Midweight designer (integrated)

Closing date for applications: 28 September 2025

Salary: £34,000-£38,000 (full-time, 37.5 hours per week) with paid overtime

Term: Permanent

Location: Small Axe Office, London

Are you a designer who thrives on creating powerful campaigns for change?

A midweight integrated designer at Small Axe is part of our campaigns delivery team. In this role, you'll be working collaboratively with campaigners, digital experts, designers, press advisors, filmmakers and content creators to produce powerful campaigns. You will work across a variety of campaigns, from trade union actions like Amazon’s first unionisation drive in the UK, to issue based campaigns like Free School Meals for All and Refugees Welcome, to producing digital fundraising content for the International Rescue Committee responding to global conflicts and crises. At your core, you are a campaigner, but your tools are InDesign, Illustrator, Canva, Veed.io and anything else you can lay your hands on to make creative that moves people to act on the most pressing issues of our time.

There is no magic formula for a winning campaign. That’s why we use multiple crafts and tactics to move our campaigns forward. We’re at our best when we’re working across our three core disciplines – organising, digital and creative – to make maximum impact. An ability to understand and integrate your ideas across these disciplines will give you the tools to respond to any strategic challenge. As an integrated designer, you’ll join a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative delivery team, focused on winning progressive campaigns.


Responsibilities

• Work with colleagues and suppliers to produce creative design for high quality creative including social campaigns, social films, websites, print and branding projects, from concept to delivery.
• Work with a range of media, including the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, always delivering clean, clearly constructed and labelled artwork files.
• Be driven to pick up new tools as new creative tech emerges (e.g. Canva, AI plug-ins, Veed.io).
• Create or complete content natively in social platforms and post your designs.
• Balance delivering high quality creative executions across multiple projects and deadlines at once.
• Support the commissioning of high quality and impactful film and photography which forms a basis of creative assets.
• Make lo-fi film and photo content using mobile phones including capturing & editing, employing simple software like Canva or Veed.io.
• Work with a range of media, including the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, and keep up to date with emerging technologies and social media developments.
• Translate the creative concepts from idea to mock-up, drawing from your own ideas as well as clients and colleagues.
• Think practically about the constraints and opportunities of the medium you’re designing to, whether that’s changing social specs or a new format for campaign print material that will engage people in a compelling way.
• Look at the impact of your design decisions on campaign objectives to help inform future creative. Is that social graphic performing? How did people react to the leaflet you created? What conversations did it spark? Did people use the QR code on your out-of-home advertisement?
• From time to time, send creative outputs to clients, responding to straightforward client feedback and explaining creative decisions in clear but compelling ways.
• Liaise with clients or team members to discuss the objectives and requirements and long term objectives of a campaign or project.
• Estimate the time and budget required to complete deliverables.
• Support with bringing in work e.g. providing quotes for small projects, contributing toward creative pitches and supporting campaign leads with proposals.
• Participate in brainstorms on creative concepts and for final deliverables, pulling in internal and external stakeholders, finding creative solutions to problems raised.
• Provide critical feedback on the work of suppliers and colleagues.
• Reliably follow internal processes to log creative licences, expenses and any other relevant information for the projects you are on.
• Support the creative delivery of meaningful campaign actions from livestream design to the visual production of events (e.g. print and ads), to film and photoshoots.
• Be willing to occasionally travel or work evenings and weekend hours as required.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Solid proven experience working in design agencies or in a similar freelance capacity
• Proven skills in Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, XD, After Effects, Premiere and motion graphics knowledge)
• Confidence to pick up new tools as new creative tech emerges (e.g. Canva, AI plug-ins, )
• A strong and well-rounded portfolio that shows a solid understanding of digital and print design and core graphic design principles
• A demonstrable interest in integrated design - from digital artworking, motion graphics, web page design to print and developing strong visual brands
• Ability to brainstorm, develop and make the case for creative concepts
• A curiosity about progressive campaigns and the role of creative in communications
• Working with copy
• A willingness to produce native content for social platforms
• Right to work in the UK

Desirable

• Design experience in a campaigning context
• Experience with Webflow
• Experience with HTML / CSS
• Experience working with original film and photography
• Experience of working at shoots, events or actions

Additional information

Please note that all roles at Small Axe require a DBS check. All candidates must have Right to Work in the UK.

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.