Consultancy - Design Specialist (GIGA), Home-based, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up.

UNICEF has a 75-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

And we never give up.

For every child, Connectivity

Over a third of the world’s population has no regular access to the Internet. Millions of children leave school without any digital skills, making it much more difficult for them to thrive. This has created a digital divide between those who are connected and those who are not, a divide that has become even wider during the Covid-19 pandemic. UNICEF and ITU have therefore joined forces to create Giga, an initiative to connect every school in the world to the Internet and address this new form of inequality.

Working with 19 countries (and growing), Giga maps school connectivity in real-time, advises on appropriate technical solutions, creates models for innovative financing, and supports governments contracting for school connectivity. To date, Giga has mapped over 1.1 million schools, connected over 5,300 schools, and mobilized over $200 million for connectivity.

You can read more about Giga’s work at https://giga.global and by following us on twitter @Gigaglobal

How can you make a difference?

We are a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, finance specialists, data scientists, policy experts, and much more. Our team is a distributed workforce and plans to remain distributed into the foreseeable future. We are growing fast. Our team has grown by over 400% in the last 6 months as we rapidly scale to meet our stated mission.

We seek a strong self-motivated and experienced designer who can work with a diverse interdisciplinary team to support the creative development of internal and external facing visual assets to amplify Giga’s ambitious goal of connecting every school, and every community to the Internet.

You will be responsible for driving the vision of the Giga brand, producing brand assets, content and collateral in a wide range of formats and continuously devising creative ways to communicate the brand message visually.

The successful candidate will exemplify expertise in communication design (visual storytelling across a range of mediums) as well as a working knowledge of user experience and interaction design.

Our team takes large ideas and makes them a reality; being able to communicate complex and abstract ideas using visual, verbal and written language is crucial.

You will:

• Effectively utilize current brand guidelines, and recommend and improve assets as required across all touchpoints, which includes but is not limited to:
  • Corporate Identity and brand guidelines.
  • Presentation templates.
  • Reports, concept notes, pitch products, whitepapers, etc.
  • Interactive media and videos.
  • Website and social media.
  • Supporting visual assets: icons, graphics, infographics, etc. for internal and external audiences in digital and print.
• Work in collaboration with internal teams in response to design briefs to develop effective creative solutions as required.
• Continually iterate on concepts in an effort to make communications and presentation materials relevant and relatable to our audience(s).
• Create cohesive and consistent brand experiences across multiple channels and touchpoints through the development of self-serve tools, templates, libraries and request processes.
• Run workshops to establish, educate and promote design guidelines, template usage, best practices and standards amongst team.
• Use design thinking or other processes, to define and develop outputs that are innovative, solve real problems, and have impact on business.
• Position yourself as a Giga brand identity and visual identity expert.

Description of assignment:

# Tasks End Product / Deliverables Time Frame****1

Develop and/or refine multi-channel style guides and assets for Giga’s external and internal communications- Presentation, memo, concept notes templates & guidelines - In-house and promotional materials - Social media templates & guidelines - Video templates & guidelines - Website brand and design review - Infographic & information design styles and guidelines

Month 1-5Photo resource/libraryOngoingIllustrations and icons library2

Branding and identityRun design thinking workshops and feedback sessions to improve on, champion and educate on current and upcoming brand assets and usageOngoingAssist in development of Giga’s sub brands as required3Design reports and various miscellaneous documents as required by Giga teamsAssist in designing compelling, cutting edge pitch documents, impact reports, partner reports and various documents as required by various Giga teams, and integrate design findings into new templates and guidelinesOngoing4Giga brand manualDelivery of comprehensive Giga brand manual encompassing learnings across all assets.Month 1-11To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• A first University Degree in a relevant field in graphic design, communication design, visual design, interaction design or another relevant field.
• A minimum of five (5) years of relevant communications experiences for different use and audiences.
• Advanced knowledge of Adobe CC software (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, After Effects) and working knowledge of interface design tools like Figma.
• Experience creating templates for Microsoft Office’s on and offline apps and/or Google Workspace apps.
• Experience in cutting edge interactive multimedia documents and advantages/disadvantages of delivery platforms.
• Strong information design experience is considered an asset.
• Deep understanding of design systems, creation and components.
• Preferred knowledge of capabilities and limitations of Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
• Strong preference for ability to illustrate.
• Experience in motion graphics (including storyboarding), and video editing.
• Fluent in design principles, and best practices.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment; proven track record working across a cross-functional team.
• Your portfolio showcases engaging, elegant and functional designs, clearly demonstrating brand knowledge and multimedia experience.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance.
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.