Junior Brand Designer 2021

We were born of a fascination with people-led service organisations and a frustration that they often fail to achieve their full potential. Our founders, Neil and Darrel, started Rufus Leonard to have long-term partnerships enabling our clients to become and remain outstanding in their categories.

Rufus Leonard is an independent agency who builds category-defining service brands through design & technology. We act as the catalyst for service brands with the desire to be foremost, standard-setting, and first choice. With over 30 years of experience, we help brands like Lloyds Banking Group, The Student Hotel, The Gym Group, WWF, and British Gas. We pride ourselves on our mission to deliver meaningful impact to people.

You and your role

As a passionate and enthusiastic Junior Designer, you’ll be working collaboratively with your creative team across a range of accounts and projects. You’ll help us to deliver and implement high quality design solutions for a wide range of creative expressions, including brand framework design, digital design, motion and more.

By working across a wide range of creative tasks and projects, you’ll be supporting your respective Senior Designer and or Design Director with their day-to-day work. This could include smaller brands or digital projects, creative exploration, mood-boarding or brand research.

You’ll need to be a quick learner – listening, showing initiative and acting on creative direction from your core team. We’ll expect you to bring fresh thinking, original ideas and a can-do attitude to the projects you’re involved in.

Key for this first stage of your career will be focusing on broadening your brand experience and developing your hands-on design, craft and executional skills.

Ultimately, we need someone with a hunger to learn and an intense aptitude to develop their communication skills – using a proactive and energetic approach to tackling briefs and exploring new and exciting opportunities as they arise.

Your primary responsibilities

Leadership and management

• Be a key team player, supporting and working with other members of the creative team
• Mentor and guide interns with regular catch-ups, helping them feel at home in the creative team
• Be a present and positive addition to the collaborative culture within the agency – working with other departments and disciplines
• Take direction and feedback from other team members
• Run and manage smaller tactical projects

Creative direction and vision

• Be a hands-on, motivated and ambitious creative – producing quality craft with a keen eye for detail 
• Show a conceptual outlook, thinking both literally and laterally to help produce original and transformative ideas – working as part of the team to push creative boundaries and challenge the status-quo
• Continuously develop your ideas in order to evolve your layout and typographic skills through independent thinking, initiative and proactivity
• Interpret, develop and evolve conceptual ideas and or territories in line with the creative brief, clients’ objectives and the creative vision set by the Creative Director (CD) and Design Director (DD) throughout a project
• Be accurate and precise, with strong attention to detail in the quality of deliverables
• Ensure creative deadlines are met in a sometimes-high-pressured environment
• Demonstrate an understanding and a growing ability to create, develop and deliver brands that live and breathe through different applications, channels and customer touchpoints (digital, social, print, campaign, radio, voice etc.)
• Show a confident approach and unwavering interest to understand our work in the form of motion and movement within the context of creating strong narratives and storyboards
• A growing ability to interpret and contribute to language ideas and approaches, tone of voice, messaging structures and principles
• Communicate clearly and precisely the thinking behind your creative work
• Show confidence with your presentation and storytelling when presenting your own work
• Work should always be reviewed and approved and signed-off by the Executive Creative Director (ECD) and or CD before sharing with the client

 Operational and commercial

• Have a diligent approach to general housekeeping, filing of work, essential information and time management
• Communicate clearly and regularly with your core team throughout a project – providing clear progress and status updates to mitigate risks and delays for the design team
• Using the help of the creative team, recognise and implement the practice of delivering ideas and concepts efficiently and effectively. Drawing on the strength of tried-and-tested techniques and approaches when appropriate
• Be aware of and use, when appropriate, our ‘ways of working’ framework, approach and delivery processes
• Ensure timesheets are accurate and completed on time

 Your skills and experience

• 1+ years experience working at an established brand agency
• Display a clear awareness of current branding trends, both offline and online
• Demonstrate an ability to support senior members of the creative team in auditing and documenting competitor brands
• Collaborate with senior members of the creative team to help deliver creative territories and design concepts that align to the brand strategy
• Contribute to the creation and development of brand assets and best practice communications
• Possess an understanding of brand guidelines and online design systems, and their important role in managing a brand
• Collaborate with the DD and or CD in recommending and meeting third party suppliers and partners on a regular basis and adding them to our Black Book, e.g. technology and innovation partners, editors and animators, photographers, illustrators and typographers
• Show an understanding and appreciation for the creation of innovative and best practice digital, user experiences (UX) and user interfaces (UI) to help create design solutions
• Demonstrate understanding of, and contribute to, the translation of a client’s brand (both existing and new) into digital experiences and designs across a variety of touchpoints
• Display confidence in your understanding of best practice usability and accessibility standards

Essential

• Display strong working knowledge of Adobe Creative programmes (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
• Demonstrate working knowledge of word-processing (Microsoft Office) and presentation software including Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint

Nice to have

• Experience in video production and motion design, especially After Effects
• Basic understanding of Sketch and or Adobe XD
• Understanding of prototyping tools such as InVision, Marvel and Principle
• Working understanding of HTML and CSS