WHAT DOES A DIGITAL DESIGNER DO?
Published: Oct 25, 2024 - The Digital Designer creates concepts and designs for web and mobile platforms, translating product positioning and marketing strategies into impactful designs. Leads communication throughout the project lifecycle, aligning stakeholders across creative, media, production, and brand management while conducting user research, creating wireframes, and building prototypes. Collaborates with cross-functional teams, ensures brand consistency across digital touchpoints, stays updated with design trends, and inspires other designers while reviewing developer outputs to maintain high creative standards.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Digital Designer
1. Digital Designer Duties
- Brand Guideline Adherence: Work within global brand guidelines to design and create concepts/layouts that reinforce the brand’s style and voice through visual and digital touchpoints.
- Prototype and Mock-up Design: Design, create prototypes, and mock-ups.
- Usability Testing: Conduct usability tests on digital projects, spot design flaws, and make corrections to enhance user experience.
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Collaborate with the Global Brand & Creative Team, Digital Media, CRM, and Website Teams to create digital campaigns, assets, and activations for dotcom, email, social, paid media, and e-commerce.
- Quality and Deadline Management: Adhere to quality work standards, production processes, scheduling, and deadlines set by the team.
- Industry Trend Awareness: Keep up to date with industry standards, best practices, and digital design methodologies.
- Creative Initiative Optimization: Identify creative initiative opportunities and optimize with user feedback.
- Online Content Management: Design, produce, and manage online content, including elements for social media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), website, e-commerce, and other digital channels.
- Marketing Campaign Production: Produce materials for sales and marketing campaigns.
- Infographic and Animation Design: Create infographics, animations, and data visualizations to explain products and processes.
- Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaborate with digital sales and marketing teams to ensure design aligns with brand guidelines and meets usability standards across all channels.
- Design Consistency Management: Ensure consistency in designs and content across company platforms.
- Technology and Competitive Awareness: Maintain awareness of current industry and technology standards, social media trends, competitive landscape, and design trends.
2. Digital Designer Details
- Digital Content Creation: Craft digital design content that balances art, motion, sound, and typography in collaboration with the internal team.
- Project Brief Utilization: Leverage project brief and guidelines to develop all forms of digital content with a thorough and critical eye, and with guidance from team leaders.
- Social Media Design: Design social media content (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter), ad banners, rich emails, and other digital media, from concept and theme to execution.
- Responsive Web Design: Create inspired responsive website design from creative concept, site architecture, UI, wireframe, and navigation for online properties–providing code recommendations to outsourced developers.
- Animation Production: Deliver promotional animations, created and produced via storyboards, rough cuts, mock-ups, and animated prototypes.
- Client & Project Management: Partner with clients, project managers, and internal cross-functionals to understand project requirements and client objectives.
- Trend Awareness: Stay informed and ahead of digital design/social/website trends, consumer engagement, and the competitive landscape.
- Quality Assurance: Ensure food safety, quality, and SQF practices are followed at all times, notifying the immediate manager of any food safety and/or quality issues.
- Product Concept Design: Create design solutions articulated through new product concepts, storyboards, detailed visual designs, screen flows, and prototypes aimed at The LEGO Group's business partners and internal salespeople.
- High-Fidelity Design Production: Produce high-fidelity designs for desktop, tablet, and mobile, supported by the design system “Klik.”
- User Testing & Iteration: Validate and optimize design solutions, frequently interviewing and testing users to ensure the viability of design - and iterate visual designs accordingly.
- Product Discovery: Conduct product discovery activities and design deliveries based on the outcomes.
- Collaboration with Engineering: Work closely with the engineering team to ensure proper implementation of high-fidelity designs.
- User Experience Design: Create compelling, usable, branded experiences guided by user insights.
3. Digital Designer Responsibilities
- Concept Development: Creating concepts and designs for web/mobile platforms from inception to completion.
- Design Translation: Translate product positioning, existing research, and marketing strategies into effective designs.
- Project Communication: Lead communications during the project lifecycle to ensure that external and internal stakeholders from creative, media, production, and brand management are aligned.
