Senior Visual Designer
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The Senior Visual Designer plays an integral role in the creative development and execution of product marketing, product brand, and consumer reception of the product. A Senior Visual Designer helps in mentoring Junior Visual Designers while simultaneously supporting the Head of UX (User Experience).
His roles encompass; creating a positive creative team- work environment, collaborating and partnering up with User Experience managers, product development, as well as interacting and forming relationships with consumers. The Senior Graphic Designer takes direction directly from the Head of UX and guides the junior Visual Designers in meeting the standards or targets set by this Head of department.
As much as the Senior Visual Designer receives assistance from junior Visual Designers, he should be self-sufficient and capable of performing his functions independently and autonomously.
Objectives and Responsibilities of the Senior Visual Designer
Collaboration: Just like his junior counterpart, the Senior Visual Designer is tasked with collaboration with cross-disciplinary teams in order to concept, validate, iterate, and refine the proposed or implemented product features for further enhancement of the user experience. The most prominent departments that the Senior Visual designer works with are the product development departments such as the engineering department and the marketing department.
Research: The Senior Visual Designer is tasked with the constant improvement of the research and design processes already conducted by the Junior Visual Designers. In the performance of this function, the Senior Visual Designer proposes of better methods of consumer surveying as well as formulating suitable research approaches for different demographics. This is done in order to maximize the creative potential of the user experience through the product, including the fluency in responsive design principles and practices of front-end development.
Creative role: The Senior Visual Designer does simply rely on the creative input of Junior Visual Designers; he also has to summon his own creative juices and aid in the creation and improvement of visual storytelling. This further aids in connecting the dots between consumer needs, product designs, product concepts, and design principles, which ultimately leads to the achievement of this position’s objective; creation of an excellent consumer experience through the product.
At this capacity, the Senior Visual Designer directs the Junior Visual Designers in the creation of product prototypes; style guides, vision storytelling, design provocations, case studies, presentations, comps, among other tools that communicate the design’s intent to collaborating product development departments and the Head of UX during presentations.
Consultancy: The Senior Visual Designer is also tasked with playing a consultancy role for the Head of UX as well as the sales/marketing departments. Being the Senior Visual Designer, he is the person best positioned to regularly relay the product’s unique selling points with each developing feature modification to the sales and marketing teams. The Senior Visual Designer also makes presentations to these teams when new products have been developed by the business in order to help them understand how to best approach their marketing activities and how best to appeal to the consumers.
In addition to this, the Senior Visual Designer will also assist the Head of UX in understanding product design changes and developments in order for this information to be, in turn, simply and clearly conveyed to the Director of UX and business stakeholders.
Support/Content Creation: The Senior Visual Designer does not simply act as a consultant for collaborating departments and the Head of UX. Rather, the Senior Visual Designer plays an active supportive role for these parties. The Senior Visual Designer produces high-quality branding, marketing and sales materials inclusive of; business pitches, packaging, catalogues, editorial layouts, digital campaigns approaches, buying guides, retail displays, presentation decks, brochures, and presentation spaces.
Required Qualifications of the Senior Visual Designer
Education: Candidates for this position must have a Bachelor’s degree (Master’s preferred) in Graphic Design, Interface Design, Fine Art/Design, Advertising, or Marketing or a degree in any other related field. A work experience equaling this educational requirement is also acceptable for the position.
Experience: A suitable candidate will have 5-10 years working experience in the field of Visual Design or any related field. He will also have proven experience working on projects that require extensive use of typography and graphic design skills. The candidate must also have a proven successful track record in designing front-end product visual or interface designs.
Software: The role of Senor Visual Designer is one meant to enhance the functions of the Junior Visual Designer. The Senior Visual Designer candidates must demonstrate superior proficiency in the use of Adobe Creative Suites, InDesign, Illustrator, 3D Max, Google SketchUp, 3D design softwares, and Photoshop. This is in order to be able to compliment and supplement the designs developed by the Junior Visual Designers prior to presentation to the Head of UX.
Ms Office: The Senior Visual Designer must be proficient in Ms Word and PowerPoint in order to create engaging content for presentations made to the Head of UX, product development departments, and sales and marketing departments.
Communication Skills: A candidate for this position will have to have excellent verbal and written communication skills. The role requires that one make regular presentations to the Head of UX, sales and marketing teams, as well as to the product development managers regarding proposed and approved product design modifications; these presentations must involve the conveyance of information in the most clear, concise, and understandable manner.
Apart from presentations, collaborative initiatives across cross-functional departments can only be effective where there is clear and concise communication and for this reason, the Senior Visual Designer must possess these skills for the efficient execution of his duties.
Inter-personal Skills: The candidate must also demonstrate various interpersonal skills if he is to execute the functions of this role efficiently. Some of the interpersonal skills necessary to make a good Senior Visual Designer are;
A curious, open-minded, consumer-centered, and experimental approach to product design; a positive attitude that inspires and motivates Junior Visual Designers as well as collaborating personnel; appositive attitude that pushes others to test their creative boundaries; a strong sense of motivation that enables both independent working and team collaboration; a consistent desire to learn and to adapt to ever evolving market and consumer needs/preferences.