Senior Designer, Surface & Product Art
Location: Roseville, CA
Compensation: $95,000-$125,000
Benefits: Paid time off, sick leave
Employment Type: Full-Time ; Hybrid remote based in Roseville, CA
Reports To: Founder / CEO / Creative Director
Department: Creative / Product
Manages: Freelance designer roster
About Iron Orchid Designs
Iron Orchid Designs (IOD) is a design-forward craft and decorative arts brand with a devoted following of artists, makers, and creatives. Our growing collection of creative offerings and products spans decorative transfers, stamps, moulds, paint inlays, inks, and clay, all united by a distinctive aesthetic that is feminine, vintage, and sophisticated. We work with both domestic and overseas manufacturing partners. Our customers can spot an IOD product across a room, and that is not by accident.
Working at IOD
At IOD, we consider bringing beauty into the world a high calling and a privilege, and we push through until the work sings. We never settle. Because beauty only happens with intention. We are also a team that genuinely likes working together. Everyone here has a voice, no one stands alone, and there is a real humility to how we operate, the kind that makes it safe to speak up, to share an unfinished idea, and to make mistakes and grow from them. No one is too senior to pitch in on the small things or to be the first to help.
The Role
This is a role for an exceptional designer who creates the work directly. You will use Illustrator and Photoshop to produce the art yourself, taking source material, including vintage botanical plates, antique ephemera, archival illustrations, and commissioned fine art, and turning it into finished, unmistakably-IOD product art. Just as important, you will help decide what gets made: which assets a collection needs, which products they belong on, and where the right source material lives.
You will make the calls on style, scale, and color, and on how a design is best presented, whether as a pattern, a vignette, or a border, for instance, grounded in how our community actually uses our products. Those decisions will weigh historical use, modern trends, community preferences, gaps in our current offering, and more as you finalize each product.
Today this work runs through our founder. She conceives the products, sources the art, and creates the work herself. This role exists to take that work off her desk by doing it at a level that meets her standard. If you are the kind of designer who loves the work itself, who is happiest with a beautiful old engraving on the screen in front of you, and who also has the instinct to shape a product line, this is your seat.
What You'll Do
Refine the art
- Prepare source material into finished product art:
- isolating artwork from aged scans, restoring and matching historical typography so edits read as original to the piece, and selectively reworking tone and shading to a defined standard.
- Redraw, interpret, and separate colors into isolated color blocks for our paint inlays.
- Assess the quality and resolution of source material, making sure every image is crisp and clear before it moves to the production manager.
- Find a unifying thread that runs through an entire release so the products feel cohesive, while building in enough versatility and variety to give the collection range.
- Hand off finished art to the production manager, who prepares the final files for manufacturing. Preparing art for production is not part of this role.
- Work to a brief and a defined revision process, providing test pieces before finalizing and handing products off.
Shape the product
- Help conceive collections and individual products: what to make, which asset each product needs, and how all of the products in a release work together.
- Source and curate material from historical archives, public-domain collections, commissioned fine artists, freelance illustrators, museum contacts, and antique dealers.
- Clear and document rights, licensing, and artist agreements for every source.
Work with the team
- Partner closely with the founder, who is currently acting as IOD's Creative Director, taking concepts from a written brief to a finished collection with increasing independence and shortened revision cycles over time.
- Partner with the production manager, and over time help build and brief a roster of freelance designers and illustrators.
- Keep your creative decisions grounded in how things are actually made, so the work moves smoothly into production.
What You Bring
Required
- A portfolio of finished work, not just concepts and mood boards. We want to see real products and collections you have designed and created yourself.
- Expert hands-on skill in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
- Demonstrated ability to work within an established aesthetic and produce work that feels native to it, with a strong grasp of design principles, color theory, and decor design.
- A real eye for product: you understand what makes a collection cohere and which assets a product needs.
- An understanding of how creative decisions translate to physical manufacturing, so the work transitions cleanly into production.
Strongly preferred
- Deep familiarity with vintage and decorative-arts source material, and experience working with public-domain and archival art.
- A genuine love of the world IOD lives in: vintage design and home decor.
- A love of DIY and craft, especially decor.
- Experience sourcing and curating art from varied origins (archives, fine artists, illustrators, antique and museum sources).
Nice to have
- Experience leading or briefing other creatives (see the note below).
- Experience working with overseas manufacturing partners.
A Note on Growth
This role is, first and foremost, a Lead Designer role. But IOD is positioned to scale significantly over the coming years, and there are real levers to pull in this seat. For the right person, it can grow into broader creative leadership over time. And if you already bring proven creative leadership and team-building experience on top of the design skill above, tell us. We are open to shaping this as a Creative Director role for a candidate who can do both.
How to Apply
Please submit:
- Resume
- A portfolio showing finished work you have made yourself, including real products and collections
- A short note: explain your process when approaching a new product collection. For instance, if we gave you a brief for a transfer collection, what steps would you take to get the art to a place of being ready for handoff?
- More than the biggest portfolio or the longest resume, we want a designer with a firm grasp of vintage design and a feel for the nuance of translating it into inspiring products. Someone who wants to work shoulder to shoulder with us and blaze new trails in the making industry, with the highest-quality designer-craft products on the market.