- User Research & Testing: Perform in-depth user research, create user flows and journey maps, create wireframes and prototypes for testing, and advocate data-driven solutions.
- User Experience Design: Deconstruct complex concepts into simple workflows to create an excellent user experience.
- Brand Consistency: Ensure consistency of brand across digital consumer touchpoints.
- Leadership & Inspiration: Inspire other designers and review work of developers.
- Team Collaboration: Work as part of a multi-disciplinary (scrum) team.
- Research & Experimentation: Carry out research and conduct experiments.
- Trend Awareness: Stay up-to-date with design and technology trends and keep on the pulse of what’s cool.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate cross-functionally with various stakeholders, including the global product design team, and constantly raise standards of creativity.
- Communication & Feedback: Communicate concepts and solutions with clear reasoning and an open mind to feedback.
- Brand Visual Identity: Develop an original look and feel for all visual extensions of the brand, including print, online, mobile, and environmental.
- Strategic Design Development: Work with marketing, creative, sales, and operations teams to develop conceptual designs supporting an overarching messaging strategy.
4. Digital Designer Accountabilities
- Product Lifecycle Management: Work on products through the full life cycle, turning an initial brief into beautiful, user-friendly designs.
- Feature Design: Conceptualise and design new features based on customer feedback.
- UI/UX Strategy: Assist in making key decisions around UI/UX, and contribute to product strategy.
- Team Collaboration: Integrate with the rest of the wider team.
- Feature Development: Work with team members to create new features, as well as work on marketing materials for social media.
- Product Testing and Reporting: Testing and reporting any findings on the portfolio of products.
- Agile Methodology: Work in an agile environment.
- Design Trends Awareness: Keep up to date with the latest trends in modern design, and be passionate about the application of good design to new and developing technologies.
- Digital Campaign Design: Assist in the concept design and production of digital creative campaigns for Kmart across its social media, e-commerce, email, and display channels.
- Creative Campaign Development: Develop ideas and concepts, produce compelling commercially focused creative campaigns, and take a strategic approach to creative briefs.
- Stakeholder Management: Present to and manage key stakeholders from initial ideas through to production and execution.
- Photoshoot and Video Direction: Attend photoshoots, direct stills, and video shoots.
- Production and Asset Preparation: Select and prepare files for presentation and upload, edit videos, and brief retouch.
- Digital Asset Design: Produce clear and concise assets for digital and content design that effectively communicate against objectives while adhering to guidelines.
- Web Design and Prototyping: Web design, prototyping, wireframes, etc., are all part of the day.
5. Digital Designer Functions
- Design & Execution: Design concepts for homepages, landing pages, web banners, email campaigns, and social media posts.
- Collaboration: Work closely with the brand copywriter to conceptualize promotions and offers through final execution.
- Review & Feedback: Review designs and concepts with the Web Supervisor & Creative Director to ensure a consistent brand voice and overall image.
- Technical Proficiency: Understanding of creating Animated GIF files and execution is also needed on occasion.
- Digital Channel Management: Concept and execute assets across all digital channels, including homepage design, ad creatives, Instagram stories, TikTok (including stills and video with a focus on strong motion graphics).
- Creativity & Innovation: Source new design inspiration, ideate, and present design solutions to evolve the brand’s identity while communicating marketing messages.
- Art Direction: Lead art direction as assets are delivered across channels.
- Brand Alignment: Ensure all work is aligned to the brand guidelines and direction.
- Content Development: Develop and design emails, social media, app design, and web content, microsites, landing pages, and video content.
- Visual Communication: Design compelling, original, engaging, and compliant content that builds and maintains brand and marketing visual approach.
- Brand & Marketing Engagement: Involved in all elements of digital brand and marketing materials.
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with creative, digital, and tech teams to deliver compelling digital content.
- Brand Consistency: Help develop and maintain brand standards and consistency.
- Audience Research: Research and understand the organization’s diverse needs and target audiences through reviews of existing information and research, interviews with subject matter experts, and in-person meetings.