Senior Designer, Real Estate & Marketing in Chicago, Illinois at Cross Street Real Estate LLC

Job Title: Senior Designer, Real Estate & Marketing

Reports To: Senior Marketing Manager

As Senior Designer at Cross Street, you will own the design direction and creative output of our company, ensuring consistency, quality, and innovation across every brand we touch. You will lead creative efforts that support our brokers in winning and marketing listings, guide branding and lease-up campaigns for multifamily properties, and shape the corporate identity of Cross Street itself. This is a highly visible role that blends hands-on design, client-facing strategy, and team leadership; ideal for a designer who wants ownership over both the creative product and the process behind it.

Supports the organization's mission and values by exhibiting the following behaviors: excellence and competence, collaboration, innovation, commitment, accountability, and ownership.

To thrive in this role, you should have a passion to learn and grow, be able to execute across different timelines, and be able to work well with and inspire other team members.

Design Leadership

• Take ownership of the design process and output across all projects, ensuring alignment with Cross Street's creative vision and quality standards.
• Supervise and mentor internal and external marketing/creative team members, providing guidance, feedback, and support to foster professional growth and maximize team performance.
• Collaborate with fellow designers to conduct design reviews, prioritize project workloads, and ensure consistent, high-quality creative execution.
• Collaborate with cross-functional Leasing and Technology teams to provide design expertise and influence creative decision-making throughout projects.
• Set creative direction, review and approve work before it reaches clients or the market, and maintain a consistent quality bar across the creative output.
• Establish and document design workflows, templates, and file systems that allow the creative deliverables to scale efficiently across multiple concurrent projects.

Broker & Listing Support

• Assist the brokerage/managing broker to update/design listing materials that help win and market properties, including pitch/proposal decks, listing flyers, and other marketing collateral.
• Ensure broker-facing materials are consistent in quality and voice, regardless of which team member produces the first draft.

Client Collaboration

• Act as a primary point of contact for clients on branding and lease-up engagements, hosting brand alignment meetings, understanding their needs, and leading the branding process for properties under our management.
• Present creative concepts and rationale confidently to clients, ownership groups, and internal stakeholders.
• Manage client feedback and revisions, balancing client vision with brand and market best practices.

Lease-Up & Property Branding Strategy

• Develop and execute comprehensive branding strategies for luxury apartment lease-ups, ensuring brand consistency and relevance in the market from pre-launch through stabilization.
• Design and produce leasing collateral including brochures, floor plans, flyers, signage, banners, QR code cards, and availability flyers.
• Experience designing large-format signage with attention to print specifications,
• production requirements, and design best practices.
• Assist with digital assets such as social media content creation such as email campaign creative, and listing/property websites, all aligned to lease-up timelines and leasing velocity goals.
• Potential to lead the development of naming, logo, and visual identity systems for new properties, and translate them into a full suite of applications (print, digital, environmental/signage) and brand guidelines.

Corporate Branding

• Lead the development and maintenance of Cross Street's corporate branding, including visual identity, messaging, and brand guidelines.
• Ensure company-wide materials: pitch decks, website, social channels, recruiting materials, and internal communications reflect a consistent and elevated brand.
• Evolve the Cross Street brand over time in response to company growth, new service lines, and market positioning.

Pricing Strategy

• Collaborate with the leadership team to establish pricing for branding and design services offered to clients, considering market trends, competitive analysis, and value proposition.
• Provide input on scoping design engagements (timeline, deliverables, revisions) to support accurate proposals.

Vendor & Production Management

• Manage relationships with printers, signage vendors, photographers, and videographers to ensure quality, accuracy, and on-time delivery.
• Oversee production quality control, from proofing to final installation (signage, banners, etc.).

• Cross Street's corporate brand and every client-facing deliverable feel consistent, polished, and on-strategy.
• Lease-up properties launch with strong, market-differentiated branding that supports leasing velocity goals.
• Brokers have reliable, fast turnaround on listing materials that help them win and close deals.
• The creative team operates efficiently, with clear direction, templates, and quality standards in place.
• Vendor relationships run smoothly, with consistent quality and on-time delivery.