Leeds, UK
Concept designer
at Unilever
Unilever’s Personal Care Design is seeking a concept designer to join its dynamic and innovative team in Leeds, UK.
Job purpose
Personal Care is a €15bn business globally and is the home of outstanding brands that deliver personal hygiene, self-care, and confidence to billions of people. We hold some of Unilever’s strongest market positions. We aim for market-beating growth supported by increased investment on the core brands, funded via gross margin recovery. Where we will play: We focus on our core categories and top brands to win with our key channels and top customers. How we will win: (1) We Make it Premium – leading category value growth via core innovation delivering Holistic Product Superiority. (2) We Make it Profitable – unlocking structural margin challenges via premiumisation and technology and radical simplification. (3) We Make it Positive – leveraging our scale and brands for impact, delivering on our commitments for people and for planet. (4) We Make it Personal – leadership through service, humility, and care for all our stakeholders.
The Personal Care Design Team is a group of ambitious and visionary design leaders residing in our R&D organisation responsible for transforming the creative culture of Personal Care projects and people by promoting and implementing best practices in creative problem-solving processes, tool and techniques.
The main purpose of your role as a concept designer will be to demonstrate the power of design in the early project stages. Your job is the right integration of methods and insights from the beginning to turn concepts into design opportunities with great value for both our consumers and our brands. The goal is to deliver holistic experiences that help showcase internal capabilities in physical, digital, brand and service design.
The concept designer also drives experience as a key unlocking factor for future innovation at a project level. They will positively influence project partners by providing guidance on how an experience-based approach can help elevate our PC brands and their priority projects to measure superiorly.
By conducting design research and connecting with other disciplines and external partners, you will give identity and purpose to projects. To express insights and design opportunities compellingly and accurately, you should be able to use a broad range of storytelling and prototyping methods. You will closely collaborate with brand and R&D teams in developing convincing value propositions by design. Over time, you will therefore gain significant responsibility for the impact of design in front-end innovation as well as the overall representation of the design team as a strategic and execution partner.
Why join Personal Care Design
Joining Personal Care Design means working within a dedicated and ambitious design team on the development of high-impact brand innovation. Unilever offers an agile and open-minded environment with strong and passionate thinkers and doers who are constantly seeking to improve purpose in terms of brand, people, sustainability, technology & business growth.
As a job holder in Personal Care Design you will have the chance to collaborate with and guide multi-disciplinary teams and external partners in order to create value and meet consumer needs with convincing and meaningful Design solutions. Within Personal Care Design you will have the chance to grow further through various training initiatives both inside and outside design.
Responsibilities:
- utilise design thinking tools and methodologies to lead teams through the explore phase of projects
- manage individual Experience Design projects, co-create project timelines, and report progress to the Experience Design lead
- collaborate with strategic agencies to deliver transformational design concepts beyond just packaging
- engage with brand leaders to develop product and service experiences that present new value to the business
- drive design consistency across all touchpoints by aligning with other functions and integrating them into the design process
- collaborate with consumer insight function and cross-functional teams to ensure Experience Design and prototypes deliver against key experience metrics, meet consumer requirements and business demands
- embody early prototyping as a tool to create new opportunities and solve existing challenges, not only within the design team
- shape creative and conceptual frameworks for design projects to emphasize the value of design
- master trends and insights collection in order to identify opportunities and set direction
- develop experience prototypes and scenario roadmaps to qualify design opportunities
- showcase opportunities with advanced visualization and communication tools
- where required, co-author and facilitate workshops using design thinking techniques to help explore strategy and project futures
- where required, research, pilot, and implement new capabilities (both physical and digital) within our design ecosystem to build upon any skills or knowledge gaps
All about you:
- impressive portfolio of proven track record of engaging multi-disciplinary project work
- experience in contributing design project work that have helped a brand grow
- a passion for outstanding consumer experience, demonstrating creativity and how they arrive at the best possible solution
- project experience and knowledge of designing for different channels and touchpoints
- collaborative approach to creativity as a team effort
- self-starter, growth mindset in relation to personal development and their own creative capability
- are a design thinker and doer demonstrating logical thinking and practical hand skills together as one
- attention to technical detail, the ability to fixate on the ritualistic details while maintaining an overarching view to achieve excellence
- strong communication and visualization skills, especially in the area of early conception
- storytelling experience in communicating technical ideas to non-technical audiences
- generate concepts through sketching and 3D modelling, ensuring that the concepts meet manufacturing, supply chain and brand guidelines
- adept in 3D modelling and rendering software
- adept in using Adobe Creative Suite, as well as traditional sketching (both digitally and pen and paper)
- good organizational and project management skills
- basic knowledge of the end-to-end product development process and supporting processes
- basic knowledge of common commercial packaging materials, their manufacturing processes and design implications
- knowledge of sustainable design and engineering is a clear advantage
- ability to think conceptually and globally about a broader range of design projects at the same time
- competent to distil consumer understanding and needs into opportunity areas for design
- expertise in and/or the willingness to drive the use of AI throughout the design process is a clear advantage
Experience
We ask for relevant years’ professional experience in an industrial/product design-related role in a corporate, consultancy or agency environment. Ideally, you hold a degree within the area of industrial design, marketing, branding or innovation. Preferred are candidates who are experienced in making delightful experiences within the constraints of industrial design.
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