Visual Designer

Visual Designer

FUNCTION Marketing & Brand

LOCATION Mumbai (On-site)

EMPLOYMENT Full-Time

EXPERIENCE 2 to 3 Years

ABOUT SAFFRONSTAYS

SaffronStays is India's leading managed villa hospitality brand, with 450+ homes across 80+ driveable destinations. Founded in 2015, we curate stays for families and groups who believe that the most meaningful luxury is time spent together, pausing, breathing, and bonding away from the noise of everyday life.

Our homes range from heritage havelis in Rajasthan to lakeside estates in the Western Ghats. Every SaffronStays property is distinct, and so is every piece of communication we put out. We don't do generic. We don't do lazy. We're building a brand that earns attention. We need a designer who understands that.

THE OPPORTUNITY

We're looking for a Visual Designer who brings both technical depth and genuine creative ambition to the role. This isn't a job for someone who waits for a brief and executes it exactly as written. We want someone who reads a brief, understands what it's really trying to say, and comes back with an output. Often, an idea we did not know to ask for.

You will be the visual engine behind SaffronStays' creative communication, working across digital and print to produce work that feels as considered as the homes we represent. You'll partner closely with the Content and Marketing teams, and over time, you'll develop a strong instinct for the SaffronStays brand voice expressed in visual form.

WHAT YOU WILL WORK ON

Your output will span the full range of SaffronStays' communication needs. On the digital side, this includes:

• Social media creatives across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp: static posts, carousels, stories, and reels thumbnails
• Email newsletters and HTML EDMs for seasonal campaigns, destination launches, and brand announcements
• Paid media creatives for performance campaigns across Meta and Google
• LinkedIn content visuals, carousel decks, and branded templates
• Presentation decks for internal strategy, investor communication, and homeowner pitches

On the print and collateral side, this includes:

• In-home menus, welcome cards, activity guides, and curated experience booklets for our villa properties
• Brand stationery and co-branded materials for homeowner partnerships
• Press kits, media packs, and editorial layouts for PR and earned media
• Event materials for brand activations, homeowner soirees, and experiential marketing initiatives
• Signage, packaging inserts, and other physical brand touchpoints as needed

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Technical Proficiency

You are deeply fluent in the tools that professional design demands. Adobe Creative Suite is not something you're learning. It's something you live in. Specifically:

• Adobe Photoshop: image editing, compositing, retouching, and campaign visual production
• Adobe Illustrator: vector work, iconography, brand assets, and print-ready files
• Adobe InDesign: multi-page documents, menus, press kits, and editorial layouts
• Adobe Lightroom: colour grading and visual consistency across photography
• Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects: basic motion visuals and reel content (a strong advantage)
• Canva: fast turnaround, team collaboration, and templated content at scale
• Figma: digital prototyping and UI-adjacent work (good to have)
• AI-assisted design tools: Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Runway, or equivalent. Used actively, not occasionally

Creative Craft

• A strong eye for typography, hierarchy, whitespace, and visual restraint. You know when a layout is doing too much, and you have the discipline to pull back.
• A genuine feel for colour: in isolation and in the context of photography, season, and brand mood.
• The ability to work within a brand system without becoming a prisoner of it. You can push it, stretch it, and occasionally break it, as long as you can explain why.
• An understanding of the difference between what looks good on a screen and what holds up on a printed villa menu card or an outdoor banner.
• Awareness of current design trends in hospitality, lifestyle, and luxury: not to imitate them, but to contextualise your own choices.

Working Style

• You take a brief seriously, not literally. You ask the one right question before you start, not ten questions that push the deadline.
• You come to feedback sessions with options, not just revisions. You understand that presenting two directions and recommending one is more useful than presenting a single file.
• You can receive directional, sometimes sparse, notes and convert them into finished work quickly and accurately.
• You're self-directed on execution but genuinely collaborative on creative direction. You don't hoard ideas.
• You can move between a festive Diwali campaign and a quiet in-room welcome card in the same week, and you bring the right tone and register to each.

THE PROFILE WE ARE HOPING TO FIND

You have 2 to 5 years of professional design experience. A background in hospitality, lifestyle, travel, or consumer brands is genuinely helpful, though portfolio quality and creative instinct will always matter more than a specific category pedigree.

You follow design, not just as a professional requirement, but out of curiosity. You have opinions about hospitality brands, editorial photography, and seasonal campaigns, and you can articulate those opinions clearly.

You've designed for Instagram, email, and print simultaneously, and you understand that each format has its own logic, rhythm, and constraints. You don't treat them as the same surface.

You understand AI not as a shortcut but as a legitimate part of a designer's toolkit in 2025: something that expands what's possible when used with intention.

Most importantly: you care about the work. Not in an abstract way, but in the specific, daily way that shows up when you fix a kerning issue no one asked you to fix, or when you send back two options when one was requested because you had a second idea that felt worth sharing.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THIS ROLE

• Direct exposure to brand-building at scale: 450+ homes, 80+ destinations, a growing digital and print presence.
• Creative work that spans campaigns, collaterals, earned media, and brand IPs. No two weeks look the same.
• A team that has genuine respect for craft and will give you room to bring your perspective.
• The chance to grow into a senior design role as the brand's creative function expands.