Frontier is looking for a full-time Intermediate Designer to join our team!

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About Us

Frontier is a design office that believes in the expansive potential of storytelling to help people get somewhere new. To us, this means creating exceptional brands and experiences with purpose at their core. We work with clients and on our own projects to celebrate BIG—Brave, Imaginative, and Guiding—initiatives leading us toward a better future for people and the planet. It means our work spans all types of design challenges, and we have a pretty deep toolbox with which we approach them.

For a decade, people have come to us because we’re experts at drawing together diverse perspectives into something unified and resonant. Generating ideas, building consensus, setting direction: we accelerate this work by listening closely and bringing to bear new tools and methods of understanding and shaping what’s next. We draw from diverse realms—like contemporary art, purpose design, playful speculation, and radical technologies—to help organizations and their people understand the edges and make progress that matters.

This pluralistic approach to purposeful branding leads to genuinely inspiring and strategic stories that we turn into momentum-building brand identities, exhibitions, websites, campaigns, books, and videos.

In addition to design services for partners, our commitment to big stories runs through studio-initiated projects. These include Frontier Magazine, an online publication about new and newly relevant ideas in the culture, architecture, technology, and education; Projectory, an experiential learning platform that trains organizations on building future resilience; and Live Magazine, a traveling editorial project.

The Role

We’re looking for a dedicated, self-motivated designer to join our team. In a design role, you’ll directly contribute to the development and creation of visual-communication projects, with a focus on visual identities, brand roll-outs, and websites. Proficiency across technical software and working knowledge of detail-oriented design tasks is a baseline for any of our design roles. You will also be expected to support strategic projects, attend research activities, and participate in client workshops. You should be comfortable participating in design critiques and giving and taking feedback, as well as be excited to learn from others. Our studio manages many projects at once, and you’ll be expected to manage your time across several different projects, some as the sole designer and others as a member of a design team.

This role reports to Tristan Marantos, Associate Creative Director.

What You’ll Do:

• You’ll work alongside other members of the design team leading and/or supporting the development of specific design concepts or project tasks with guidance from senior creative staff. This can include developing and refining visual identity systems, designing websites and digital user experiences, developing narrative creative presentations, and designing exhibitions and physical installations.
• You’ll be expected to manage your given tasks each week across projects and maintain close communication with your design leads.
• You’ll participate in weekly studio and project-team meetings, during which you’ll share your work with the team and participate in design conversations.
• Based on your experience, you’ll help provide guidance and motivation to fellow designers by fostering a healthy and supportive working relationship with teammates and sharing new ideas, references, and examples with others.
• As a small team, our culture is important. We’re excited for each member of our team to add to this environment and participate in studio activities outside of regular design tasks.

Who you are:

• You have 2–5 years of experience in a studio setting, leading and/or supporting the development of idea-driven visual identities, websites, editorial projects, and spatial projects for clients, from concept to completion.
• You are an enthusiastic, well-organized, and self-motivated individual with the ability to rationalize and clearly communicate ideas within a design context.
• You are excited to join a small, fast-paced design practice and are comfortable balancing diverse tasks.
• You possess excellent knowledge of graphic design principles such as visual storytelling, typography, hierarchy and structure, designing for print, interactivity and web-design principles, and photography/photo editing.
• You have excellent knowledge of the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign), presentation software (Pitch, Google Documents), and Figma.

Nice to haves (great if you have one of these, but not required):

• Experience writing design strategy and conducting design research (interviewing, workshops, facilitation)
• Experience with motion design and video editing, using software such as Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.
• Experience with the development of wayfinding systems and designing signage programs.

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Accommodations and Accessibility: Frontier provides employment accommodation during the recruitment process. Should you require any accommodation, please indicate this in your introductory email and we will work to meet your accessibility needs.

Doing Better: At Frontier, we view diversity as fundamental to the way we work and think. We are always looking to increase the diversity of our team. Groups that are typically underrepresented in the creative field are Black, Indigenous and racialized people, LGBTQ+, women, non-binary people, people with disabilities, and people for whom English is not their first language. We invite you to voluntarily let us know if you identify as being a member of one of these groups. Beyond our hiring policies, we commit to using all facets of our work to support the movements for equity and justice for all people. Please consider reading our commitments to Doing Better to learn more. — Job Details & Benefits

What’s great about working at Frontier:

• We work with a lot of great clients and companies and value creating meaningful relationships with our collaborators. We avoid working with companies whose values do not align with our own. Read more about our values and commitments.
• We run studio-initiated design projects that allow us to have a voice in the conversations we care about. Sometimes these are big projects that take over the studio, like Live Magazine, or small projects that everyone participates in, like DesignTO. We host a podcast, publish an online magazine, and create content for our website and social media (which we encourage everyone to participate in).
• We put a lot of effort into creating a work culture that is fun, inclusive, and honest. We hold our work to a very high standard but also make time for activities that take us outside of our day-to-day tasks.
• We have competitive drug and dental health benefits, including a Health Spending Account (HSA).
• We have a parent-friendly workplace and a 80% top-up plan for eight months parental leave.
• Intermediate Designer roles include three weeks of vacation per calendar year.

Our Location: Our office is based in Toronto and we work in a hybrid model. Team members are encouraged to balance working from home with working at the studio, and may be required to come into the office several times a week depending on scheduled team and project meetings. An average balance at our studio is about half/half, between in-studio and at-home. At the moment, we are not considering applicants who are based outside of Toronto.

Compensation: Compensation packages will be commensurate with experience and will be discussed during the interview process. It is expected that annual salaries will be offered in the $55,000–$65,000 range.

Applications close: Sept 22, 2023 Start date: approx Oct 10, 2023

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Here’s how to apply:

Please email your portfolio to tmarantos@frontier.is with “Intermediate Designer Job Application” in the subject line, along with a paragraph or two about why you are interested in the role. Also include your portfolio (PDF or website are fine) and CV.

Selected applicants will be asked to join a video interview with one of our Creative Leads. While not all applicants will be selected to go through the interview process, we will do our best to respond to all applicants who apply.

For the interview, be prepared to discuss:

• Two relevant projects, the ideas that informed the work, and how they were realized visually in the final product.
• Your experience working within a design team and/or collaboratively with clients.
• One other exciting project that might not be immediately relevant to Frontier’s work but that you are passionate about.

Promising candidates will be invited to have a second interview with another member of our team. The second interview is expected to focus more on the culture of Frontier and whether candidates will work well within our culture.