Design Lead

About the role

Department: Brand. Employment Type: Full-Time Regular. FLSA Classification: Salaried, Exempt. Reports To: VP of Brand. Travel Requirements: Less than 10%. Work Location: Remote - Green Bay/Chicago preferred. Expected Working Hours: Monday – Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM CST. Role Summary: The Design Lead is a hands-on creative role responsible for bringing the Vital Essentials brand to life across digital, e-commerce, packaging, retail, and integrated marketing. This role brings fresh, distinctive thinking that helps the brand stand apart. This role partners cross-functionally across marketing, e-commerce, and innovation to deliver compelling visual and storytelling assets that strengthen the company’s brand presence and support growth objectives. As a team leader, this individual manages internal and external creative resources, oversees the full design process from concept to completion, and ensures all materials meet brand standards of quality, creativity, and timeliness.

Responsibilities

• Creative Development: Collaborate with brand leadership and external creative partners to develop campaign concepts, visual storytelling, and creative solutions that support brand and business objectives. Generate disruptive, culturally relevant ideas that break category conventions, earn attention, and give the brand an outsized presence in the market.
• Design Execution: Create high-quality design across packaging, retail, trade shows, sales materials, and other brand communications, taking projects from initial concept through final production.
• Performance Marketing: Concept and produce compelling paid and organic content for Meta, TikTok, Amazon SBV, Amazon DSP, and other digital platforms, incorporating performance insights to continuously improve creative effectiveness.
• E-Commerce: Develop conversion-focused creative for Amazon, Chewy, and DTC channels, including storefronts, PDP imagery, A+ content, website assets, and email.
• Content Production: Plan and provide creative direction for photo and video shoots, collaborating with external production partners to develop proprietary brand assets.
• Brand Stewardship: Maintain and evolve the brand’s visual identity, ensuring consistency across all consumer and customer touchpoints. Create and own brand book, guidelines, and style systems.
• Creative Leadership: Provide guidance and mentorship to the Graphic Designer, coordinate external creative resources, and manage competing project priorities to ensure quality and timely delivery.
• Project & Asset Management: Oversee the organization, deployment, and utilization of the Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional design craft, conceptual thinking, and experience across multiple channels, including bold, unconventional ideas that challenged category norms or helped a brand stand apart.
• Minimum of 7 years of progressive experience in creative design and brand development, including print and digital media such as paid social, e-commerce, video, packaging, in-store, and digital advertising.
• Prior experience mentoring junior designers.
• Experience managing external agencies, contractors, and creative partners required.
• Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro