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Brand design is a field that is highly attuned to the consumer psyche and shifting market landscapes. As a result, jobs within this field continue to be in demand. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, graphic designers and, by extension, brand designers can expect3% employment growth between now and 2032, which suggests a level of stability and availability for the foreseeable future. Whether your company is looking to refresh its current brand identity or build a compelling visual profile from the ground up, hiring a brand designer is a smart decision.

Brand designers conceptualize and promote a company’s public image, often working with clients and other creative professionals to develop a distinct look, feel, and message. Expert brand designers are adept at crafting cohesive visual narratives that resonate with consumers on an emotional level. If executed well, an organization’s brand identity becomes both recognizable and trusted.

In this hiring guide, we outline what a brand designer does, how to identify a freelance designer who aligns with your organization’s goals, and how to adopt recruitment strategies to help your business reach the strongest pool of qualified brand design candidates. Brand design services can benefit all types of companies, from startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to midsize and large corporations.

What Attributes Distinguish Quality Brand Designers From Others?

Expert brand designers are capable of developing clear, consistent, and captivating messaging that appeals to clients and end users. Hiring a skilled brand designer can help your business engage with customers, increase revenue, and promote lifelong brand loyalty.

When hiring managers and business owners consider what type of brand designer would best suit their organization’s needs and design projects, they should seek a dynamic candidate with competency in the following areas:

Strong Visual Skills

Brand designers usually have graphic design experience, which heavily emphasizes visual hierarchies, form, flow, and both verbal and nonverbal communication. A strong understanding of layout and composition is imperative for a brand designer to convey meaning and represent ideas more successfully.

Strong candidates will also be able to visualize how their designs will appear across a multitude of platforms, such as websites, apps, billboards, brochures, print ads, and digital data visualizations. Brand designers should be detail-oriented, comfortable with problem-solving, adaptable to changing consumer landscapes, and willing to collaborate with company owners, managers, directors, and additional creative professionals.

Logo Design

Any brand’s identity is heavily dependent on an easily recognizable logo—think of leading e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopify, or Etsy, and health and wellness brands like Peloton, Lululemon, or Whole Foods. For both new businesses and established brands, a logo is often the first visual representation of a brand that customers encounter. It helps establish a brand identity and reflects the business’s personality, values, and mission. A well-designed logo can leave a lasting impression and differentiate the brand from competitors.

A proficient designer will be able to transform business goals, values, and identity into a carefully crafted visual representation using images, shapes, and colors. Traditionally, this process begins with conducting market research to assess the target audience, evaluate industry trends, and gauge the competition from similar brands. Insight gleaned from this undertaking will help guide the direction of the overall project.

A quality brand design candidate will synthesize this information in order to generate a logo that aligns with a company’s overarching message. Depending on the deliverables, a brand designer may use certain typography styles or fonts that resonate with the brand’s objectives. A skilled hire adept in brand identity design will understand the psychology of colors and how to employ them in order to convey specific emotions. Additional elements such as illustration, iconography, texture, and pattern may also be incorporated into a logo’s design.

Brand designers should be comfortable using graphic design software, such asAdobe Creative Cloud, to create mock-ups and refined digital versions of their work. Additionally, professional designers will be open to receiving feedback from clients in order to develop logos that satisfy brand strategy and vision.

Client Brand Guideline Expertise

Brand designers, as well as web and UI/UX (user interface/user experience) specialists, should be keenly aware of their client’s current brand style guide or guidelines, which often dictate the use of color palettes, spacing, logo placement, typography, and other visually driven design elements. When reviewing brand guidelines, the designer should ask questions about specific constraints, limitations, variations, or modifications a client may have. Throughout this process, an experienced brand designer will also review any past marketing materials and design assets that adhere to the brand guidelines, which will aid their understanding of the brand’s history, mission, and overall positioning.

Communication is critical during this stage, and a designer should be able to iterate as needed. Refining design materials to meet the guidelines through rounds of revisions is a common practice, and quality candidates will ensure that any modifications are cohesive and ready to use across a variety of marketing channels. Attention to detail, flexibility in iterating designs, and a commitment to continuous improvement are key attributes that the candidate should embody to deliver sound brand design solutions.

Market Awareness

A brand designer should be familiar with ongoing market trends, emerging technologies, and consumer preferences in order to create meaningful and impactful brand assets in the design process. Staying abreast of cultural and social shifts is also important, especially when partnering with global clients.

Professional designers should always be receptive to adjusting design strategies based on a client’s industry while maintaining ethical design practices that adhere to copyright and trademark laws. By actively maintaining a level of market awareness, brand designers can make informed and relevant decisions and stand out from the competition.

How Can You Identify the Ideal Brand Designer for You?

If your company is interested in revitalizing its brand identity—or even if the identity is in the earliest stages of brand development—a brand designer’s discerning eye can make all the difference. Hiring a brand designer is an excellent way to bolster your business’s market presence and reinvigorate customer relations.

To begin the hiring process for a brand designer, your company should define the project’s scope, mission, and budget. This allows your team to decide whether it’s best to hire a junior or senior candidate, and to set expectations as to what the final deliverables will look like. Factors such as timeline and workplace culture should also be taken into account. Regardless of whether you choose to hire a junior brand designer or a more seasoned professional, it’s necessary to understand the choices carefully before making a decision.

Typically, junior brand designers will have limited professional experience, which means they have had less hands-on training. As a result, brand designers who are still in the nascent phase of their careers are responsible for smaller and more straightforward website designs. However, this provides your business the perfect opportunity to direct these candidates in accordance with your design standards and workplace expectations. By partnering a junior brand designer with a veteran designer as a mentor, you allow them to work with a more experienced colleague to hone their specializations and create more complete design solutions.

In contrast, senior brand designers will have considerable experience in design. These designers have nuanced insider knowledge, which helps to lay the foundation for polished and impactful end products. Senior brand designers exhibit a strong command of brand identity craftsmanship and can offer high levels of insight, articulation, and flexibility. Of course, hiring senior brand designers is significantly more expensive than hiring their junior counterparts, but the higher rate reflects their successful track record and years of experience, which they can bring to bear on executing a professional branding campaign for you.

A solid brand design candidate should possess a combination of creative and technical skills. Proficiency in graphic design software, a sharp eye for visual elements, strong typography skills, and a deep understanding of color theory are only a few of the abilities a designer should display. Brand designers should also excel in visual storytelling, exhibit a knowledge of branding principles, and have the ability to create memorable logos and eye-catching graphics. The ability to communicate and collaborate with other creatives, such as UX designers and web design specialists, is also an essential skill for a brand designer to possess.

A well-rounded team full of both junior and senior designers can be advantageous to the sustainability of your company’s design-related ventures. By blending the technical expertise of long-serving design veterans with the enthusiasm of entry-level creatives, your brand’s identity is more likely to resonate with a wider audience, paving the way for a stronger branding presence.

How to Write a Brand Design Job Description for Your Project

Drafting a brand designer job description doesn’t have to be a chore; however, it’s imperative to outline exactly what your organization expects from a potential candidate. Oftentimes, brand designers are mistaken for graphic designers, and while their roles may seem similar on the surface, each of these roles demands a finely tuned skill set. In order to reach a top-tier brand design candidate, consider including the following competencies when writing your job listing:

Proficiency With Graphic Design Tools

A brand designer candidate should be proficient in a number of graphic design software tools geared toward delivering a polished final product. As mentioned, Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes applications such asPhotoshop,Illustrator, andInDesign, is a popular suite used in the design industry. Brand designers may also be familiar with additional tools such asSketch,Figma,Canva,Procreate, orAffinity Designer.

A strong candidate will also exhibit a working knowledge of font management systems such asAdobe Fonts andGoogle Fonts. Finally, brand designers often utilize stock image websites such asShutterstock andUnsplash as a means to incorporate high-quality images into their designs.

Prototyping Tool Knowledge

Brand designers are frequently involved with creating UI and UX for a wide range of digital products and platforms. In these cases, brand designers should be comfortable working with prototyping tools that help bring their design concepts to life. Popular programs include Sketch, Figma,UXPin,InVision, andProto.io. Depending on the complexity of the project, the needs of the design team, and the prototyping requirements, certain tools may perform better than others. However, a competitive candidate will be able to easily translate design ideas into real-life working models.

