Freelance Graphic Designer

About Grizzly Mine
Grizzly Mine is a pre-launch apparel and lifestyle brand inspired by the mining towns, industries, and visual language of 1860s California. We are building a contemporary brand with a distinct world around it - one that feels grounded in the period while remaining relevant, wearable, and alive today. The physical pieces surrounding the product matter to that experience. A hang tag, booklet, sticker, label, or package insert should not feel like generic marketing collateral with an old-fashioned font added to it.

The Opportunity
We are looking for a freelance graphic designer with strong traditional design fundamentals, real print experience, and the creative sensibility to help us develop this side of the Grizzly Mine visual language. This is not primarily a digital or social-media design role. The immediate work is physical, printed material that accompanies our apparel and helps extend the brand beyond the garment itself.

We expect the best work to come through collaboration. Our team will develop the concept and provide a design brief, references, copy, brand materials, and direction. The designer will interpret that material, develop a thoughtful visual solution, and work with us through feedback and refinement until the piece is ready for production.

First Projects
We have two initial projects in mind, completed in sequence:

• Hang Tag - The first assignment. A two-sided printed hang tag for Grizzly Mine T-shirts and hoodies. This smaller project will allow both sides to establish a working rhythm and determine whether the creative fit is right.
• Package Insert Booklet - If the first project goes well, the next assignment will be a small multi-page booklet included with customer shipments. It will introduce customers to the Grizzly Mine world and is expected to incorporate or hold a branded sticker.

These are intended to be the beginning, not the end. We expect an ongoing need for printed brand pieces, packaging-related design, and other graphic design projects as Grizzly Mine develops.

What We Are Looking For

• Strong graphic design fundamentals: typography, composition, hierarchy, color, and visual storytelling.
• Demonstrated experience designing for print, not only digital channels.
• Strong working knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and/or Adobe InDesign. Photoshop capability is also useful.
• Understanding of production-ready print files, CMYK and spot-color workflows, bleeds, trim, resolution, and working with printer specifications.
• Ability to use texture, material cues, typography, and composition with restraint rather than relying on effects for their own sake.
• A portfolio showing thoughtful identity, editorial, packaging, print collateral, labels, tags, or other physical design work.
• Comfort receiving a detailed creative brief, asking good questions, presenting ideas, and refining work through multiple rounds of feedback.
• An interest in storytelling and world-building. Historical or heritage-inspired work is a plus, but the ability to interpret a concept creatively is more important than having worked in this exact aesthetic before.

The Creative Standard
The challenge is balance. Grizzly Mine draws from an 1860s Northern California mining-town world, but we are not creating museum reproductions, archaeological artifacts, or novelty Old West graphics. The work should feel as though it belongs naturally within the brand world while still functioning beautifully for a modern customer and modern production.
We value designers who can explore more than one meaningful direction when a concept is still being defined. We are looking for someone who can contribute ideas, not simply execute instructions mechanically.

How We Work

• Our team develops the concept, objectives, content, references, and design brief.
• The designer reviews the brief, asks questions, and develops an initial direction or directions.
• We review together and provide consolidated feedback.
• The designer refines the selected direction through approval and prepares final production-ready files.
• When the relationship works well, we prefer to continue with the same designer so the visual language becomes stronger and more consistent over time.

Who This Will Fit
This project will fit a designer who enjoys doing more than making a layout attractive. You should enjoy thinking about why an object exists, how it feels in someone's hand, what story it communicates, and how the details contribute to a larger brand experience. You should also be comfortable with a collaborative process in which some answers are discovered through the work rather than predetermined before the project begins.