Junior Product illustrator  

Do You Turn Great Creative Direction Into Finished, On-Style Product Art?

At Hadley Designs, we believe learning should be enjoyable, engaging, and screen-free. Millions of parents and teachers trust our beautifully designed, developmentally aligned educational tools to help children grow and thrive. As a fast-growing, family-founded brand, we are looking for an early-career illustrator who wants to make the art that goes into our products.

We are seeking a Junior Product Illustrator to work hand-in-hand with our Chief Creative Officer, taking her creative direction through to finished, production-ready product art. This is a maker’s seat, not a template-and-layout role. If you love to draw, have a genuine eye for cute, playful, kid-friendly design, and want to grow your craft inside a brand that ships beautiful products every month, this is a rare opportunity to build your portfolio while creating work that reaches millions of families.

About Hadley Designs

Hadley Designs is redefining early education with creativity and purpose. Every product is hand-drawn and teacher-designed, crafted to build confidence and connection. Our screen-free tools help families and teachers make learning meaningful while nurturing children’s curiosity and creativity.

Mission: We design beautiful, developmentally sound, screen-free products that parents can trust to help their children learn, grow, and reach their full potential.

Vision: To build the most trusted children’s brand in the world, reshaping how families learn, connect, and grow.

Role Overview

As our Junior Product Illustrator, you will turn the Chief Creative Officer’s vision into finished, on-style product art so Hadley Designs can launch products faster and multiply its creative capacity. The CCO sets the tone, style, and strategy; you carry out the hands-on execution by creating new artwork, completing sets in an established style, and building each concept through to production-ready.

This is a deliberately early-career seat for someone with real illustration talent who wants to keep growing their craft. You will not be expected to arrive as a seasoned art director. You will be expected to draw well, learn our style quickly, take direction cleanly, and finish the last mile of the creative so the CCO can focus on setting direction.

Key Responsibilities

Original Illustration & Artwork. Create new artwork and complete sets in Hadley Designs’ established style. Illustrate original characters, motifs, patterns, and scenes that fit our cute, kid-friendly aesthetic.

Product Design Execution. Turn the CCO’s concepts and creative direction into finished, production-ready product designs.

Creative Production Support. Own execution offload, including variations, building designs across full sets, and file preparation.

Style Consistency Keep every piece on-style and on-brand across the full product set. Maintain the living style reference so the look stays consistent as the catalog grows.

As needed, provide occasional ad-ops support, including A+ content, storefront updates, CMYK ad images, and revisions to existing product lines.

How Success Is Measured

• First-pass approval rate: The share of deliverables with no major rework
• New original art created: The volume of original artwork generated to feed the product pipeline.
• Sets/SKUs completed: Finished design sets per month
• On-time delivery: Assignments delivered by the agreed deadline.
• Framework-to-finish independence: The share of projects carried from CCO handoff to production-ready without kicking work back up.

Who You Are

You are an early-career illustrator with genuine drawing talent and a real eye for cute, playful, kid-friendly design. You love to make art and you want to keep doing exactly that. This is the work you want to grow in, not a stepping stone into something else. You take creative direction cleanly, you learn a style fast, and you can carry a piece all the way to finished without needing it handed back to you. You thrive in a remote, fast-moving environment where new products ship every month, and you are excited to build your portfolio inside a brand that reaches millions of families.

Must-haves

• A portfolio of original illustration work that shows a cute, playful, kid-friendly or product-design sensibility.
• Working proficiency in Adobe Illustrator for native illustration (not just file handling or layout).
• Ability to match and extend an existing art style, completing a set so new pieces sit naturally alongside the originals.
• Strong ability to take written and verbal creative direction and turn it into finished work.
• Reliability on deadlines while managing several pieces at once.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience preparing print / production files to spec.
• Familiarity with the children's, educational, or consumer-product space.
• Comfort with lightweight project tools (Notion, ClickUp) and file organization.
• Note: this is an entry-level maker's role. We are not looking for a senior art director or a veteran illustrator. We are looking for real talent early in its arc, with the interest and hunger to grow.