The world of industrial product design is a challenging one. There are the demands of your company, the demands of your engineers and the demands of your investors to think about, plus the pressure of putting a product out into the marketplace. And it certainlyseems at times that it’s easier to fail than to make an impression with your product.
So why get into this field? It’s a fair question because it’s a vocation that’s going to call for a lot of hard work. But there are rewards, too, and they often outweigh the risks involved. Here are some reasons to consider product design as the field for you.
The skill combinations
Product design is a field that brings together art, business and engineering. At the same time you’re developing new concepts, you’re coming up with ways to market those concepts within the design. You’re mixing aesthetic tastes, functionality and financial considerations in a way that few other jobs allow people to do.
Product design bolsters a skill set that could make you invaluable in many different job markets, all over the world.
Career options
Product design doesn’t have to be just one job. There is potential for employment in many different areas, including design research, art direction or even desktop publishing. It is a job that allows you room for growth and expansion into any number of areas, with any number of companies. You can even be your own boss by freelancing, combining any different number of jobs for any different number of companies.
If you’ve become dissatisfied with one aspect of product design, there’s always another that you can move into with just a few adjustments. Think of designing as an umbrella under which many different options are gathered.
Design doesn’t always mean invention
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions about product design is that you have to come up with something totally new in order to do it. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
There are products all over the map that you could create new innovations or features for, without the pressure of having to introduce something entirely new into the marketplace. Think of the advances in mobile phones and computers over the last couple of decades; imagine how exciting it might be to be the next person who creates a new wrinkle for those products.
The most (literally) rewarding part
As of 2017, the average salary for an industrial product designer was around $75,000, which is around $25,000 more than the typical across-the-board American salary. And that’s just the average. The top salary, according to several different industry website estimates, is over $100,000, to say nothing of the possible incentives, bonuses and other financial rewards that could be involved in a successful product launch.
There are artistic considerations, to be sure, but the potential monetary rewards are difficult to ignore.
Innovation is its own reward
There are probably moments in everyone’s life when they wonder what impact they will have on the world when all is said and done.
Imagine being the person who comes up with the design for a new product that takes the world by storm and becomes a part of the general population’s everyday life. The idea you’ve helped bring to fruition has just changed the world, and you were a part of it.
Are you considering pursuing product design as a career? Learn more about this exciting field with our e-book “From Concept to Product Launch: a Guide to Product Development.”
