Right, So i’m currently studying for my A2 and it’s decision time with regards to higher level education / Employment. I’m not heartset on what I want to do in later life but I really like the idea of moving into design. The question is what area to your guys work in, what does it involve and do you think uni, apprentiships or straight into work is the best way into the business.

Any input will be hugely appriciated.

What sort of design?

I went to Art College, I guess it would be called a Univeristy these days and be a degree course.

You need to know the basics of Photography, Typography have a good command of English, Art at A level as I remember, nowadays you’ll need to be totally IT literate, you’ll learn the illustration programmes, plus Quark, Indesign, Photoshop, then I imagine Dreamweaver, Flash, Html5 whatever is current in web design, it’s probably a pretty heavy duty course.

Er that’s all assuming you mean Graphic Design of course.

Quark? So what’s that then?

Nobody uses it.

But OP – if graphic design, I’d be happy to help – give me your email and I’ll get in touch on Monday if you like.

johndoh – Any help would be so useful. If you can spare the time and don’t mind, my email is in my profile. Thank you

Of course – will drop you a mail on Monday to let you know my experience of education and opinion on employment (as I have a design business now and also part time teach at a local Uni).

Brilliant, Just what I was after. Thanks again.

Hi,
I’m a product designer by practice / experience, BUT currently sat here being distracted from writing the final bits of my dissertation for my MA Design: Sustainable Futures…..digital draft has to be sent to the external tomorrow night.

Does it sound like I could help at all, or is it mainly Graphic stuff you are interested in?
If Graphic i’ve been following the American graphic artist, James Victore’s work for a while. I like his notion that you should do work that matters, and to make it matter, it has to matter to yourself first. He does a good open question Tuesdays thing, kind of mentoring and is on the money. Worth a look.
(you can probably tell i’m in dissertation mindset)

I’m currently studying A2 level product design and loving it so anything you can input is welcome. Cheers!

I graduated from a Product Design degree in 2008, took me 3 years to get a job relating to my degree title, I have been in my first proper design job for 18 months, but I also have a lot of other skills my employer get value from,

my advice, never give up,

you need to go to uni i’m afraid,

Well i’d say Uni is bloody expensive these days, therefore I guess it should be considered carefully, which you are obviously doing.

Regarding Product Design, if you chose to have a go at that, then yes, you would really need to do an undergrad degree to learn all of the skills needed to be useful in the profession. Then a uni course with a sandwich year placement is a must, otherwise unless you are obviously the next Jonathon Ive you’ll struggle to get noticed above the pile of cv’s.

A good suggestion would be to not gamble yet and go and find a nice art and design foundation course for a year. It’ll give you a better understanding of the different disciplines. 10/12 years or so ago, Falmouth College of Art had a great foundation course and Falmouth is a great place to spend a year.

As for Product Design as a career, i’m well over it. The reality of churning out bits of guff in a For Profit economy, manufactured as far away from the UK as possible to meet margin/profit demands ground me down. Hence studying an MA in Design:Sustainable futures to try and find a way of using design for some good.

My current thinking is that with (product) design skills it’s far more rewarding to work for yourself and add value in a measurable way somehow. I hope i’ve found a way forward with the work i’ve been doing.

The reality of churning out bits of guff in a For Profit economy, manufactured as far away from the UK as possible to meet margin/profit demands ground me down.

all my designs are manufactured in the UK, actually in the factory 100 yards from my desk,

I’ll second doing an art/design foundation course. Really focused my mind as to what I wanted to do a degree in, unfortunately although I loved my furniture and product design degree the chances of me getting a job in that field were very slim. Luckily after a couple of years of bumbling along I stumbled into architecture and enjoy it immensely.

As those above have said, if you need any advice feel free to get in touch.

amt27 – Good to hear! I made that comment as it reflects where my career ended up and a realisation that I wanted to do something that involved manufacturing in the UK. Profit is not a bad word, i just believe it is great if design can be used for good, such as bringing some manufacturing home.
So what do you make and where are you???!

For product design you need a good education AND experience. Uni and work experience, then a couple of jobs to learn the trade, then you might get to do something decent. I did an engineering degree then a masters at art college in design which allowed me to chose a wide range of jobs.

