Senior Graphic Designer

Description of the offer

Senior Graphic Designer (Contract, Part-Time to Full-Time)

Job Description: 

The Design Team at Kasa is looking for an experienced designer with a background in traditional graphic design including print, layout, physical signage, wayfinding, and other printed collateral. Extra points for experience with hospitality specific applications, and package design. Logo and identity design work creating net-new visual identities and/or extending or rebranding existing design systems is also a plus.

This role will primarily support creating physical signage for our properties including exterior branding, welcome, and wayfinding signage, common space signage, and interior instructional and wayfinding signage, as well as in-room collateral.

This role will also support Design leadership and various teams at Kasa by creating internal, guest facing (B2C), and partner specific (B2B) digital presentations decks, style guides, and other digital assets.

Depending on experience level, there is also opportunity for this role to make a significant impact on the visual brand at large through extending and iterating on the existing brand design system.

This role will start as a part-time role and depending on experience level and success, may have a path to full-time if desired.

This role will report directly to the Senior Director of Brand and Design.

All Applications MUST include a current design portfolio.

Job Location: 

This position is location flexible and fully remote.

There is an option for in-person work if desired. Kasa has a satellite office in NYC and the manager for this role is based in San Francisco, CA where occasional co-working is possible.

Regardless of physical location, candidates must be willing to work on a schedule that provides at least 3 hours of overlap per business day between the hours of 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, US Central Time / (GMT-5/6).

Responsibilities:

Day to Day

• Use existing brand design system and style guidelines to create requested physical signage and collateral assets (such as in-room print pieces and on-site wayfinding) for Kasa properties.
• Use existing brand design system and style guidelines to create requested digital assets, such as presentation decks, case studies, and web design elements for various departments at Kasa.
• Create slides and digital signage for guest facing screens within Kasa properties.
• Occasionally support marketing by creating assets for print/digital ads and/or social media.

Potential Projects

• Reorganize and refine existing Kasa brand design guidelines and style guides for better consistency of design across projects and ease of use by yourself and other designers.
• Create a “signage catalog” of plug-and-play physical signage design templates for new Kasa properties to utilize in order to increase speed, efficiency and design consistency when creating new property signage at Kasa.
• Design updated in-unit collateral and packaging to enhance guest experience and upscale brand perception.
• Design concise, and compelling case-study digital “cards” for the Kasa Partners website
• Create a unified Master Template with defined styles, colors, and assets, in Google Slides for creating future B2B and internal Kasa presentations.
• Design digital and physical “City Guides” for Kasa guests.
• Create a library of templates and pre-made brand/graphic assets in company wide Canva “Brand Kit” for departments to “self-serve” in creating low impact or temporary assets for property events or operations projects.
• Provide feedback on the creation of and aid in the populating of assets in, an updated company wide Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.
• Propose updates, modification, and extensions to the Kasa brand design system and style guide in order to enhance and “upscale” the visual aesthetic of the brand.

Basic Keys to Working with the Design Team:

• Self-manage and prioritize design assignments from different departments will accurately communicating timeline estimates and your current project bandwidth
• Follow brand guidelines for design materials
• Collaborate with your team for guidance on brand and copy when in doubt.
• Use Notion for task organization and feedback
• Communicate proactively with your team via Slack
• Upload finished work to a shared drive or company Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.
• Pay attention to details and correct mistakes, such as copy or visuals that deviate from the brand.

Success Metrics: 

• Creating work that is intuitive, concise, easy to follow, and improves guest experience during their stay as well as positively impacts their perception about the quality of Kasa’s brand.
  • As measured by changes in guest feedback and guest ratings as well as NQS score once your work has been implemented at a specific property.
• Completed work being free of spelling and grammatical errors.
  • As measured by number of errors found in work during prepress or after handoff. (Content doesn’t have to be perfect for internal crits, though you will share responsibility with any contributing copywriters for “shipped” or printed work being “clean” of errors.)
• Your contributions improve the aesthetic and functionality of Kasa design collateral.
  • As measured by changes to guest feedback and internal team feedback.
• Delivering work “on-time” per your estimations and/or proactively and clearly communicating any changes or challenges with your team and manager.
  • As measured by ratio of projects completed “on-time” and “clean” against your initial estimate or proactively updated timeline.
• Working in an organized, sustainable, and collaborative manner.
  • As measured by
    • design team and cross-functional feedback about working together
    • how quickly the design team can find and reference assets you’ve created
    • How easily your manager and the design team can understand your prioritization and progress on current tasks and projects.

Qualifications:

All applications MUST include a portfolio of work. Other than that, more important than meeting 100% of qualifications, we are looking for collaborative, diverse, long-term collaborators with a growth mindset, a commitment to proactive communication, and a bias towards action. Folks who are aligned and excited by working with high performing colleagues, hall-of-fame hospitality, and designing collateral and signage that is functional and concise with an approachable and upscale quality aesthetic.

• 6+ years of experience as a graphic designer.
• At least 2+ of those years must be in creating printed design collateral that was actually produced and used in real life situations.
• Basic knowledge of physical printing for design projects. E.g. materials (paper stocks, substrates), printing processes, print finishings, embellishments, and coatings and how digital colors will translate (or not) onto various physical printed materials.
• A keen eye for design and aesthetics.
• Basic copywriting skills (English) capable of identifying off-brand or confusing content.
• An eye for detail that looks out for content and design mistakes and suggests solutions.
• Proficient in Adobe InDesign
• Proficient in a vector based design program such as Adobe Illustrator and/or Figma.
• Fluent in written and spoken English (ILR Level 3 or above).
• Comfortable using Notion for task tracking and project management.
• Skilled in designing for both print and digital mediums, with a good understanding of the unique requirements of each.
• Communicates effectively and independently with team members, understanding project requirements, providing updates, and gathering feedback.
• Takes responsibility for managing schedules, workloads, and meeting deadlines.

Bonus Skills and Experience:

• Experience designing and producing non-paper signage, and/or multi-material signage.

• Copywriting
• Proficient with Canva and experience setting up a Canva Brand Kit
• Package Design
• Experience creating full design systems / brand guidelines, and/or style guides
• Prepress experience and coordinating printed design asset hand-offs to printers/vendors as well as project management of printed asset production
• Print shop and/or sign shop experience including extended knowledge of substrates, print materials, methods, inks, coatings, embellishments, finishings, and mountings.
• Motion graphics and/or animation
• Photo retouching skills
• Video/video editing skills
• Service Design Experience
• Traditional Hospitality Experience
• Experiential/Interactive design experience
• Photography skills (shooting and/or post-process)

And if you got this far, wow! Thanks for reading. You should probably apply.

How to apply?