Commercial & Industrial Designer

Overview and Key Facts

What Do They Do?

A commercial and industrial designer could...

Overview Listen to this section

Have you always loved art? Do you have a good eye for beauty, balance, and form? How would you like to see your designs show up in toy stores? Or in a sporting goods store? Or at a car dealer? Commercial and industrial designers create the shape and form of every type of manufactured good that you can think of—from toys, sporting goods, and medical equipment to high technology products, furniture, toothbrushes, and toasters. They design the form of new products that are as beautiful and pleasing to look at as they are functional.

Do You Have the Skills and Characteristics of a Commercial & Industrial Designer?

1. Active Listening: ? Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
2. Reading Comprehension: ? Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
3. Complex Problem Solving: ? Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
4. Critical Thinking: ? Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
5. Speaking: ? Talking to others to convey information effectively.

6. Operations Analysis: ? Analyzing needs and product requirements to create a design.
7. Judgment and Decision Making: ? Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
8. Time Management: ? Managing one's own time and the time of others.
9. Coordination: ? Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
10. Social Perceptiveness: ? Being aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react as they do.

Core Tasks

Think about if you'd like the typical tasks a Commercial & Industrial Designer might do:

• Prepare sketches of ideas, detailed drawings, illustrations, artwork, or blueprints, using drafting instruments, paints and brushes, or computer-aided design equipment.
• Modify and refine designs, using working models, to conform with customer specifications, production limitations, or changes in design trends.
• Evaluate feasibility of design ideas, based on factors such as appearance, safety, function, serviceability, budget, production costs/methods, and market characteristics.
• Confer with engineering, marketing, production, or sales departments, or with customers, to establish and evaluate design concepts for manufactured products.
• Present designs and reports to customers or design committees for approval and discuss need for modification.
• Research production specifications, costs, production materials, and manufacturing methods and provide cost estimates and itemized production requirements.
• Direct and coordinate the fabrication of models or samples and the drafting of working drawings and specification sheets from sketches.
• Develop manufacturing procedures and monitor the manufacture of their designs in a factory to improve operations and product quality.
• Investigate product characteristics such as the product's safety and handling qualities, its market appeal, how efficiently it can be produced, and ways of distributing, using, and maintaining it.
• Participate in new product planning or market research, including studying the potential need for new products.
• Read publications, attend showings, and study competing products and design styles and motifs to obtain perspective and generate design concepts.
• Fabricate models or samples in paper, wood, glass, fabric, plastic, metal, or other materials, using hand or power tools.