Senior Brand Designer

Discover International; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule

Job summary

Discover International is seeking a Senior Brand Designer to shape the visual identity and storytelling for a new nonprofit Research Institute. This founding role focuses on consumer-focused brand storytelling, integrated campaigns, and partnerships, rather than performance marketing.

You will lead digital branding, event visuals, and co-branded campaigns, collaborating with cross-functional teams to craft a scalable visual system and compelling narratives for diverse stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in brand, digital or marketing design
• 2+ years as senior IC, design lead, or ACD for a B2C company
• Portfolio demonstrating typography, layout, color, and editorial sensibility
• Genuine B2C experience designing for consumer audiences
• Ability to turn abstract/scientific ideas into visual narratives
• Auditing and refining existing brand guidelines to align with user needs

Responsibilities

• Design web pages, microsites, social content, features, and data visuals for consumer audiences
• Own visual identity for events, conferences, donor moments including environmental graphics and slides
• Create partnership pitches and co-branded campaign assets
• Brief, hire, and manage external agencies and freelancers; set the creative bar
• Evolve typography, color, imagery, motion, and scalable systems/templates
• Collaborate cross-functionally with UX, Tech, Marketing, scientists, writers, and philanthropy teams

Skills

Brand design

Digital design

B2C branding

Storytelling

Brand audit

Design leadership

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe InDesign

AI design tools

Job description

My client is seeking an exceptional Senior Brand Designer to shape the visual identity and storytelling of a new nonprofit public benefit organization — its Research Institute. This is a founding creative role: the Institute is new, but it comes from a legacy brand, and has a lot of older components, legacy branding and redundant components that need finetuning and bringing into a new era.

This is brand storytelling, not the performance marketing funnel — integrated brand campaigns, digital storytelling, event activations, and philanthropy/partnership materials that introduce the Institute to consumers, scientists, philanthropic supporters, the media, and more.

It's a B2C brand at heart: the end user is the everyday consumer, not a scientist. The strongest candidates will have genuine experience designing for consumer audiences.

Who They Are:

A nonprofit medical research organization that enables people everywhere to access their genetic information, learn about themselves, and be able to understand potential hereditary issue within their genes — They also have the ambition to be the most significant contributor to scientific advancement, uniting people around improving health and understanding DNA.

What You'll Do:

• Digital Brand Storytelling — Design web pages, microsites, social content, editorial features, and data visualization that translates complex science into something a consumer audience wants to engage with.
• Event Activations — Own the visual identity for key events, conferences, and donor moments: environmental graphics, stage design direction, slides, attendee materials, swag, and photo/video assets.
• Partnership Pitches & Integrations — Design and art-direct partnership pitch decks and co-branded campaign assets.
• Creative Direction & Agency Management — Brief, hire, and steer external design/video agencies and freelancers; set the creative bar and protect the Institute's voice.
• Visual Identity & System — Evolve the Institute's identity (typography, color, image direction, motion) and the systems/templates that let it scale consistently across teams.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration — Partner with UX, Tech, Marketing, Digital, scientists, writers, communications, philanthropy, and partnership leads to shape the story before designing the assets.

What You'll Bring:

• Experience — 6+ years of brand, digital or marketing design experience, including 2+ years as a senior IC, design lead, or ACD for a B2C company where you have seen how your design choices affected the organization and the end user.
• Portfolio — A strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional graphic design fundamentals — typography, layout, color, image direction, editorial sensibility — across identity, campaign, and digital work. Required for consideration.
• B2C Experience — Genuine experience designing for consumer audiences, not just B2B or internal marketing.
• Storytelling Instinct — Comfortable turning abstract or technical/scientific ideas into images, systems, and narratives that land with different audiences.
• Branding / Design auditing and finetuning — Comfortable with auditing and influencing the existing brand guidelines and design components to ensure that the design is inline with user requirements and the organizations goals.
• Technical Mastery and content management — Fluency in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign); strong aptitude with AI-assisted design tools; comfortable directing video editors.
• Hybrid Availability — Able to work in the Palo Alto office 3 days per week, in person with the Brand Team.