Senior Brand Graphic Designer

Foundant + smartsimple

About The Position

Foundant is seeking a Senior Brand Graphic Designer to establish and maintain the company's brand framework, including color, logo usage, typography, photography, iconography, and illustration. This role involves defining how the brand adapts across various client segments and product lines while maintaining a unified identity. The designer will also set product-level visual standards for Foundant’s product lines (CommunitySuite, GLM, SLM, SmartSimple, and GivingData) and maintain a scalable brand architecture to accommodate future mergers and acquisitions. The position requires partnering with marketing, product, and sales leadership to translate business strategy into visual standards and creating guidelines, templates, and components for non-designers. Additionally, the role involves producing brand and marketing creative assets in a high-volume environment, utilizing generative AI tools, and directing photography and illustration styles. The designer will also be responsible for scoping, briefing, and quality-checking work from external freelancers or agencies.

Requirements

7-10 years in brand/graphic design, including direct ownership of brand systems or style guides — not just executing someone else’s
A portfolio that shows both strategic thinking (frameworks, systems, guidelines) and polished, shipped production work
Real, hands-on fluency with AI creative tools (e.g., Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and similar), integrated into a professional creative practice — not just casual experimentation
Experience designing across multiple client segments, sub-brands, or product lines while keeping a cohesive identity
Strong command of Adobe Creative Suite and Figma
Has worked as a strategic collaborator to cross-functional partners to deliver work that drives business results
Comfort operating as a creative team of one: able to set priorities, drive creative strategy and execution work, and know when and how to bring in outside help
Experience building or evolving brand architecture through M&A or multi-brand growth — and the ability to execute on a decision to merge, sub-brand, or retire
A strategist that is genuinely energized by doing both brand strategy and execution—defining the frameworks and owning the tools to deliver amazing work
Experience briefing and managing freelancers or agencies

Nice To Haves

Experience designing for the social good sector preferred

Responsibilities

Establish and maintain Foundant’s brand framework — color, logo usage, typography, photography, iconography, and illustration — as a documented, living system rather than a static style guide
Define how the brand flexes across client segments (community foundations, corporate and private foundations, nonprofits, grantmakers, government, and education) without losing a single, unified identity
Set product-level visual standards across Foundant’s product lines — CommunitySuite, GLM, SLM, SmartSimple, and GivingData — that stay recognizably connected to the parent brand
Maintain and evolve a scalable brand architecture that can absorb future M&A activity — defining how acquired products, teams, and sub-brands get integrated into the Foundant brand hierarchy
Partner with marketing, product, and sales leadership to translate business and positioning strategy into visual standards other teams can apply with confidence
Build guidelines, templates, and components that non-designers across the company can use correctly without needing design support for every asset
Lead integration of future acquisitions
Personally produce brand and marketing creative — campaigns, newsletter templates, content assets, sales collateral, web assets, product launch materials, event and trade show materials, and social content in a high-volume environment while maintaining a high standard of quality
Use generative AI creative tools to enhance speed and volume of creative output while still applying the judgment needed to keep the work distinctly Foundant
Build and maintain a library of reusable templates and components that speed up production without sacrificing quality or consistency
Direct photography and illustration style and execution, whether shot, sourced, or AI-generated
Scope, brief, and quality-check work from external freelancers or agencies when volume exceeds what one person can produce — this role decides when and how to use outside help and holds the standards on what is produced