Engaging with industry

A vital element of product design education is its role in preparing you for a career in industry. Many universities and colleges employ instructors who are active designers with their own design consultancies and practices, bringing their extensive experience to the classroom. They can help to bridge the gap between industry and education through activities such as study trips to design companies and factories, setting up live projects set by industry, and helping students find internships within the design industry.

Internships

There are few better ways to obtain hands-on professional experience than through an internship, or placement. You should start considering your first job early in your college career, and at the very least try finding a summer job with a company that interests you. Many colleges offer students the possibility of a sustained period of work experience as an optional or compulsory part of their course. These placements are a fantastic way of gaining experience, and offer an insight into the different career paths available to product design graduates. They provide an opportunity to learn about a company or industry sector, develop a network of professional contacts, and can occasionally even lead to a full-time position.

Finding an internship can be as challenging as finding a regular job. You need to target companies you are interested in working with and prepare a résumé, cover letter, and portfolio along the lines described below. You never know who might have an important professional contact, and it’s always worth asking friends and family as well as instructors and alumni if they have any possible leads you can explore.

Some internships are paid; some companies offer unpaid work experience or merely pay expenses. While this can appear to be unfair, such companies will often point out that they are providing valuable professional training, experience, and networking opportunities, which will often result in a job offer if the student performs well.

“Work placements help you gain experience without getting paid. It’s a good way to gain invaluable experience as long as you make the right choice of placement. Work hard, gain contacts, be reliable, produce good sketching and conceptual ideas, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, and work long hours—a mixture of these will pay off!”

Matt Jones, Director

Preparing a résumé

Once you have completed, or better still before you end, your education or training in product design you will need to turn your attention to preparing your résumé and personal design portfolio. Both of these items should contain a clear, compelling, and impressive collection of work that showsoff your design skills, critical thinking, and practical capabilities.

A good résumé should promote the design skills, knowledge, and experiences that you will bring to the job. There are no hard and fast rules, but most résumés are made up of the following sections (not necessarily in this order):

• personal details
• education
• work experience
• specific skills (such as languages or CAD skills)
• interests and activities
• referees

Remember that an employer will read your résumé with one thought in mind: “Why should I hire this product design graduate?” Don’t be tempted to include information that isn’t relevant to that employer. If you want a design job and you have good CAD skills, include them. If you studied life drawing at night school, leave it out, unless you are applying for a job as a painter.

It is also important to get the length right. Ideally it should not be over two pages—but even so, busy employers may not even make it to the second page of a résumé if there’s nothing relevant on the first page. So cover the most relevant thing you have to offer (perhaps your degree or work experience) early in your résumé.

Finally, a note on presentation: the information in your résumé should be consistent and presented in clear, distinct sections. Check and double-check for spelling and grammatical errors (don’t simply rely on a computer spellchecker). Use good-quality white or off-white paper and present each page on a different sheet of paper, not double-sided. See page 218 for a sample résumé.

How to write a cover letter

Cover letters are a vital method of introducing yourself to a company. When writing a cover letter you need to ensure that you have thoroughly researched the company you are approaching and, if applying for an advertised position, that you have analyzed the job description. Try to demonstrate that your skills are a match for those required for the role, and mention your qualifications and portfolio as a means to showcase your talents and experience. See page 219 for a sample cover letter.

Résumé

Cover Letter

Designing your portfolio

Having a great design portfolio is a must. Your design portfolio is one of the most important things you will create during your studies and is what you will mainly be judged on. It must, therefore, be well presented and include about five or six of your strongest and most impressive pieces of design work. Think about the kind of work the company you are applying to does and try to tailor your portfolio toward that. For example, if the company specializes in sports equipment and branding then try to include work of this nature in your portfolio.

Be prepared to talk about your product design work, what inspired you, why you approached the project in the way you did, even your choices of materials, colors, and imagery. Show the company some of your sketches and development work. Many companies will want to see your early development work more than the finished piece as it shows your design process and how you think and work through design projects.

Before taking your portfolio along to job interviews, make sure you show it to a few people such as your design instructors, friends, and other design students and talk them through it. Get them to ask you questions about your design work and practice and rehearse your responses with suitable answers. This will get you used to talking people through your portfolio, making you better prepared for that all-important interview.

A strong design portfolio opens doors, showcases your talents to prospective employers, and is a physical representation of your design ability, process, personal approach, passion, and skills.

The following step-by-step guide will help you create a personal portfolio you can be proud of:

Who are you?

Determine what you want your portfolio to say about you, who it is aimed at, and what they wish to see evidenced in it.

Creative selection

Choose a variety of examples that highlight your very best work. Demonstrate your skills and talents by choosing only projects that you can confidently discuss. Ensure that your portfolio presents a balanced body of work, including a variety of projects that demonstrate the breadth and depth of your work.

Show your creativity

Remember that you wish to work in a creative industry. There is nothing worse for an employer than spending a day looking at a load of portfolios all presented in the same unthinking way. Show how far your creativity can stretch by creating a portfolio that is personal, while ensuring it appeals to as many people as possible.

