Manager

 

Description:

This is a hands-on managerial role at SRMG Labs DI. Leading a team of Associate level designers, you shall be the backbone of your projects from beginning-to-end. You will plan, prioritise, and deliver stakeholder-centric visual & interaction design activities autonomously, in the context of interdisciplinary projects. As an artist, you shall be accountable for the overall sensory experience of any given Service or Product and are expected to represent depth in the craft of Visual & Interaction Design – as a mentor & guide for junior colleagues, and as an individual contributor to the practice. You will lead client conversations within Visual & Interaction Design, providing articulate recommendations and helping guide stakeholder choices in a manner that drive goal-centric outcomes. In the future, you shall also contribute to proposal-writing and pitches.

 

What you will do

As a highly skilled Visual Artist & Art Director you shall be responsible to balance spirit & rationality, brand & product, functional clarity & emotional impact. You will orchestrate visual, sound & haptic elements into harmonious systematic compositions. Leverage your graphic, motion, sound & interaction design experience and skills together with your team, to translate a brand's DNA into stunning visual & sensory experiences that are contextual, relevant, tasteful, endearing, and built on the foundation of intricate expansive Design Systems. Unlocking your creative mind you will imagine enticing stories – paint a vision – guide your team in bringing a sense of oomph & pizzazz to visual, sound, and haptic aesthetics – pay attention to the tiniest details – push the boundaries of your craft – take peers on visual journeys – and induce admiration for the work you create, through inspirational art, fine crafting & continuous experimentation.

Specifically, you will be responsible for meticulously crafting User Interfaces for digital consumer and enterprise Services & Products by:

+    Translating brand principles, guidelines, themes, and moods into strategic frameworks for visual expressions.

+    Envisioning engaging interactive narratives that are user and business centric.

+    Artfully bringing together multi-media to create breath-taking experiences.

+    Defining, shaping & building scalable design language systems for typography, colour, sound, motion, haptic, components and layouts.

+    Leading Visual & Interaction Design team(s).

 

Your typical day will be:

+    Acting as the day-to-day Visual & Interaction Design lead on your projects (with leadership oversight), whilst guiding a team of designers to achieve the best possible outcomes, without compromising timelines or team harmony.

+    Hands-on designing and managing at least 2 UI & Interaction projects at any given time.

+    Scoping your projects and contributing to the creation of cross-domain roadmaps & timelines, that sync with business requirements and deadlines.

+    Defining and establishing Experience Design pillars with cross-domain peers.

+    Articulating a clear comprehensible vision for the visual & interaction experience of a project, such that it reinforces Brand/Product/Service purpose, vision & goals.

+    Developing stylistic expressions for mood, tone, look, feel, etc. based on brand guidelines to create stakeholder alignment around a visual direction.

+    Evolving brand expression to Systems & Interfaces.

+    Crafting foundations for Design Systems – Typography, Iconography, Colour, Grid, Motion, Sound, Haptic, design components and layouts.

+    Defining, designing, and harmonising utilitarian needs of the user (accessibility, usability, navigation, key features) with more emotional values of design to create unique and distinguished brand equity for the client.

+    Ensuring continuous and regular communication & alignment with delivery, strategy, brand, editorial and marketing teams throughout any engagement.

+    Collaborating in creating concepts that push the bar for quality & excellence.

+    Create multi-media artefacts that tell the story of the work in an impactful way.

+    Story telling your work to senior and cross-domain stakeholders in a confident & convincing manner.

+    Providing team members with guidance for visual & interaction expression.

+    Building stakeholder relationships and responding calmly & proactively to unexpected and untimely requests.

+    Supporting the Senior Manager, Experience Design, and Delivery peers in day-to-day project management.

 

We require that you have:

+    A formal university degree in Graphic Design.

+    10+ years professional experience in an organisation with an established design culture (Design & Technology – consultancy / agency), specifically within Visual & Interaction Design, with solid knowledge of User Experience Design (UX).

+    A stakeholder-centric design strategy & consulting approach, with experience of ‘thinking & doing’ specifically within Visual & Interaction Design. Additional experience as a UX Designer, Design Strategist or a Product Designer is a plus.

+    An outstanding track record as a Visual & Interaction designer developing strategies, systems, interfaces & products that delight readers/customers/users and deliver on business results.

+    Fluency in grasping the DNA of a brand and translating it into world-class, audience-centric, finely crafted, interactive visual artefacts, whilst being relevant and cognisant of its impact on business.

+    Experience in contributing to conceptualisation and development of journeys & blueprints for services & products, as well as to crafting the business logic, IAs, user-flows, wireframes.

+    Ability to empathise with, and sense-make stakeholder feedback and defend design decisions with objective rationale.

+    Soft skills to influence stakeholder thinking and turn them into proponents of design centric solutions.

+    Excellent presentation & storytelling skills, which you leverage to communicate your work.

+    Knowledge of best practices across Visual & Interaction design, alongside industry trends.

+    A spirit of an energetic self-starter, pragmatic and welcoming of ambiguous challenges.

+    High peer, end-user, and client satisfaction with services & products you create.

+    Strong managerial and collaboration skills, with the ability to inspire, persuade and influence, rather than command & control.

+    Excellent team management skills.

+    Affinity to our values at SRMG Labs + the larger SRMG group, and a deep desire for creating services & products that meet people's functional & emotional needs.

+    Deep experience in research, prototyping & testing, including prototyping and testing methods & tools (Hotjar, Lookback, Mouseflow, etc.).

+    Expert knowledge of design tools such as – Figma, Principle, Adobe Creative Suite etc.

+    Willingness to travel for work when required.

+    Business-level proficiency in English.