Join our team: Digital designer

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We’re Village One, a worker-owned studio for ethical design and tech­nology, incorporated as a cooperative, with a distributed team and running on a four-day workweek. We design and implement custom websites, digital platforms, infrastructure and products with clients who work towards a better world. Now we’re looking for a digital designer with experience in branding and art direction to join our small remote team, who will then also become an equal co-owner of our company. Applications are open until August 30, 2024.

Who we’re looking for

• You’re an experienced designer, with a focus on digital branding and designing for the responsive web. Most of our projects involve a (re-)branding component, design of custom responsive websites and products, and supporting developers during implementation.
• Our design tool of choice is Figma, which is where we do most of our design work, conduct workshops via FigJam, and store all our presentations. Adobe’s creative tools are also part of our workflow.
• We put a focus on making our output accessible, performant and widely compatible–designing and building with the browser and the open web, not against them. You should consider accessibility and performance implications while designing.
• You’ll most likely be involved in new business activities, such as writing proposals and have lots of direct client communication. You should be comfortable to present your work.
• We don’t have any project managers and work in a self-organising way. You need to be able to structure your work (and workload) autonomously. This means a lot of freedom to work how you want to work, but it is also a responsibility.
• We try to enable focus work as much as possible, but truth be told, the agency business is hectic sometimes and you might need to juggle multiple projects at times, along with being involved in internal topics.
• You will become a co-owner of our company, meaning you’ll have deep insight into all financial aspects of running the business. You need no prior entrepreneurial experience, curiosity is enough.
• This is a 100% remote position, but it would be good if your location had four hours of overlap with regular working hours in Berlin (CET / GMT+1), where most of us are based.
• At the moment, some of our projects are in German. Our team language (written/spoken) is English, and we don’t require you to speak perfect German, but it is a plus.
• You don’t need to have prior experience with the cooperative movement, but the values around worker-ownership, economic democracy and social justice should resonate with you. See our vision here.
• Please apply even if you don’t check all the boxes. Nobody is perfect, we certainly are not, and we don’t expect you to be.

What we offer

• We only work on projects we deem to be meaningful, with a focus on ethical design/tech, with clients who do something worthwhile in the world (see our wish/blocklists). Current clients include the Sovereign Tech Fund, Publix, Media Lab Bayern, dekoder, ZEIT ONLINE and Youth Policy Labs.
• We are a deliberately small worker-owned cooperative, of which you will become an equal co-owner after the probation period of six months. Your company share will cost 100€, to not exclude anyone on financial grounds. Your voice will then count the same as anyone else’s and you’ll participate in profit sharing (should we collectively decide to pay out profits). Read more about the process here.
• You’ll get an unlimited employment contract, either directly with us in Germany or from elsewhere via an employer of record (Deel.com in our case). You can read our employment contract for German employees here.
• 4-day workweek (32h), with flexible working times. Six weeks of mandatory holidays per year.
• As we don’t have an office, we practice remote-first and asynchronous workflows, to be compatible with many lifestyles and locations. You should be comfortable expressing your thoughts in writing, as most of our internal communication is text-based.
• The salary for this position is up to 5500€/month (up to 66k/year), before taxes. Within Village One, we have transparent salaries and want to make sure that everyone earns enough to live comfortably.
• We are a team of six people: researchers, designers and software engineers. You will be collaborating with each of us on a regular basis.
• We’ll provide you with a laptop and any other equipment you need to do your work.

How to apply?

• Tell us how you found us, why you decided to apply and about your journey as a designer. Generally speaking, we’d like to get to know you as a person, understand how you see the design/tech industry and what attracted you to Village One.
• Include your portfolio. We’d rather see three insightful projects than 15 similar ones. Quality and depth over quantity. Tell us what the constraints were, which challenges you encountered, how you solved them.
• Let us know when you could start working with us.

Application timeline

You have until August 30, 2024 to send us your application. We will send you a brief acknowledgment that we received your mail. We will then look at all applications after August 30, to give everyone a fair chance, no matter when they applied.

Bonus points (not required!):

• if you make our team more diverse
• if you’re familiar with any neighbouring design disciplines, like motion design, 3D, illustration, etc
• if you’re curious about code and not afraid of the medium you’re designing for
• if you bring existing client relationships or projects into Village One (but it’s not required)
• if you know what the solidarity economy and cooperatives are, have an activist background and/or bring a feminist + somewhat capitalism-critical mindset

Applications are closed now, please don’t apply anymore! Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming positions.