Senior Brand Designer

About the role

We're a product design and brand consultancy in San Francisco. We take products from first insight to first customer, working across strategy, industrial design, digital experience, brand identity, packaging, and market launch with one integrated team. Our clients fall into two camps: funded startups (seed to Series B) who've raised money and built something real but lack brand, website, or time, and established companies launching a new sub-brand, entering a new category, or refining an existing product's identity.

Most studios design the brand first and force the product to match. We work the opposite way: brand strategy sets the compass early, but brand design happens after product concept exploration, so the identity is shaped by the physical product—its form, materials, and personality. Logo, color, typography, and the visual system grow out of the product. If working from a real object instead of a blank page sounds like an interesting constraint, this role is hybrid 3-days onsite at our studio at 55 Mississippi Street, San Francisco.

Responsibilities

• Brand identity and visual systems: mood boards, logo exploration/refinement in harmony with product design, color palettes, typographic systems, and supporting visual language (photography, icons, patterns, symbols). Build systems that work across devices, screens, packaging, and trade show booths.
• Brand guidelines and documentation: create usable guidelines covering brand foundation, audience, messaging, identity, and elements. Develop slide templates, icon libraries, pitch decks, and dynamic, evolving brand systems (not static PDFs).
• Packaging graphics: design information hierarchy, logo placement, layout across all surfaces, and print-ready dieline templates. Conduct on-shelf visibility testing and refinement with production vendors alongside structural packaging and industrial design teams.
• Website and digital visual design: high-fidelity desktop/mobile designs, component libraries for Webflow/Framer handoffs. Partner with UX on wireframes, information architecture, and content strategy.
• Brand strategy support: participate in strategy workshops, competitive landscape mapping, audience definition, positioning, tone of voice, and naming (including USPTO search coordination).
• Launch collateral: campaign creative, social templates, email design, sales materials, and swag to ensure a successful launch.

Requirements

• 6+ years of brand design experience for Senior, 9+ for Lead, in a consultancy, in-house brand team, or combination. Agency pace matters more than pedigree.
• A portfolio built on systems, not one-off logos—show what happened after the mark was approved.
• Real command of typography, color, composition, and layout (fundamental skills that show immediately).
• Experience designing brands that live on physical products, packaging, and screens. Work limited to browsers will be a stretch.
• Fluency in Figma and comfort in Adobe CC. Knowledge of print production (dielines, stocks, finishes) and ability to communicate with printers.
• Ability to present work to founders/executives, defend directions with reasoning (not taste), and adapt when better arguments arise.
• Comfort with ambiguity and speed—deadlines (e.g., crowdfunding) don’t move for extra rounds.
• Direct, clear communication: we say what we think without sugarcoating.

Nice to have

• Motion design or ability to art direct it.
• 3D product visualization sensibility (directing renders/marketing assets even if not modeling).
• Naming and verbal identity experience.
• Experience in consumer hardware, connected devices, medical, or robotics categories.
• Shopify, e-commerce, or DTC launch experience.
• Working knowledge of AI tools in design workflows (as time-savers, not gimmicks).

Schedule

Hybrid: 3 days onsite at our San Francisco studio (55 Mississippi Street). In-person collaboration is core to our process with industrial designers, brand designers, and engineers.