Industrial Design

[Bodo]

I wonder how many PHers work in industrial/product design, and are employed in-house or in an agency.
Seeing as there are generally more products coming in shorter intervals on the market, will this sector have good future prospects?

[Bodo]

LA, there is nothing like non-design - it only may not be profitable in the industrial sense

[prelude4ws]

Well I'm in automotive design, which is Industrial design as far as insurance companies are concerned.

I work through agencies for car makers, I guess in a very similar way to IT contractors. The auto industry is a tricky one and I suspect has reached a kind of saturation point, in that there are now far, far more people leaving collage as car designers than there are real jobs and the car makers are cutting costs as much as possible and the bean counters often see design departments as an expensive luxury. Others are more enlightened!

But I think other areas of design such as product design are on the up as more and more society is becoming "design conscious".

[groomi]

prelude4ws said:

...I suspect has reached a kind of saturation point, in that there are now far, far more people leaving collage as car designers than there are real jobs...

I fall into that category. Fortunately, all is not wasted as there is a fair degree (excuse the pun) of overlap between most design disciplines. One things for sure, I'd never be my own boss in the automotive design industry, so I'm already higher up the tree than i ever imagined!