SENIOR DESIGNER - LONDON
Chapter 2 · London, United Kingdom · hybrid
SENIOR DESIGNER - LONDON
Polished, High-End brand execution across Print & Digital for Beauty, Cosmetics and Fashion clients.
We're Seen & Heard: a global creative agency in Newcastle and London, making brilliant work for some of the world's biggest brands. Now we want a Senior Designer to raise the bar in London. Hands-on, craft-obsessed and the first person everyone shows their work to. Two studios, one team, loads of great work.
· High level of page layout skill
· Digital: e-commerce, social, and web banners
· Print: leaflets and brochures
· Digital publications: mobile, e-books, and flip books
Why this role matters.
This is the big design seat in our London studio. You'll spend most of your week doing what you love, designing, but you'll also set the bar for the studio and be the first person everyone wants to show their work to.
There's no line management here, just the good bit: giving honest, useful feedback that makes everything leaving the London studio even better. You'll help less experienced designers grow, and champion great work, smart workflows and a healthy dose of curiosity.
You'll also help bring our two studios closer together. Newcastle and London should feel like one design team working in two places. That doesn't happen through process. It happens when people in both studios talk, share work early and hold each other to the same high standard.
This is a role to grow into. In three years it'll be bigger than it is on day one, and you'll have a real hand in shaping what it becomes. It suits someone who lives our values of curiosity, partnerships, insight, agility and integrity, and who solves problems through beautiful design rather than seeing design as just an output. If you want a say in how the studio works, not just what it makes, and you care deeply about everything that leaves the building, we'd love to meet you.
Where you'll fit in.
Line management sits with the Studio Manager, who covers both sites. Creative direction and the final quality gate on global toolkits sit with the Lead Designer in Newcastle; this role works close to that and contributes to the standard rather than owning the gate. The equivalent senior designer in Newcastle is a peer, with no reporting line in either direction. Scheduling and job planning come through the PM team.
You'll work across our whole client base, so no two weeks look the same.
We're flexible on working pattern, but this is a studio role, so you'll spend most of the week with us in our Hackney studio. Expect the occasional trip to Newcastle, plus client meetings in and around London.
What you'll be doing.
DESIGN AND CRAFT
· The senior hands-on designer in London, working across the full range of studio output: brand and campaign work, print and retail, digital, social and e-commerce, long-form documents and presentation.
· Get under the skin of every brief. Ask the right questions before work starts, then use your skills, and those of the people around you, to turn complex problems into simple, beautiful solutions.
· Finished artwork to production standard: specification, pre-press, formats, colour, print methods and retail specs.
· Work inside established brand systems, with the judgement to recognise the distinction between legitimate creative stretch and a breach of brand character.
· Brief and art direct specialists where a job needs them, including motion, 3D and video colleagues, without needing to do their job for them.
· Love a challenge. When a job is genuinely tricky, you're the one we'll turn to.
BUILDING FOR SCALE
A large part of what we produce is built once and used many times, in several languages and across a number of markets. That changes what a good file is, and it is a discipline we expect this role to hold.
· Build masters and templates other people can work in: structured, named, consistent, and documented where documentation is appropriate.
· Design for adaptation from the first decision: text expansion, alternative formats, market variation, regulatory and legal copy.
· Use creative automation and AI-assisted production where it accelerates or enhances the process, and be clear about where it does not. We are building this capability and expect this role to have a view on it and to push it forward.
· Feed production experience back into how the studio’s tools and processes develop, rather than quietly working around them.
DEVELOPING THE DESIGNERS AROUND YOU
Craft mentoring rather than line management. Objectives, appraisal and the formal side of managing people sit with the Studio Manager. What we're asking for is the stuff that makes great designers: attention, honest critique and time.
· Mentor less experienced designers in London. Review work in progress, explain the reasoning, and resist the temptation to simply fix the file.
· Critique work leaving the London studio and say when it is not good enough, including when saying so is difficult.
· Set the tone for how work is shown and discussed: early, openly and without defensiveness.
· Design through others where the job calls for it. Set the direction, hand it over, and stay close enough that the quality is held.
· Tell us when someone is ready for more, and where we are missing a skill.
CLIENTS AND BRIEFS
· Take briefs directly from clients, and ask the questions that make a brief workable before anyone starts.
· Present work and explain creative decisions in terms the client cares about.
· Hold a position where a request would damage the work or the brand, and know when to concede.
· Be a confident, credible creative voice in the room.
· Work with the producers, project managers and directors, flagging things like timing or scope risk early.
TWO STUDIOS, ONE TEAM
· Be the London end of a single shared standard, in regular contact with the Lead Designer and the senior designers in Newcastle.
· Share work across sites as routine rather than as an event: put London work up for review, and review what comes out of Newcastle.
· Help new starters in London get to know the Newcastle team quickly.
· Represent the London view as studio standards, processes and tooling develop.
EXPERIENCE
· Solid experience as a mid-weight or senior designer in an agency, studio or in-house creative team, with a portfolio that demonstrates print and digital execution.
· Artwork and print production to a finished standard: specification, pre-press, print methods, retail and POS.
· Digital output: social, e-commerce, display, and the appropriate formats.
· Working inside established brand systems and guidelines for large brands.
· Building master files and templates intended to be scaled and adapted by other people.
· Creative automation and AI-assisted production: current and hands-on, with a clear view of where it helps and where it does not.
· Taking a brief directly from a client and presenting work back to them.
· Supporting less experienced designers, formally or otherwise, or a real appetite to start.
· Expert across Adobe Creative Cloud, and InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop in particular.
WHAT MAKES YOU GREAT
· Typography and layout of a standard that others can learn from.
· Fast and accurate at volume, and happy to roll their sleeves up.
· Able to critique someone else’s work so that the work improves and the person still wants to do it.
· Confident leading the conversation in the room, and just as comfortable being challenged in it.
· Clear about the difference between a preference and a problem.
· As organised in the file as on the page.
· Generous with what they know.
· Endlessly curious about the craft and the industry, and always bringing fresh ideas back to the studio.
BONUS POINTS
· Global or multi-market brand experience, including adaptation and localisation across languages.
· Scripting or automation inside Adobe applications, or experience of a creative automation platform.
· Experience of working across more than one site, or with colleague