Digital Brand Designer

We are hiring a digital brand designer to lead visual identity and shape how brand systems translate to web and product environments, with digitally native brand thinking.

At Little Plains, brand design doesn't stop at assets or guidelines. We deliver systems that can form websites, funnel into a product, and carry through content, decks, and real-world use.

Our work starts from brand strategy, and the work you do is how that strategy translates into a visual identity that’s usable and scalable across multimedia environments. You contribute at a high level individually and help define how digitally fluent brand systems are designed, componentized, and built.

Why This Role Exists

Founders are asked to move faster and spend more efficiently, but still deliver work that feels considered, credible, and differentiated. The old tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost no longer hold, and the bar for quality has risen rather than fallen. Meeting this moment requires changing the way we traditionally deliver brand identity work.

We deliver brand systems in both human-facing formats and agent-readable ones. The systems we build have to work for a person and for a machine. We see this as an exciting opportunity, and one where we are continuously evolving our process.

The digital design tools available to us are faster and more powerful now. What sets a great designer apart is being able to design a brand for scale and behavior across any medium or format, all while having a strong point of view that a client with AI tools doesn't have the taste for.

What You Will Do

Day to day, you will:

• Lead brand design on your projects end to end
• Work closely with strategy to align narrative and visual systems
• Explore widely and quickly, then make clear, confident design decisions
• Define brand DNA: typography, color, layout, motion, imagery, and structure that produces consistent yet flexible expression
• Develop art direction using visual references and generated imagery, with web and product environments in mind
• Prototype initial design applications
• Translate brand thinking into systematized UI components, meant to be handed off to web or product teams
• Collaborate with developers to ensure systems hold up in real builds
• Develop guidelines and rules of the brand system with clear and thorough documentation
• Use AI tools to accelerate visual exploration and concept development without outsourcing design decisions wholesale

The Bar for Craft

This role requires strong visual judgment, typographic rigor, and the confidence to make decisions. Systems should feel intentional, durable, and considered, not trendy or over-engineered.

It also requires craft at the file level. A beautiful identity delivered without the proper documentation or a high level of file organization is not finished.

The designers we hold up as the standard componentize design elements, use style variables, and consider every detail an intentional design decision.

What We're Looking For

• Demonstrated ability to build brand systems, not just logos or assets
• Mastery of typography, layout, and fundamental design principles
• Art direction sensibility: imagery, illustration, and the visual layer beyond graphics
• Digitally fluent: you naturally think about how an identity adapts to the screen: across responsive states, motion, and interaction
• Adobe- and Figma-native: a strong handle on components, variables, and styles, and you deliver clean, functional files that others can build from
• Can zoom in and zoom out: craft-level attention to detail while holding the macro vision
• Range: break the formula in exploration, then bring rigor and organization in production (workflows, files, handoff)
• Able to iterate, curate, and move quickly in sprint cadences
• Excited to work in AI-informed workflows (e.g. Flora, Weavy, MidJourney, Claude, Paper) without outsourcing taste or judgment
• Experience working with early-stage or high-growth companies
• 4–7 years of experience in brand design, digital design, or related roles
• Curiosity about new tools paired with deep traditional craft
• Ability to take ownership, self-curate and monitor for errors, and move work forward

Nice to Have

• Motion: type and identity in movement, from simple micro-interactions to launch films
• Illustration, 3D, or generative visual work
• Web or product design experience
• Prior experience as the bridge between a brand team and a web or product team

About Little Plains

Little Plains is a modern brand and product studio. We work primarily with early-stage companies, often from pre-launch through Series A, at moments where clarity, speed, and conviction matter most. Our partners are founders and small senior teams building new products, categories, and narratives under real constraints.

We operate as an embedded creative partner rather than a traditional digital agency, building brand, product, and go-to-market work into cohesive systems that can scale as companies grow. Our work spans healthcare, biotech, SaaS, and consumer products.

How We Work

Design is developed in context, alongside strategy, product, and interaction decisions. Work is shared through live artifacts and evolving systems, not static presentations.

On a typical project, strategy leads the first weeks, brand design starts in week two, and the web designer and copywriter join as the system takes shape. You are the through line: the brand you build in week two is what the site is built from in week five, so you design with that handoff in mind from the start.

AI is part of how we work. We care more about the judgment you bring to it than the tools you are using.

Benefits (Full-Time)

• Quarterly profit share tied to studio performance
• Equity participation for long-term team members
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (50% employer-covered)
• 15 days PTO (Year 1, increases by 2 days/year)
• One week paid office closure every summer
• Paid office closure between Christmas and New Year's
• Parental leave: 12 weeks (birth parent), 6 weeks (non-birth parent) at full pay
• Prenatal leave: 20 hours paid per year
• $1,000/year craft and tools stipend
• $200/month coworking stipend

What to Submit

• Resume or LinkedIn profile
• Portfolio showing brand systems carried into digital: at least one project where we can see the identity, the Figma system behind it, and how it showed up on a live site or product
• A short note on the kinds of brand problems you want to work on next

If you want to design serious brand systems, building identities that scale, evolve, and actually get used on screen, let's talk.

Equal Opportunity & Fair Chance

Little Plains is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law, including the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws.

In accordance with the NYC Fair Chance Act, we consider applicants with criminal histories. Any background check will occur only after a conditional offer of employment has been made.

Thank You

We appreciate your consideration. We will do our best to view every submission carefully, and in a timely manner. Please allow a few business days for us to get back to your submission, and we look forward to hopefully talking more.

Cheers,
Little Plains