Presentation Tool Experience

After working to create a brand identity that accurately reflects a company’s values, brand designers use presentation tools to showcase their work, pitch ideas to clients, and communicate effectively with stakeholders. Top candidates should be aware of, if not entirely proficient in, one or more of the following:Microsoft PowerPoint,Google Slides,Apple Keynote,Adobe Express, or Canva.

Social Media Copy Design Expertise

Brand design goes beyond mere aesthetics. In fact, brand designers play an integral part in ensuring that social media copy and design work together seamlessly. Working alongside content creators, copywriters, and social media managers, brand designers help to ensure consistent messaging and identity. Creating templates and brand assets, establishingresponsive design, adhering to social media platform standards, maintaining brand guidelines, and rolling out engaging campaigns are only a handful of tasks that brand designers will undertake. A quality candidate will have experience with these types of responsibilities.

Brand designers also contribute to your company’s SEO and marketing strategies. Consistent brand design elements across the website, such as logos, color schemes, and fonts, can also improve brand recognition and user experience. Search engines like Google value good UX and may reward websites with consistent branding elements with higher rankings.

Project Management

Project management expertise enables brand designers to organize and coordinate tasks effectively, ensuring projects are completed on time and within budget. Moreover, having project management skills allows brand designers to communicate effectively with clients and team members, manage feedback and revisions smoothly, and ensure that branding projects align with the company’s overall goals and vision. Ultimately, integrating project management skills into their toolkit allows brand designers to deliver high-quality, cohesive, and successful branding solutions.

Key Questions to Consider When Hiring a Brand Designer

In order to make well-informed decisions throughout the brand designer hiring process, consider discussing these questions with members of the hiring team beforehand as a way to gauge their understanding of the position:

How can a new brand designer align with and advance our company vision?

It’s key that members of the hiring team have a clear understanding of the brand’s core values, its target audience, and its overall market positioning. Regardless of the industry, a company should prioritize data-driven improvements that ultimately contribute to the brand’s longevity and success.

When adding a new brand designer into the mix, ask questions such as:

• Will the new hire collaborate with cross-functional teams to promote strategic growth?
• Will they commit to preserving brand consistency?
• Are they eager to explore and expand the brand’s creative vision?
• What innovative design can this brand designer offer our organization?

Should hiring managers weigh the importance of certifications, specialized courses, or professional affiliations when recruiting brand designers? If these are deemed valuable, which specific ones stand out as particularly advantageous in enriching a designer’s skills and expertise?

From a business standpoint, it only makes sense to take into consideration the time and effort invested into earning additional certifications or pursuing specialized courses. These types of credentials demonstrate a brand designer’s commitment to professional development and a willingness to sharpen creative skills. Take note of applicants who have earned credentials such as theGraphic Design Specialization from CalArts or theGraphic Design Certification from Adobe. Connections with professional affiliations such as theAmerican Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) or theAmerican Marketing Association indicate a commitment to networking. However, it should be noted that additional certifications may be cost-prohibitive or inaccessible to certain candidates. With this in mind, it’s always best to review a candidate’s design portfolio in order to allow the work to speak for itself.

Do we have a clear grasp of the company’s existing brand identity and its future direction? How will a new brand designer fit into and enhance this vision?

Again, it’s important that your hiring team is well-informed in regard to your company’s current brand identity and its objectives. A new brand designer is charged with bridging the gap between your business’s present and future brand aspirations. In theory, this transition should be seamless, as designers ought to preserve a brand’s core values in their work. By developing and sharing fresh, innovative, and relevant design choices, brand designers are poised to generate an appealing and cohesive public-facing image.

Why Do Companies Hire Brand Designers?

Brand designers and strategists are experts at helping to establish and refine a company’s visual identity and core messaging elements. Using logos, typography, color schemes, and messaging, brand designers work with clients and other stakeholders to capture a brand’s essence, ultimately setting it apart from competitors. Additionally, brand designers can assist in creating marketing materials such as websites, apps, billboards, brochures, banners, and other advertisements to increase a brand’s visibility.

Accomplished brand designers are sensitive to design trends, consumer preferences, and market shifts, which allows them to develop visual identities that are relevant and appealing. They will have a strong portfolio, a willingness to collaborate, excellent communication skills, and an eye on the future. When a brand’s identity is carefully crafted and consistent, it can influence how consumers perceive a company, which helps foster long-term trust and loyalty.

Top Brand Designers Are in High Demand.