Thanks for all the replies so far. I may be in contact with a few of you guys later if thats ok. I like the idea of architecture however maths isn’t my forte and I didn’t continue with it at A level so that is probably out!

If going the uni route, pick a course/uni that has lots of practical experience. The real world and the uni world are completely different but a decent course will fall somewhere in between. Courses with a long work placement would be my choice.

An apprenticeship would also be good, but you’d not get a look-in without experience. Ditto for trying to get a job.

I’m a ex Graphic/Product designer and illustrator (who still does a bit now and then), now working in the print trade fixing bad artwork created by ‘designers’ using InDesign.

johndoh – Member
Quark? So what’s that then?

Nobody uses it.

Hmm, I wouldn’t write it off just yet, I know quite a few old guard that stuck with it and now it’s Html5 compatible and targeting the tablet publishing sector.. Yes it did lose the plot by not getting on board with OSX soon enough, but Indesign were late with the intel Macs. All these programmes have their ups and downs, but if you want to be in the business you need to know about their strengths and weaknesses and to be able to cope with their out or in put depending what sort of job you end up with.

What you end up doing is key here, if you are at the creative end you can choose what you like, if on the other hand you end up at the production end then even more important to be able to handle the work of others, which will inevitably come in mixed formats.

Just saying, never be closed minded, not this early on in your career path.

I was very interested in studying product design at uni. However, I spoke to a few people who had studied it and said it was very hard to get a job with the degree, something like 1 person on his course had actually got a product design job.

They recommended Engineering, as you can go from engineering to product design, but not vice versa. So I’m currently studying Mechanical Engineering.

Not a huge amount of design though (arty stuff).

I like the idea of architecture however maths isn’t my forte and I didn’t continue with it at A level so that is probably out!

Don’t rule it out just because you didn’t choose maths. I’ll check with my work mates but I don’t think all of them did maths a level. I’ve been doing it quite succesfully for 13 years and although i got into it a rather convoluted and very lucky way I did a levels in Art, Design, and History of Art. It’s also much easier to get into than most other design disciplines once you’ve done your degree, most people who stick it through their part 2 will end up working in architecture in some way or other. Don’t expect to get rich though.

fixing bad artwork created by ‘designers’ using InDesign

what’s wrong with InDesign?

I did an Industrial design degree. Even thogh I got a first and one a few awards it still took me 9 months to get a job and even that was only tenuously related. For the next job I ended up in POS / POP design (design retail fixtures), I didn’t even know the industry existed before hand but it’s pretty big in the UK and lots of product / industrial design graduates end up in it. The pay’s is not the best but no worse that actual industrial design (unless you set up your own consultancy).
For me it does have the advantage that it uses your design skills but the projects are very fast turnaround so you don’t have to spend a year developing a spout for a kettle. It dependends what floats your boat really.
From that I’ve done a bit of retail marketing and project management and am now in procuring POP displays.

If you really love design and want to do it I recommend at least a foundation course, if you like it after that do the full course (£££) or get a low / no pay job as an assistant at a product design consultancy for some experience. Then see if you can set up your own design led product company, it will be tough but it’s the only way that you won’t see your vision dulled by clients.

what’s wrong with InDesign?

It’s too easy to create pretty pictures with InDesign. Not all pretty pictures print as they should. If the user knows what they are doing then there’s no problem. Sadly ime, the majority of InDesign ‘designers’ don’t. It’s cheaper than Quark though.

It’s too easy to create pretty pictures with InDesign.

❓

What on earth do you mean? Are you saying it is TOO intuitive?

I used Quark XPress pretty since it first came out (around 1990 – and I still know the keyboard shortcut to get the Alien Delete) but when I set my own business up in 2003 I swapped to InDesign because it was so much more cost effective to buy everything from Adobe.

Apart from a couple of minor niggles (lack of typographic shortcuts being the main one), it was a revelation.

But it is certainly no easier to make ‘pretty pictures’, just easier to use and had ‘out of the box’ control never known in Quark – simple things like gradient drop shadows over complex backgrounds or images.

