Position type: Full-time

Reports to: Creative Director

Go beyond the visual.

OXD is a human-centred design and technology consulting firm working with clients across industries to solve complex, dynamic, and networked problems. We’re looking for an experienced Intermediate Designer to join our Creative team, full-time, to help us work with clients like Honeywell, The University of British Columbia, Government of Alberta, Government of British Columbia, TransLink, and FortisBC.

Working cross functionally with experts from across our organization—user experience designers, developers, QA engineers, and project managers—our new Intermediate Designer will bring a passion for great visual communication to human-centred, accessible digital experiences.

Our new Intermediate Designer loves typography that’s so tight, it hurts. They get revved up over colour and contrast and balance and rhythm. Thinking about motion in interactions is just second nature to them. And they’re obsessed—obsessed—with great brand guidelines and comprehensive design systems.

Does that sound like you? Read on and let’s find out if you’re a fit.

What you’ll be doing a lot of

• Solve problems, creatively. At OXD, we don’t draw the line at departmental or discipline boundaries. Everyone has a responsibility to make the best work possible, and Creative designers are in a unique position to think about our clients’ challenges from a fresh visual and conceptual viewpoint. You are our champion for branding, communication, and visual design from the earliest stages of a project to the very end.

• Design and production for websites and web applications. Working both within the Creative team and without, you’ll be helping to bring our clients’ projects and services to life—on all viewports, screen sizes, and devices—through visual designs and interactive prototyping.

• Work with design systems. Whether updating a pre-existing design system, or helping build a new system from scratch, you will help maintain the design systems that keep our interfaces consistent and unified, ready for use by front end developers.

• Work with clients. Either as part of a team of Creative designers or representing the visual design role on your own, you’ll be drawing out our clients’ needs, working as their brand guardian, and walking them through key visual design decisions as they relate to their business.

• Follow brand guidelines. Most web and application designs sit within the context of our clients’ other communications. You know how to create stunning visual solutions while still working within those constraints, and you also know when to push back due to critical technical or accessibility concerns.

• Design QA. Working closely with OXD’s QA team, you’ll review websites and applications built from your designs and ensure that our vital visual communication standards are followed.

Other things you’ll be doing, as needed

• Design research and exploration. Using design research, mood boards, and style tiles, you’ll help articulate a design’s vision for our clients and their users.

• Asset management. Our assets are only as useful as they are findable. You’re dogmatic about maintaining file naming conventions, good file organization, and documentation.

• Presentation design. You’ll be designing persuasive decks and presentations in Google Slides or PowerPoint.

• Microcopy. You’re not afraid to identify and suggest copy improvements for any design you’re working on, knowing that it will result in a better user experience overall.

• Creative ideation. You’ll generate creative ideas either alone or in a team setting.

• Graphic and photo editing. You’ll edit, adjust, and retouch photographs to suit a project’s art direction.

• Sales support. You’ll be asked to work on sales pitches and provide estimates for your areas of expertise.

Are you a good fit?

Personal qualifications

• You have a human-centered mindset that puts the audience first.

• You’re great with clients and have developed the soft skills needed to work well with them. You’re a patient, empathetic, and clear communicator.

• An obsessive attention to detail is what drives your work. You can’t help but notice the little things and try to improve them.

• You’re comfortable with uncertainty and with newer, more agile ways of working.

• You live to learn—every day—and aren’t afraid to ask questions.

• You’re fanatical about doing the best work possible, but not at the expense of meeting deadlines.

• While you take your work very seriously, you don’t take yourself too seriously and aren’t afraid to have a little fun along the way.

• You’re a team player who doesn’t shy away from work or tasks that might be outside your comfort zone.

Minimum requirements

• 5+ years of web and UI design experience in an agency or in-house design department

• A degree or a diploma in a design- or communications-related field, or equivalent experience

• Expert-level mastery of the production tools commonly used in modern web, UI, and graphic design and prototyping—namely Sketch and InVision

• High degree of comfort using Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other Adobe suite tools

• Excellent typography skills

• A proven ability to design with all levels of accessibility in mind

Things that will give you an edge

• Experience working with UX prototyping tools like Axure

• Ability to rapidly prototype design possibilities at various levels of fidelity

• Experience with using user research methods, information architecture techniques, and wireframing

• Illustration abilities

• Experience designing logos

• Experience with motion design, video editing, or 3D modelling

• Digital product design experience

• Experience with multimedia design

• Experience with planning and designing infographics