Junior Designer / Layout Artist

Financial Mail, South Africa’s oldest financial magazine, is looking for a talented junior designer to join its team. The magazine has a long history of excellent, award-winning design.

That may not be the first thing people expect from a publication focused on business, finance, the economy and politics, but we see these subjects as an opportunity for smart, compelling and sometimes unexpected visual storytelling. 

This is an especially exciting time to join Financial Mail. We are preparing to launch a redesigned print magazine, a refreshed brand and a new website, while also introducing a new print-production system. We are looking for someone who is eager to grow into the role, develop their skills and help shape the magazine’s next chapter.

The designer will be responsible for laying out pages — and, as they gain experience, potentially entire sections — of the weekly magazine. Financial Mail goes to print on a Tuesday night, so the production cycle runs on a weekly rhythm and requires someone who can work quickly, accurately and calmly under deadline pressure. The role includes selecting and curating photographs and illustrations, working with graphics, and creating original visual elements (illustrations etc).

A genuine interest in news and the world is important: the job involves reading stories, understanding what makes them interesting, and turning them into strong, engaging print pages. The designer will work closely with the rest of the design team, subeditors, section editors and journalists. Print is the core of the position, but there will also be opportunities to contribute to digital, social-media, brand and video projects.

What we are looking for

• Strong Adobe Creative Suite skills, particularly InDesign, photoshop and illustrator.
• An eye for detail.
• Speed, accuracy and a good eye for layout, typography and images
• An interest in news, current affairs, and visual storytelling
• The ability to work within templates while still bringing intelligence and creativity to each page
• Excellent organisation and communication skills
• Enthusiasm, focus, a collaborative approach and a willingness to take direction.
• A willingness to learn our new print-production system, which is intuitive and built around InDesign This is a hybrid position, with some work taking place at our Johannesburg office and some from home.
• Financial Mail is a small, energetic team. We work hard, pitch in when unexpected projects arise, and believe the process should still be fun too! 
• Minimum level of education and experience: enthusiasm and a strong portfolio and solid knowledge of tools and design principals, plus sound references are more important than years of experience.