5 Design Careers to Explore

Design affects every aspect of our lives. Whether it's the advertising we see every day, the websites we visit every day or the products we use every day, they have all been touched in some way by professional or unprofessional designers. Good design is a pleasure to the senses and makes our lives easier and smoother. Bad design can lead to irritation, annoyance and even disaster. If you're a creative type, it's easy to end up thinking that you're doomed to live as a starving artist, but that is simply untrue. There are countless careers open to you in the world of design. So if you have an eye for design and a mind to make a career of it, here are just a few of the paths available to you.

Graphic Design

If you do have the skillset to use a pencil, pen or computer aided design program, you might want to look at a career in graphic design. There's plenty of work for graphic designers, given the explosion in content creation around the world. Everything from a newly launched morning complete reviews website to the cover of the next bestseller needs graphic design work to make it pop. Additionally, there are countless media forms that you can use, although most these days prefer to use digital design.

Web Design

If you already know something about digital design, then it's a good idea to look into adding coding to your skill set and get into web design. Everyone and their uncle has a website these days, so there's always work to be had, and plenty of people hiring. If you already have a job, your boss would probably thank you for picking up and practicing this skill in your free time. The ability to do your own web design opens tons of doors in your current career, or even chart a path towards a whole new career.

UI and UX Design

One of the fastest growing and best paid fields of design work is user interface and user experience design. This is more about charting out how people, especially clients and customers, interact with a website, program or app. User interfaces are the face of most company's programs, and they know exactly how important that is. User experience specialists can be added at any point to look critically at an interface and see how it could be modified to make using it smoother, faster or easier. UX design also overlaps with product design.

Product Design

For those who know something about design, understand the complexities of working with computer design programs, but want to do something a little more hands-on, try looking into product design. Product designers are the UX specialists of the physical world. Their job is to use their artistic skills, usually with a digital design program, to make products easier to use and more aesthetically pleasing. Any company that makes any kind of product does product design, whether they have a product design specialist or not.

Interior Design

If you are a creative person and you have an eye for design but you don't have the talent or you haven't developed artistic skills, you might want to consider a career in interior design. Rooms become your canvases and upholstery becomes your paint. There's plenty of work available for interior designers. If you're not helping clients get their living spaces in order, then you can almost always find work setting up rooms for real estate agents who want to take really good photos or are about to host open houses.

There are many exciting options available today, and many more are likely to spring up as we continue to move forward. Design has always been a vibrant and creative career path, and it likely always will be. It's never too late to start working towards a creative career in one of these fields, or any of the countless other design and creative careers that are available to students of every age.