Job Description

Visual Communication Design Lead In a nutshell:

IDEO Munich is in search of a Visual Communication Design Lead capable of managing projects, with a focus on leading teams and clients through complex design challenges. You’ll work collaboratively with teams to bring our voices, stories, and concepts to life. The ideal candidate has a strong foundation in graphic design, experience establishing and applying practical and conceptual design principles to brands, interactive and immersive experiences, and physical spaces. We're looking for designers who can bring their unique expression and voice to each design challenge we face.

Purpose of the Craft

Visual Communication Designers at IDEO are purpose-led movement makers and immersive strategic storytellers that can mobilize leaders, teams and organizations. They bridge brains & beauty, magic & mastery to help clients recognize and realize desirable futures that are inspiring, inclusive and immersive.

Some of the key outcomes of Visual Communication Design:

• • Turning purpose and strategy into aspirational stories through visuals, writing, and other media
  • Creating concise, compelling competitive brand strategies, and expressions that differentiate in the market and attract new customers
  • Taking data and complex information and expressing it in a digestible but also actionable manner

Why is this role important for IDEO’s work?

At IDEO we create positive impact through design. In this role, you’ll act as a project lead, guiding multidisciplinary teams through complex client challenges and tackling all aspects of the design process from user research to prototyping and communicating the overall project story to the client team. You’ll have the opportunity to work on a diverse portfolio of projects that involve data, experience, interaction, digital product, and service design. Your contributions may take on a variety of forms including brand strategy, brand expression, storytelling, user interface, user experience, data visualization, packaging, and environmental design.

Once here you will:

• Lead project teams and collaborate with multidisciplinary designers
• Participate in user research with a particular focus on the stories people tell each other and themselves
• Look out into the world for design and experiential inspiration, and bring that inspiration back to the studio and to our clients
• Translate verbal ideas into rough visual concepts, creating prototypes of different levels of fidelity to help teams determine design directions
• Design complete experiences from concept to prototype to final conceptual deliverables which may include websites, apps, combined digital and physical products, storyboards, guidance documents, and environments with the end-user in mind
• Collaborate on the development of brand strategies, identity, and expression
• Create compelling visual narratives (e.g. decks, movies, posters, scripts...) that communicate user stories and our strategic solutions, that inspire change and deepen the impact of our engagements
• Be an advocate for exceptional visual design

Relevant Experience and Mindsets:

Experience:

• • At least 5-7 years of graphic design/brand/interactive experience across a variety of applications and media
  • Bachelor’s degree or higher in graphic design, visual design or an equivalent degree
  • Experience leading client work and multidisciplinary teams through complex, often ambiguous design challenges
  • Passion for visual/graphic design: strong, versatile portfolio with an elevated sense of layout, design patterns, color, and typography
  • Experience establishing and expressing brand identity, from understanding strategy to creative interpretation and execution; designing visual identities and building clear and useful guidance documents for implementation
  • Experience in strategic storytelling, immersive experiences design and motion design
  • Experience creating and expressing brand identities across user interfaces
  • Extensive experience with a variety of graphic design and interactive tools including Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch/Figma, etc.

Mindset:

• • Able to navigate team dynamics, clients, and timelines to deliver exceptional design. Optimistic and open to new ideas and ways of working, and the ability to push boundaries and explore new territories within design. Able to zoom in and out between tactical and strategic tasks.
  • Ready to learn from failure and design critiques and then iterate to learn faster. Take chances without being afraid to fail and learn along the way
  • Curious and proactive — a desire to learn about people’s needs and the ability to generate ideas, and get things done. Ready to pitch-in on tasks, big or small

Some previous projects to check out:

• This Startup Revolutionized an Industry Through Design: Launching a nationwide venture that redefines and simplifies how customers engage with their pharmacy
• Boston's New Citizen-Centered Site: Redesigning a welcoming, intuitive website for Bostonians to have a reliable resource, making life in the city more manageable.
• Future of Automobility : Designed an online visualization of how life with driverless cars might really look and feel. It considers four scenarios: “Moving People,” which looks at how commutes will change when we can look away from the road; “Moving Things,” where we examine automated package-delivery fleets; “Moving Spaces,” where we envision mobile offices meeting people where they live and parking in underused areas of our cities; and “Moving Together,” which explores how the interior of future vehicles will be customized to meet our personal needs during ride-sharing.
• Building the Future of Electric Mobility: Helping a startup to move from sketch to scale at speed

What does IDEO offer you?

IDEO is a place where you can solve diverse, complex challenges for our clients or the organization, alongside thoughtful, intelligent individuals who lead with curiosity, empathy, and optimism. We work hard, but we also intentionally craft moments that allow our community to pause, create, and connect. We encourage our community to bring their whole selves to work, respect the need for work-life balance, and allow for autonomy in the design process and your career.

Commitment to Diversity

At IDEO, we are committed to the work of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within our organization and in the world. Our purpose of having disproportionate, world-changing impact through design is directly connected to our ability to bring many different perspectives to the table. This applies to our candidates, the people we hire, the clients and customers we serve, and the communities we learn from in our research.

As a human-centered organization, we are committed to working with and designing for people of every race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, physical ability or attribute, religion, national origin, or political belief. We recognize that this commitment requires ongoing work and sustained attention, as well as adaptation to new insights and best practices. Read our most recently updated Commitments to further Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at IDEO here .

Application instructions:

To apply, please submit your resume, cover letter, and your portfolio. Your portfolio should include at least 4 examples of work-related projects. In particular, we want to hear about the process involved in developing the design or project.

Equal Opportunity Employer

IDEO is an equal opportunity employer; applicants are considered for all roles without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, marital, parental, veteran or military status, unfavorable military discharge, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law.