Product Designer - remote

Tastemakers Africa has been disrupting what the world thinks about Africa for five years. Part travel-startup, part culture-shifter, we’ve helped thousands of predominately Black travelers experience the continent authentically by building a network of artists, chefs, storytellers, creatives, and expert guides sharing their world through our platform.

COVID-19 has shaken things up, but the culture moves forward. We’ve been building community and sharing perspectives throughout the pandemic and are ready to launch something new. We’re looking for a fire Product Designer (preferably Black/POC) that’s interested in working hand-in-hand with our CEO and CTO to create a next-gen, subscription-based platform at the intersection of travel, culture, and media.

More details on what we’re building:

High-level, we’re moving with “let’s go deep but make it sexy”energy with an initial cohort of some of the most talented writers, illustrators, photographers, and short-form video creators in Africa and the diaspora making up our contributor base.

We’re focusing on what we do best, introducing the world to Black Tastemakers through a global perspective, highlighting the destinations, places, and vibes people don’t want to miss, and sharing perspectives on the issues and events that people should know –even if it’s not on their radar yet.

Beyond editorial, we’re doing best-in-class digital experiences, sending a newsletter (with an aim to go daily), and beginning to do some IRL shindigs at our “Salon Houses”in Brooklyn and Accra. There’s even a merch play in store but…ka kra ka kra (bit by bit) as they say in Ghana.

Where you fit in:

You’ll be adding the sauce and designing the “home”for this idea across the web. Your main focus will be:

Pulling together an initial brand suite (we’d love to do things like use fonts from Black typographers and really nod to the culture in everything we build) Creating 5 –10 landing pages as we grow the newsletter and build excitement, and of course Design the platform itself which in its simplest form is:a searchable blog site (6 –7 page templates) with multiple content types, a subscriber transaction pathway, and an email newsletter We also plan to iterate other products we offer and, depending on scope, will update the designs of our:

Virtual community space, and Online shop Both of which will be third party integrations at the start. There’s also PLENTY of space for you to inform the shape of this platform from start to finish.

Things to note:

We’re looking for folks to say “oh damn”when they arrive. Striking a balance between known design patterns that help the user navigate the platform and breaking convention in favor of visual pleasure and/or cultural nuance to shine through everything from colors to media arrangements to typeface choices is where we want to be.

The current Tastemakers brand will be your basis, but not your finish line. We’re proud of the brand and ethos that exists around our work: it communicates that we’re an authority in the spaces we occupy, but we can be rebellious and unconventional with how we present information. We want designs that nod to past iterations of Tastemakers, but establish themselves as a new chapter.

Our expectations:

We’re looking for a product designer who’s built beautiful, functional things we can reference and can make it happen with a small team. We expect a portfolio that shows off your role in designing rich user experiences and examples of your graphic design. Hustle is key, as is having perspective.

We love iterating on everything we do. We’ll hand off our user research, but will support you going out and learning more about our community. We’re a small team that values collaboration and want to work with you at each step of the design process.

This role is initially designed as a 3-Month contract with the potential to renew month/month. Salary is meaningful but we’re also a travel startup in a pandemic, ideally, we’d land in the $20K range to get a minimal marketable product out the door.

We’re keen on long-term relationship building and believe that there’ll be a full-time product designer role soon.

What we’re like:

We’re venture-backed, but we owe our success to the people. We put them front and center every day.

Initiative takes you everywhere as does rigor.

Brilliance is welcomed as is humor, random Tik Tok videos, and a witty Tweet.

Our team sits across three continents;you can work from anywhere as long as Eastern time can be your working jam.

How to Apply:

Send your portfolio, resume, and a quick note [or whatever materials make you shine] to design@tastemakersafrica.com