Brand Designer

Expand the brand of a radically self-managing consulting firm.

Six years ago, we started The Ready to change how the world works—to realize a more adaptive, equitable, meaningful, and human way of working. And we're proud of the progress we've made since then. Today, we're 30+ people working across North America and Europe, with over 100 projects behind us, and a community of thousands supporting our work in ways big and small.

Along the way, we've invested heavily in our brand—both visually and experientially—because we believe that every touchpoint matters. But we have never brought brand design in house... until now. We are officially on the hunt for a full-time Brand Designer to steward the visual and creative expression of The Ready brand.

Building up to this moment, we recently started to refresh our brand (w/ help from Joe Montefusco and Major), but there is a lot of exciting work left to do. It will be up to our new brand designer to refine, expand, and evolve this brand. The possibilities are endless.

Most design roles are pretty rough. Design is often undervalued and overworked. Many cultures, particularly in the startup world, are toxic burnout factories, that attract top talent with the promise of impact and exits. Working at The Ready means leaving all that behind. We see design as absolutely critical to our success. We don’t have managers, bosses, deadlines, or needless politics. What we do have is a thoughtful and supportive community that wants each person to do the best work of their lives on their own terms. Choosing to work here is choosing to design your ideal role and will it into being. Building The Ready brand means creating work that will shape and change the working lives of hundreds of thousands of real people around the world—promoting transparency, empowerment, equity, and meaning.

Role Purpose and Responsibilities

Purpose: A consistent, compelling, distinctive, and communal brand

Responsibilities:

Bringing the brand to life across our more than 60+ touchpoints and multiple channels (e.g. website, slides, posters, card decks, worksheets, videos, courses, board games, apparel, etc.)
Refine, expand and evolve our brand's visual language (illustrations, icons, colors, typography, data viz, etc.), as well as our brand voice, tone, and personality
Partnering with our content producer to drive engagement across our content (articles, podcasts, social posts, etc.)
Supporting our members in creating digital and physical brand assets to support the work they do and the stories they tell
Advocating for consistent and elevated design throughout the company

Decision Rights:

The Ready's brand guidelines (w/ advice)
How to prioritize competing requests from members, projects, and initiatives
The software/tools we use to develop brand assets
The partners and suppliers we use to produce brand assets
Collaborating with other designers on a contract basis

Evaluation Criteria and Skills

Evaluation Criteria:

Coherence of our brand system in action
Member feedback
Client feedback
Accessibility and inclusivity of our visual assets
Physical product sales (where design plays a significant role)

The right person to fill this role will likely identify with some or all of the following:

You are an experienced multi-disciplinary designer with strong opinions loosely held—you know what you want to do in your gut and just need space to move
You enjoy collaborating on design and work well with others, even when they are not experienced designers—everyone leaves having learned something
You see patterns other people can't see—you can imagine multiple ways to bring something to life and enjoy sketching out the possibilities
You enjoy playing with polarities (e.g. balancing exclusivity and mainstream appeal)
You love to ship and share work-in-progress frequently and publicly
You are passionate about new ways of working and the future of work, and are ready to work in a self-managing environment. Check out this podcast episode to learn more.

Our work spans services, digital assets, experiences, and even physical products. As such, our Brand Designer will likely have competence in multiple areas, including:

Visual design (using Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, etc.)
Website design (using Webflow)
Slide design (using Keynote and/or Pitch.com)
Print design
Physical production (e.g. cards)

Nice-to-have skills include:

Data visualization
Diagram/process design
Animation design
Digital product design

Benefits

Compensation: 90th percentile market salary, profit sharing, equity (when eligible)

Benefits: Exceptional health, dental, and vision coverage, technology, data, etc.

About The Ready

We're here to change how the world works by helping organizations of all shapes and sizes become more adaptive, equitable, meaningful, and human. It takes an unusual person to disrupt decades of tradition and guide hundreds or thousands of people through an experience that demands their bravery, vulnerability, and curiosity. It takes conviction to join a decentralized self-managing public benefit corporation where reputation matters more than position.

The people that make up The Ready are specialists in the ways of organizational culture and transformation. Yet within that world, we are generalists drawing freely from the principles and practices of dozens of theories and hundreds of iconoclastic firms. We are coaches, facilitators, academics, psychologists, technologists, and corporate veterans who have found each other in our quest to make work better. Our backgrounds are varied but our ambition is united.