Apprenticeship in Design:
Having an apprenticeship in design is always a good step to becoming a designer, because you are learning and earning. You will be learning from someone one to one on different things needed for design or maybe in a team. Even though you are earning whilst learning the pay isnt great, you start on £2.60 an hour and it stays as low as this for a year then you go to the minimum wage. Also its only on a temporary basis they may not keep you on after the apprenticeships finished but you work on the basis that they might.
Internship:
An internship is good for experiance to put on your C.V to take to a place of work, but you will be working for free you dont get paid for this. So you need to be very commited and know what you want because it will be just like having a normal job just without pay. This is also temporary, depending on how long the probabtion period is, so they may only keep you for a couple of week.
Assistants:
Working as a design assistant usually means you are on salaried pay, which is better than the apprentice one but still only a minimum wage. This will always be a perminent depending on the probation period which could be two weeks or longer after this period it should be permanent. Just like the Apprenticeship and Internship you will be getting experiance and learning on the job.
Key Job Roles:
Creative Designer Jobs - These jobs are for the more creative graphic designers, they apply a greater importance on the ability to generate highly developed creative concepts. Jobs like this are found in agencies where there are normally three designers.
Illustrators - Illustrators provide illustrations for a variety of jobs such as computer games, magazines, cartoons, adverts even clothing. Normally illustrators are freelance or work for really big agencies.
Web Designers - Web designers have the ability to design websites, their normally very creative individuals with a good knowledge of programming skills. Flash, video or mulitmedia designers all fit into this category.
3D Designers - 3D Designers are very higly skilled in using 3D programmes to produce visually accurate presentations and animations of 3D characters, products or even house viewings or buildings plans.
Factors that may have an impact on the design industry:
Globalisation - This is where designers can have contact with other designers and companies from across the world due to tecgnology and software such as e-mail, internet. This makes it easy because you can send PDF's and proofing of work from one side of the world to another in a matter of seconds. Also you can always find cheaper work in other parts of country so it may mean making more money on materials and manufacturing of products may be cheaper.
New Technology - Designers need to keep up to date with new technology such as new designing software because if they dont some new designer could come along with the new software or better software and be able to produce a final product quicker so they might lose work due to older technology. Also due to new things on the internet such as 'VistaPrint' its a lot easier and quicker to make things such as business cards. This will always be a competition for designers.
Convergence - This is the merge of distinct technologies into a new form, maybe requiring new software or a new look. These sort of things are smart phones such as android or iphone they constantly need updating by designers to beat the competiton. Also with the social networking websites becoming a bigger hit everyday web designers will constantly have to be designing new things for it.
Working across disciplines - This could be a graphic designer designing for a web, they must understand the workings of a website and whats needed for the website this is so they can be top of the list and a website that will catch the eye of any other designer and maybe even set a trend. They must know what will be good for the website and what will work well such as using text where text is needed and imagery where that is needed.
