Design

The UK has the third largest creative economy in the world, and design is its fastest-growing sector. Yet, many young people are still unsure what careers are even involved in design, and how to get into it.

The industry of 'Design' is defined as being mostly graphics and digital design, as other forms of design (e.g. fashion design, interior design, etc) are already absorbed and covered in other creative industries. So that's the definition we use. If we tried to cover literally every job in all the other creative industries that had the word 'design' in it, we could be here forever… 👀

There are lots of exciting roles that you can go into in graphics and digital design! Potential career paths feature titles like; graphic designer, brand designer, web designer, UX designer and UI designer. There are endless possibilities with the tech and programming that is being created and tested in new roles everyday.

So if designing is your passion through playing around with fonts, colours and layouts, this could be the industry for you.

  • Web Designer

    Creative Director

    Photo Editor

    Architecture & Engineering Drafter

    Video & Film Editor

    Graphic Designer

    Product Designer

    Multimedia Artist

    Flash Designer

    Animation/Animator

    Art Director

  • 👥Nearly 2 million people in the UK are employed in a design-led role!

    👏🏻 Design is creating thousands of jobs, exponentially improving the UK’s export markets and creating almost £9m an hour for the UK economy, and it is important that this continues to be recognised.

    🧑🏻‍💻In an amazing turn of events, due to the flexibility of the industry to work remotely, during 2020, one in twenty workers in the UK (1.97 million people) worked within the design economy, in industries from product design and graphics to architecture.

    🎨 The value of design exports has increased year on year over the period 2009 to 2012 (from £116m in 2009).

    ⚡️ Design had the largest increase in Gross Value Added (GVA) during 2012-13, up 23.8%. The GVA for design in that time increased from £2.5bn to £3bn.

  • 🆕 The design industry look to be turning to freelancers as they outsource their design work.

    📈The level of freelancing will impact the rate of trend changes since a higher percentage of designers in the market will be able to communicate and share their work.

    ⚖️Graphic design will be playing a more significant role in 3D Technologies like augmentation and virtual reality. Graphic design will also become a central player in 3D printing as time goes by.

    📚 Graphic design education will be transformed since these technologies require experts in both fields.

  • The Design Kids have created a list of interviews with different designers, clearly categorised for students that want to learn about the breadth of careers available

    Students can learn about the skills needed for design on the Dribbble website

    Design Week have created their own list of recommended resources for kids (made during lockdown, but still useable in the classroom)

Like the sound of Design?

Learn more on the ERIC app through our industry guides. When you’re ready to explore further, you can start browsing the Design section for opportunities, events, courses and more!