The design industry is a vibrant, varied and dynamic creative sector that plays a powerful and important role in many areas of our lives.
Designers help conceive and shape products and services; they contribute hugely to the visual world around us; they create communications for organisations of all shapes and sizes; they influence how we use buildings and help improve our workspaces; they can contribute to building better public services or create more efficient working processes; they create the interfaces we use daily on digital devices; they help us digest information; they create the clothes you’re wearing and the chair you may be sitting on.
But designers don't work alone. Design is an agent acting between many other areas of activity and involving collaboration with many people in all kinds of jobs, in all kinds of organisations. Many designers are versatile and work across more than one discipline. For instance Wayne Hemingway has designed clothes, wallpaper and buildings. The design industry is certainly far-reaching – but the input of designers is just one component amongst many. A career in design is therefore a career in communications: design itself is about communicating with end-users and the design process is dependent on good communication between designers and their clients, as well as between various designers themselves.
Supporting the many areas of design activity there is also a host of related job roles in areas such as project management, account handling, public relations, teaching and research, to name but a few. So a career in the design industry need not be restricted to practicing a design discipline itself.
About the design industry
Different types of design activity often require special training and qualifications, but there is also a great deal of overlap in the types of skills and processes which most designers use. The Types of Design section of this site discusses each area in detail, giving information about the role and function of each discipline, examples of what it produces, and comments from designers about what it is like to work in that particular area of design.
The design industry is heavily concentrated in the south-east of England generally and in London in particular – combined these areas contain almost half of all design businesses. But there are designers throughout the country, working in consultancies, in-house at non-design companies and as freelancers. Design businesses tend to be small and freelancing is common. A lot of designers gain some experience working in a consultancy before striking out on their own, or in partnership with a small number of people, to start their own consultancy business. This cycle tends to repeat and design has remained something of a ‘cottage industry’ as a result – there are few very large groups.
For detailed information about the composition and geographical spread of the design industry see the Design Council’s Design Industry Research.
Education, qualifications and salaries
There were approximately 60,000 students in higher education undertaking some form of design studies in 2007/8, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Overall employment in the design industry increased by 7% between 2006 and 2008 to a total employment of 194,000 people (in design and creative positions), according to Creative & Cultural Skills (CCS). Almost half (46%) earn less than £20,000 per year, whilst 15% earn £41,000 per year or more, according to the same CCS research.
Two thirds of the people working in the sector hold at least a level 4 qualification, which is roughly equivalent to a certificate of higher education, whilst half have qualifications higher than level 4 (higher national diplomas, foundation degrees, degrees and above). For more general information on how the different levels and types of qualifications work see the Educational and Learning section of Directgov.
Deciding what to do
Unfortunately, there are more students leaving design education than there are jobs to receive them. This means that in addition to qualifications, a designer’s industry experience, skill set and creative ability will be very influential in securing a job or client work.
The sections on each design disciplines on this site contain careers information, descriptions of typical job roles, skills needed, typical salary ranges and the availability of courses, so it is worth reading through these if you are still deciding what area of design you would like to study and work in. For even more inspiration, check out our ‘Week in the life of...’ series, where seven designers discuss a typical working week in the areas of furniture design, workplace design, industrial design, textile design, interactive graphics design, communications design and packaging design. The art, design and crafts section of the ICould website also contains videos of people discussing their jobs, explaining what they do and how they developed their careers.
There is a searchable list of all foundation degree, higher national diploma (HND) and degree courses on the UCAS website, along with entry requirements and course descriptions. Many postgraduate courses are listed on UCAS’ dedicated postgraduate site UKPASS.
Read on for more about a career as a designer ... and in the design industry.