Join the Applied Works team to deliver exciting and pioneering digital design projects for our global clients, and enrich our growing team.

Applied Works is a design studio based at Somerset House in central London. We’re a small team working on big projects – helping organisations like the UN, Chatham House and the World Economic Forum turn their complex data into impactful and interactive experiences. We strive to affect positive change in our work – seeking projects that help policymakers, governments, businesses and the public to understand data around climate change and sociopolitical issues.

We’re looking for someone to join us as an established Midweight Digital Designer who is curious and passionate about understanding the challenges our clients' face, and transforming them into well-crafted identities and successful digital products. You’ll also have a strong basis in the core discipline of graphic design, and excel in using typography, grid and layout to bring pleasing aesthetics to everything you produce.

You'll be a key creative force in our design team, working closely and collaboratively with our other designers to push the standards on everything visual and navigate new challenges. With a background in identity design, digital products or graphic design, you’ll also have a keen eye for what’s going on in the world around us — be it design, art, sustainability, future tech or other aspects of our wider culture.

What you'll do:

• Explore and experiment to bring fresh visual ideas to our projects, and strive to find interesting and innovative solutions to problems posed by project briefs.
• Support in crafting and applying identities across digital, and sometimes, physical contexts. Applying rationale and concepts consistently and coherently across all facets of our output.
• Construct and maintain design systems and UI kits for both client and internal projects.
• Utilise and grow your knowledge of UI/UX principles and best practices to ensure design solutions are intuitive, accessible and inclusive to all users.
• Work with the rest of the design team to input and solve complex interaction problems. We have weekly design reviews where we give feedback to one another’s work, and gather insights from the rest of the team.
• Take lo- fi wireframes, content documents and/or project requirements and translate them into well considered and well-crafted interfaces and experiences across relevant formats.
• Produce presentations and slide decks, thinking critically to interrogate and challenge project content and purpose solutions as to how things can be structured or reduced to make them more engaging and intuitive.
• Begin to take the lead on design projects with support from our senior designers.
• Present and communicate ideas and rationale behind your work effectively, both internally and to project stakeholders.
• Keep an engaged interest in the wider design zeitgeist (studios, foundries, culture, art, fashion, books), as part of your day-to-day and bring findings and inspiration to your project work as well as the rest of the team.
• Have an appreciation of project timelines and how to prioritise tasks around them, being conscious of when to focus on efficiency and when there’s more scope for creativity.

Core skills we're looking for:

• 4+ years of professional experience.
• A thorough attention to detail, always striving for design excellence.
• A user-centred mindset and considered approach to your design work.
• Strong familiarity with UI and prototyping tools (Primarily Figma).
• Comfortable utilising adobe creative suite design tools (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop).
• Experience in crafting presentation decks (Pitch or equivalent software).
• A keen curiosity and passion for your craft.
• A collaborative individual, committed to succeeding as a team.
• A desire to learn and expand your skill set.

Other skills that we look out for:

• Knowledge of visual mapping tools (Miro).
• An interest in motion, bringing designs and identities to life with movement or interactivity.
• Experience with / base understanding of code, some knowledge of the context in which your outputs will exist.
• Familiarity with data visualisation and information design principles.
• Familiarity with UXR methodologies (value propositions, workshops, interviews, usability testing).

Benefits of working with us

Applied Works’ mission is to nurture a working environment in which personal interests and ideas can flourish. We aim to bring together talented people who enjoy new challenges and share a genuine curiosity about the projects we work on. Our workplace is friendly and inclusive, made up of creatives, researchers and developers.

We’re a friendly and supportive team, and we’ve tried to make our recruitment process reflect this. We only ask for CVs (not covering letters), we practise blind recruitment to reduce any risk of unconscious bias, we send candidates interview questions in advance, and don’t fuss over grammar or spelling in your CV for non-comms related roles.

• 20 days of annual leave (pro-rata basis)
• Flexibility in working hours and week
• Remote/on-site flexible split
• Opportunities to work with a diverse range of ambitious clients
• We're a ethical organisation, working on challenging, impactful projects making a positive difference
• Being part of the vibrant Makerversity community
• Access to facilities and events in our shared studio space, including wood, textile, engineering and digital workshops, masterclasses, talks and courses
• A supportive and friendly environment from our passionate team
• Four team offsites a year
• Regular team socials

What we care about:

• We’re an ethical organisation, and carry out a robust ethical checklist before working with any new client.
• We always look deeper, and ask the right questions to clients and users to ensure we’re building the right solution.
• We put people first, so we put strong emphasis on designing and developing everything with real users in mind.
• We care about each other, we take time to give one another support and socialise together.
• We’re always learning, we go to talks, events and exhibitions throughout the year to ensure we’re always learning from others and challenging ourselves to do better.

If this sounds like you, we’d love to chat.

Please send your CV and a link to your website or a pdf portfolio to careers@appliedworks.co.uk

We have a rolling deadline for this role, and will review applications on an ongoing basis. We'll close applications once we've found a suitable candidate.

Role not quite right for you?

We're always looking for talented people to join our team and expand our network, and appreciate experience comes in all shapes and sizes. So if you think you'd be a good fit, but don't necessarily tick all the boxes then we'd love to hear from you — you might be exactly what we need, we just aren't aware of it yet!