Design could be a plan, or a drawing, or both, or even beyond.
Designers are planners. They draw images. They may not be great at drawing. They may not be artists too. But they are good in communicating through their drawing. These drawings are for various purposes, and to interact with different audience.
Yes, designs are modes of communicating function, utility, beauty, creativity, some them, most of them, or all of them.
Recently, youngsters are showing great interest to follow a glowing career path in the field of design. One cannot assure ‘the glowing’ part, but patience and creativity are the very much of requirement in the field of design. School days are the best of time children grow their ambition and start to see themselves in larger picture and seek answer for question “What-I-want-to-become-when-I-grow-up”. Unfortunately, the masters of the school days setup, teachers, are either busy galloping through their syllabus, or unprepared to guide these kids to the level and way needed. Forget about guiding, in most cases, teachers/management not ready to entertain any such discussion that may shed light on the future career paths for the students. ‘History-Science-Mathematics-Languages’, this is the school world. Exceptions are there, I accept, but rare, yet welcomed and encouraged.
Who replaces this crucial gap in students’ life?
Movies and movie stars?
Students start seeing themselves in roles their favorite hero casted in recent blockbuster!
Result?
Brave IAS officers! dashing police commissioners! all knowing doctors! brilliant scientists! Wise forensic experts! All fall for the end result, while very few know the path to follow or even ready to follow the process.
Let’s discuss various career paths available in the field of design now.
- Interior Design
- Fashion
- Graphics/Visual Communication
- Industrial Design
- Web Design
Individual domains can be explored in detail as below:
Interior design:
Here the designers give a professional touch to interior spaces. Various elements of interior space like table, chair, ceiling, walls, floors, furniture can be built, organized and arranged to styles.
Residential interior design: This is the interior design of residential complexes.
Commercial interior design: Here the interior design goes for schools, office complexes, restaurants, shopping malls.
Exhibition interior design: Designers do the interior design for art galleries, museums, zoos, trade fairs
Set design: This is the interior design of stages, studios, theater sets for music performance, films, television serials, fashion shows.
Fashion:
Fashion is design of wearables. They span from clothes to jewelry to shoes to bags. Fashion is the reflection of modernity and trends.
Fashion design: This includes conceptualizing, outlining, creating design and preparing patterns primarily for apparel.
Fashion management and communication: Management of brand identity and growth strategies for fashion labels in national and international markets.
Jewelry design: Ornaments and wearables have gone a long way from its initial forms and designs. Working with diverse materials (precious metals, precious stones) to create jewelry is a professional and creative space now. Many reputed brands have emerged from this domain of design that employs many talents.
Accessory design: Design of bags, shoes, wristwatches and other fashion accessories.
Textile design: Designers create patterns for woven, knitted, printed fabrics or surface ornamented fabrics.
Graphic /Visual Communication:
Combining texts, colors, images, graphics to communicate effectively through logos, brochures, newsletters, posters, and other types of visual communications is also a design task. They provide uniqueness and effectiveness in conveyed message. Many reputed MNCs (Multinational Corporations) use graphic / visual communication as an act to extend their brand identity.
Brand identity: Brand identity is visual representation of a company to its customers and the media. Logos, packaging, mugs, T shirts etc. are used to serve this purpose. Many times, these seemingly naïve elements of brand identity, by itself symbolizes the brand and means a lot to its customers and fans. Apple, NIKE products are very few examples from a long list of brands that uses brand identity strategy so effectively.
Advertising: They design print ads, flyers, web ads, electronic mailers. Objective is to design the advertisement to reach its potential customers.
Art direction: Graphical representation of data in magazines and newspapers.
Broadcast design: Opening and closing credits of news programs/TV serials, etc. are handled by these designers. Look and feel of sets, presenters, charts, sport scores, polls etc. are some of the job descriptions of these designers.
Book design: They design cover pages, fonts, illustrations, layouts, images for the books. Next time when you pick a book from a bookstore shelf, try to feel the efforts of designers and their creativity in making. And, if you find yourself fascinated, and see your own way of making a book design, congratulations, you are that book designer world is waiting to see.
Industrial design:
They combine functionality with aesthetic appeal for everyday use. Usability, technical compatibility and aesthetic appeal all are important, industrial designers understand this fact and uses its possibility.
Product design: These designers develop concepts and design for manufactured products.
Automobile design: They design and develop various modes of road transport. This could be a car, a truck, or anything in between, or even beyond.
Furniture design: Here the designer uses the possibilities and techniques of both interior design and product design. IKEA is one such great example that successfully implemented furniture design to a larger than a company image.
Toy design: A 90 billion USD business space now. Legos, toys, dolls, board games, puzzles, computer games, art and craft materials etc. are few of the forms of toy design.
Web design:
Here the designers create a space, a virtual one, that is discoverable, welcoming, habitable. Rapidly expanding possibilities of information technology and break-through advancements in computer technology allowed web designers to unleash creativity through technical and technological expertise.
User interface design (UI): Here the designer considers what the customer sees, hears and touches, and motivates to further engage with the product/services through their creative talent and technical expertise.
User experience design (UX): Genius in visualizing the whole macro world of how the user discovers, acquires, and uses a product.
As stated in the beginning, design is a career field of planning and drawing. It’s about communicating and creativity. Utility, beauty and clarity are corner stones of design.
Planning for a design career! Congratulations!!
This topic discussed in detail in below link, but language is Malayalam. Those who follow, can watch it.
Design | വൈവിധ്യങ്ങൾ നിറഞ്ഞ കരിയർ മേഖലകൾ! | All About Design Careers | Part 2
Reference: ‘Ultimate Guide To 21st Century Careers’, Author: Richa Dwivedi, Published in 2017
Mujeeb Patla 