Digital Creative (3 month FTC)

Job Description:

About The&Partnership

At The&Partnership we bring ideas and technology together to power brands and businesses. As one of the world's fastest-growing independent agency networks, we are increasingly known for developing bespoke new model agency solutions for clients across the globe.

We call this the &Model and the premise is very simple. Agency Creative, Strategy, Media, PR and Data/CRM, all working side by side, solving problems as one collaborative team with the client.

A rapidly changing market requires a radical new approach to marketing. We work alongside our clients' marketing departments - often with other agency partners - in new, nimble ways to deliver highly creative, data-driven work quickly and efficiently.

Backed by the might of WPP and GroupM, we've seen record growth over the past five years - expanding across 22 new markets and doubling in size against a challenging industry backdrop.

The&Partnership and NatWest Group

Having worked with NatWest Group since 2003, no one understands their business like us.

Our relationship with NatWest started nearly 20 years ago in 2003, with our first brief to develop a campaign for the Mint credit card. In 2013, we started The Box in London which in 2017 became The&Studio - a dedicated on-site digital delivery production team, located at NatWest Group head office in Edinburgh. Through a total of over 800 briefs a year and 1000 assets a month, it delivers high quality, large volume, fast turnaround creative solutions for a number of well-known banking brands (NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank and Coutts) across all channels including social, email, branch comms to name a few.

In 2018, our London team started working with NatWest Group Venture brands, and in summer 2019 was appointed as creative agency for NatWest, complementing The&Studio's capabilities with audience insight, brand strategy and creative firepower.

Since then The&Partnership has:

* Supercharged We Are What We Do across Retail and Business Banking
* Showed Retail and Business customers that NatWest is Here To Support You during Covid
* Positioned Tyl by NatWest as Your Payment Partner and highlighted its seemingly magical benefits
* Celebrated the mettle of Mettle customers
* Encouraged Royal Bank commercial customers to switch banks as part of the BBS initiative
* Clarified and simplified the Payit opportunity for colleagues, corporates and consumers
* Announced and explained Coutts' B Corp certification to colleagues and customers
* Launched NatWest's new brand platform, Tomorrow Begins Today
In March 2021, NatWest launched its new brand platform, Tomorrow Begins Today, created by The&Partnership. Inspired by the NatWest Group purpose to champion potential, helping individuals, families and businesses thrive, Tomorrow Begins Today is a promise to help customers take action today to achieve their goals for tomorrow, sooner. It positions NatWest as a more energised, more emotive and more empathetic brand, changing minds and changing behaviours, to drive sustainable business growth. The&Partnership has created NatWest's first consistent creative vehicle, to improve the effectiveness of all bank communications, dramatising the benefits of taking action today through light-hearted interplay between characters 'Yesterday', 'Today' and 'Tomorrow'.

With such an extensive relationship, we understand NatWest Group's purpose, their business priorities and their organisational challenges.

The Role and Responsibilites:

* Work in Agile Scrums, meet with clients, producers and or the art director/copywriter to determine the scope of a project
* Advocate of best practice, quality, and craft
* Advise on strategies to reach a particular audience
* Determine the message the design should portray
* Create / source images that identify a product or convey a message
* Develop graphics and visual or audio images for product illustrations, logos, and websites
* Select colours, images, text style, and layout
* Present the design to clients or the lead creative
* Incorporate changes recommended by the clients into the final design
* Review designs for errors before printing or publishing
Key Skills:

* Excellent Mac skills, fully conversant with Illustrator, XD, InDesign and Photoshop
* Excellent creative crafting skills - ideas, typography, layout, colour, composition, materials etc
* Good knowledge artwork/repro/print/production/finishing processes where necessary
* Knowledge of digital asset production processes
* Proven experience in managing multiple projects at one time
* Ability to realise a design based on a creative brief
* Ability to inspect, clarify and execute a creative brief
* Ability to develop designs and wireframes from scamps
* Familiarity and interest in emerging design trends
* Possessing of a wide design vocabulary and capable of thinking laterally to find solutions to challenges
* Experience working across the whole spectrum of brand centred digital marketing deliverables including web, mobile, email and digital advertising projects
* Experience with inspecting and complying with brand guidelines
* Ability to infer brand guidelines from related design collateral
* Attention to detail and determination to bring craft and quality to your work
* Understanding of the requirements of campaign based web delivery including an understanding of user behaviour, experience with the crafting of effective calls to action and the implementation of user journeys
* Experience working with design principles of animation and moving image
* Very strong user interface and interaction design experience
* Experience working in a fast paced delivery focused environment
* Excellent and pro-active communication skills with the ability to clearly express a viewpoint on a given design challenge
* Ability to accurately predict the time and steps required to solve a problem
* Ability to work closely with other designers in multi-stakeholder projects
* Ability to understand the interaction between design and content in the experience of the user
Attitude & Attributes:

* Must instinctively think solutions before channel and have experience of all aspects of the comms mix including digital (i.e., display advertising, email & social), film and print
* Must be forward thinking and embrace creative and digital innovation
* An industry champion for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and whose working practices is reflective of this mindset
* Great communication skills, both verbal and written
* Must be persuasive and very articulate when it comes to directing or presenting, inspiring confidence and trust in colleagues and clients alike
* Strong creative design and digital art direction skills
* A real passion for creating truly accessible experiences online
* Time management and organisational skills
* Speed and responsiveness in responding to requests from clients and colleagues
* Collaborative team player, open minded, transparent and non-political
* Relentlessly curious about people, technology, brands, design and business
* Self-starting, proactive and prepared to put in the hard yards to deliver excellent creative output
* Able to balance a strong point of view with an ability to listen, learn and adapt
* An infectious willing and enthusiastic demeanour
* Energised by doing the right thing for our clients; solution and results focused
* Positive, enthusiastic, unflappable
* Strong motivation and drive to succeed
You will ideally be able to demonstrate:

* A portfolio showcasing best practice examples of digital campaigns across social channels
* Excellent knowledge of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
* In-depth understanding of best practice UX/UI
* Experience of applying a 'mobile first' approach to all digital design projects
* Strong working proficiency with Adobe Creative Cloud - Photoshop, Illustrator, XD & InDesign.

And even better if you also have:

* Financial service brand experience would be helpful but not mandatory
* Experience of contributing to a design system
* Motion graphics, 3D modelling and animation experience
* Experience with establishing design guidelines supporting accessibility
* Experience of working in Agile methodologies would be ideal

The&Partnership embraces and celebrates diversity, inclusivity, and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We are a worldwide creative agency that represents global clients. The more inclusive we are, the more brilliant work we can create together