So there…

I’d say its pretty important that you get a degree – just to get your foot in the door. Even junior design jobs require a degree, and there aren’t many ‘drawing office’ jobs that you can start off in and work your way up anymore.

When looking at uni’s I would look at courses which concentrate on ‘how things work’ as well as ‘how things look’. Plenty of courses out there just concentrate on styling – the jobs available for this kind of designer are very limited. If you can design things, and have a rudimentary knowledge of the mechanics / electronics / materials science involved, then you are a much more rounded individual.

I would also look for a uni degree which offer a years work placement. When you leave uni, companies will be looking for people with experience, otherwise you are just another graduate. A year in industry will also massively help with your final year – the reality of working to a budget, and the work efficiency required in the ‘real world’ will really hit home.

I’ve been in product design for 10 years now – the pay is never great – but when you see one of your designs being retailed, or getting a good review or being used by a consumer, its a rewarding feeling.

my GF is a product designer. she studied in Germany (she’s German and we live there/here).

she is now working for a company that distributes shitty, crappy plastic gift products for “design studios”. the products are almost exclusively made in the far east. the distributor is looking to produce their own range of gift stuff, hence why she is there. at the moment she is designing the trade fair stands, catalouges and doing a bit of admin.

which is a shame as her diploma work was amazing (if you don’t mind me saying so myself) and won awards. but it wasn’t profit orientated, more socially orientated and selfless in its conception and design.

amongst her uni peers there are only two that have found a “proper” product design job and two good friends that have gone self-employed. the rest are either doing something loosely related or far removed from design.

it is my impression that the market is flooded with young designers. much like it is flooded with architects (here in Germany, at least).

now working in the print trade fixing bad artwork created by ‘designers’ using InDesign.

yep, to be honest we were upfront and asked our printers to build this into the cost, I found that some of my designers could set up artwork correctly with correct cmyk images and trapping etc, but other were complete luddites and couldn’t even do basic prep like include fonts, they were usually very good designers though so made allowances.

johndoh – Member

easier to use and had ‘out of the box’ control never known in Quark – simple things like gradient drop shadows over complex backgrounds or images.

Exactly that. Designers love it – no more dipping into illustrator and photoshop to achieve the effects you are after. Apply a cool transparency or drop shadow effect with a mouse click. Who cares how it’s supposed to trap. Truth is, even Adobe’s own print engines has trouble handling the pretty pictures that InDesign creates in the hands of a monkey 😆

Never had a single problem since I started using it. Just as seamless as Quark but half the price and more features.

I’m going to run against the grain and say don’t jump into a degree I was lucky graduating before the recession, most of my alumni getting jobs, the following year was a different story.

I would start playing with adobe products now and get good at fast hand sketching.

Go find a load of design studios you like and start asking, say you have no degree etc. There are a few companies who would much rather mould someone to their thinking than get the standard graduate and you would come at a much cheaper price than a graduate. Core77 has a design directory and dezeen is very popular with designers.

If you simply must go to uni, please get the hell out the UK. The design department at Eindhoven Uni is so much better than Bucks Uni. I would also look at US unis, their graduates often have nice portfolios they just lack a bit of European style! I’m not sure what Asian unis are like but look there as well

Design is a great hobby but given the chance again I’d steer well clear.

I use InDesign daily for presentations, its not an image manipulation tool, its a document composition tool, you have to use it with photoshop and/or illustrator, or in my case 3d renderings,

so much better than Bucks Uni

Oi!

Slightly different take on things from me.
I did a degree in Industrial Design, got a job in web design, got bored and got out as a junior Design Engineer. Wanted ot get into designig funky products but always got sucked into the engineering. Did an MA in Design Research for Disability that got me in to medical device design.
Spent 3 years runnning my own design consultancy and am now currently Senior Designer at a Pharmaceuticals / Medical Devices company.

Role has turned out to me much more Design Management than I expected and the pay is good. Will probably go back to running my own company again in the future but being an employee works well at the moment.

My advice, go for a BSc design course if you like engineering, and a BA if you like being arty. Beyond that you can mould things to your own destiny.