Digital Artist for Cognito's Educational Youtube Channel and Website

Application deadline

Please note the deadline for applications is 30th November 2024

About us

Here at Cognito, we create educational resources for secondary school students, currently focusing on science and maths. We have a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Cognitoedu) and a revision platform (https://cognitoedu.org), both of which are used by hundreds of thousands of students. We're on a mission to redefine what people expect from educational resources, and are looking to hire an exceptional artist to help us create our signature graphics and video lessons.

Please be aware that due to the volume of applications we receive, we are unable to provide any feedback for any candidate who does not pass both parts of the initial application task. We apologise for this in advance.

Job summary

This post is fully remote, and offered on a full-time basis (37.5 hours per week). Our typical working hours are 9 - 5:30, with an hour for lunch between 1-2pm.

As part of the art team at Cognito, you'll be responsible for creating the artwork that helps students learn their schoolwork through our website and Youtube channel. The majority of your time will be spent working with a subject specialist to create attractive and engaging diagrams and infographics. You'll also be involved in creating our Youtube videos, though we'll provide training on how to do that, and no prior video editing experience is required for this role. Almost all of our visuals are created using either Adobe After Effects, or Adobe Illustrator.

Though the Cognito art style is cartoony and simplistic, we are increasingly defaulting to using 2/3-point perspective for new art assets, and you will need to have exceptionally strong art skills, and a brilliant eye for for creating graphics that look 'just right'.

Application process

• Applicants will need to complete an initial application task (15 minutes) in order to be considered. Please see the 'Application task' section for details.
• If you made a sincere attempt at the application task, we will endeavour to reply to you within 7 working days, in order to let you know whether we will be moving forward with your application and asking you to do the second application task (also ~15 mins).
• Assuming a successful second application task, we will ask you to complete a series of paid trials in order to get a more accurate sense of your abilities. Each trial will range between 30 mins - 2 hours, and will be paid at £15 per hour. You will be paid for these trials irrespective of whether we move forward with your application after that trial.
• Following the paid trials, we may invite you to an interview. This will be a 20 - 30 minute informal chat over zoom, just to say hello, learn a bit more about you as a person, and also to answer any questions you may have.
• Depending on the different candidates at this stage, we may offer multiple candidates 1-4 weeks contract work, where we will be asking you to work with us as a contractor, working as close to full-time hours as you can accommodate (paid at £15 per hour again).
• Following that period of contract work, we will offer the successful candidate the job.

Requirements

• Fluent written and spoken English.
• You must live in the UK, and be a tax-resident of the UK.
• You must have passed GCSE maths and science. A level science or maths is strongly preferred.
• BSc or equivalent strongly preferred.
• Those who have educational or academic backgrounds will be strongly preferred.
• Access to Adobe Illustrator for the trial tasks, but be aware we will provide you with an Adobe CC account if you are hired for this role.
• Access to a computer connected to a graphics / drawing tablet (an ipad or tablet is not sufficient for this role as we need to use the desktop versions of the software).
• A fast & stable internet connection for uploading video files / video calls.
• Fantastic artistic skills, you should be able to draw in perspective, understand how to shade convincingly, and understand how to use line weight, and contrasting shapes to create balanced, cohesive, and beautiful graphics/layouts.
• This role will require someone who is self-motivated, has a brilliant eye for design and layout, and is fantastic at thinking of their work from the student's perspective. You will need to be an exceptionally clear thinker and communicator, as a large portion of the work will involve discussing and refining designs with the writer, always balancing academic precision with the need for visual clarity.
• Due to the job being remote, you'll need to be comfortable working independently for long periods of time, and to be able to stay engaged and productive without a lot of oversight.

Application tasks

The application task is split into two different parts, but we will check the first part before asking you to try the second (we will send this to you via follow-up email). Part 1 is linked below, and should take 15 minutes to complete. Please attach the output of part 1 to your application, using the questions & answer slots provided. The link takes you to Notion pages, and depending on where you are viewing this job, you may need to copy and paste the text of the link into your browser.

Part 1 - Art task

Please visit the following link to view Part 1 (link) (https://amadeuscarnegie.notion.site/Application-task-part-1-of-2-art-task-approx-15-mins-056109fd47394c53a34dfdecf791afe8?pvs=4)

Benefits

• £26,000 - £40,000 per annum, depending on ability.
• 30 days paid holiday per year (this figure includes bank holidays).
• As a small company (~10 people by the time you join) - we offer a friendly and informal environment, and there's a lot of potential to expand your role over the coming years, if that's something you're interested in.
• You'll play an essential part in creating some of the best learning resources in the world. To date, over 300 million questions have been answered on our platform, and our video lessons have been watched over 80 million times. Your skill and expertise will make a real difference to millions of students, and your videos will be made freely available to everyone via YouTube.