £45,000 p/a depending on experience.
• Hours: 5 days a week, 7.5hrs a day – happy also to discuss part time if suitable
• Location: We offer a flexible working pattern, with minimum 2-day a week in the London studio.
• Experience: At least 4+ years of experience in this role within the creative industry/agency setting

Benefits:

• Equivalent of 24 days holiday, plus bank holidays
• Your birthday and the days between Christmas and New Year off
• Summer and Christmas parties
• Christmas bonus
• Paid overtime
• Annual training/courses allocation
• One Friday off every 6 weeks for professional development
• We offer interest-free loans to employees and advanced purchase of travel carts/tickets
• We facilitate pre-tax charity donations from staff PAYE to ensure charities get more money from monthly direct debits
• We actively encourage sustainable commuting and limit in-person meetings to reduce our carbon footprint.

Day-to-day tasks:

• Excellent all round design skills, with proven experience in brand, design for print and website design
• Experience with preparing website handovers for developers would be advantageous but not compulsory
• Experience of questioning and developing design briefs
• Strong eye for detail
• Knowledge of best practice for print and digital touchpoints, especially accessible design
• Excellent knowledge of Creative Cloud programmes, with XD being highly desirable
• Experience working (in an administrative/back end capacity) with WordPress
• Ability to create accurate, print-ready artwork
• Good communication (both spoken and written) and organisational skills
• Ability to work solo and within a team depending on the size of the project
• The ability to effectively manage more than one design brief at a time and meet multiple short deadlines
• Desire to be a key player in a small team
• Have a positive attitude and an ability to have fun.

The person we would love to meet is:

• Experienced.

Your experience will enable you to feel comfortable at each stage of the design process, from brief to delivery and presentation

• Confident.

Feeling comfortable in a fast-paced environment is going to be imperative, as is having the ability to be spontaneous and reprioritise work depending on the day to day activity

• Communicative.

Clear communication is core to your role, you will be talking frequently to clients via email and calls, as well as with the wider team at Ave. You will need to be confident in what you’re talking about, articulating clearly and in a timely fashion

• Organised.

The role will involve planning and execution, with frequent reviews with Ave’s director. Good organisation will be a huge benefit!

• Values led.

We are a team united by a shared purpose in working for cause-driven organisations and charities that are working towards making people and planet better

• Fun.

We work hard, but we play hard too! We are a quirky bunch, and want to have fun whilst we are earning a living. There is lots of music, lunches and nights out here and there too.

Interview process

• We are committed to an inclusive interview process and would invite shortlisted applicants to an online or in-person interview.
• Questions will be shared with all shortlisted applicants ahead of the interview.