Less is more

You should edit all your previous work to create a concise summary of your work. You should not try to impress a potential employer with a portfolio crammed full of everything you have ever done. Their time is precious, and you should respect this. Simplify your presentation and try to think from the employer’s point of view.

Only show your strongest work

People don’t need an excuse to reject your work; one bad piece of work in your portfolio can prevent you getting a job, so don’t add any filler pieces just to pad it out. Learning to critique your own work is something that comes with practice. You need to be objective when choosing what pieces to keep in, and it often helps to seek out the opinions of peers and colleagues.

Stand out from the crowd

Employers look at portfolios all the time so yours needs to stand out. Many portfolios follow the same format so you need to make sure yours makes an impact. To truly stand out in an extremely competitive field, your work needs to show a thoughtful approach from initial concept through to presentation, indicating that you can reflect upon your work and refine it to a highly polished state.

Display your personality

Let the potential employer or client get a feel for the way you like to work so they can see if it fits in with their own approach. Just as your clothes can give a first impression, so too does the way in which you present your portfolio.

Show your ambition

Your portfolio should show that you can take creative initiative, resolve a wide range of problems, and complete projects from start to finish. Show that you can work with limited supervision, generate ideas, and motivate yourself and others.

Use your presentation skills

Show your full range of presentation abilities, including sketching, rendering, model-making, finished products, photography, and three-dimensional modelling.

Target your intended audience

Tailor your portfolio to the industry sector you wish to work within, and demonstrate your commitment to work in this field. You should rearrange your work based on the specific nature of each job application, position, and duties. Your portfolio should be able to evolve over your career, being updated as you develop your skills, ideas, and abilities.

Getting a job

After the excitement of the degree show and graduation, the reality of getting your first job can be a daunting prospect. Only a very few lucky graduates are plucked from their college shows and set to work immediately. Most graduates take a number of months to find employment, and often have to start at the bottom, work hard, and make slow progress until reaching their goals. Your first job may not be the job of your dreams, but it will hopefully teach you basic skills and responsibilities and provide a stepping-stone to your next job and a successful long-term career in product design.

The following tips should help you find your first job:

• Identify which designers, consultancies, companies, and industrial sectors you would like to work for, and which industry sectors, countries or cities you would like to live in. Ask yourself why you have made these decisions and what skills you wish to develop.
• Research the designers and companies you have identified through looking at books, magazines, and websites, and talking to alumni, instructors, and designers working in the area.
• Assemble a strong portfolio and résumé, and write a good cover letter that introduces you and your work to the firm or designer by following the guidelines above to create a package for sending to potential employers.
• Call, fax, or email the company or designer to get the contact name of the person responsible for hiring staff and label your package for their attention. Send this to them even if they are not currently recruiting.
• Follow up your letter by contacting the company by phone, fax or email. Ensure that you talk to the person you sent the package to. Confirm they have received your package and ask them if there are any questions about it and if they would like to see more work or meet you for an interview. If you are lucky enough to be asked for an interview, then try to give yourself time to check out the location during your visit. If you are traveling a long way, see if you can arrange a number of interviews for the same time. If the company is not interested you can send them occasional updates of work, but don’t pester.
• You should continue sending out speculative letters and applying for jobs until you are invited for an interview. The process of getting your foot in the door can be an arduous one, but you must remain committed, as your persistence will pay off eventually.

“It is never easy to find the right job, but ‘design’ is such a huge and diverse discipline that my key piece of advice would be to really know what you want to do and what drives you. Always try to find a position that has room for growth and diversity.”

Katy Buchan, product champion

Career opportunities

Product design graduates have a wide range of career opportunities that exploit their knowledge and experience of the product design process. They may become a member of a freelance design consultancy, join a manufacturing company as a specialist within a product design development team, or decide to set up their own practice as a designer or designer-maker.

Transferable skills also enable graduates to work in diverse fields such as computer-aided design, marketing, retail, multimedia or management. The best courses often have strong links with industry to ensure that students are aware of the full range of possibilities and have access to them.

Product design students have a range of prospects, such as:

• Designer within a team working within a product design consultancy with scope to work on designs for a range of consumer products.
• Own design business, with longer-term aim to act as consultant.
• In-house designer for a product manufacturer.
• Designer-maker, self-production using own or shared workshop.
• Interior product design specifier for interior or architectural firm.
• Other type of freelance or in-house designer, e.g. graphic, web, CAD.

The product design industry covers a number of different sectors such as:

• Consumer electronics—From computers to televisions to iPods.
• Digital media—CAD visualization for manufacture and media.
• Exhibitions—From trade shows to museum installations.
• Furniture—From one-off pieces of “design-art” to mass production.
• Lighting—From domestic luminaires to lighting landscapes.
• Packaging—Structural packaging and point of sale.
• Research—User-centred design to design forecasting.
• Sports equipment—From trainers to skateboards.
• Toys—From educational learning products to film tie-ins.
• Transportation—From cars to public transportation.

The range of skills developed on product design courses is wide. These and are adaptable across a wider range of organizations and roles such as:

• Design engineer—Designs, tests, and develops vehicles and/or components from concept stage through to production.
• Industrial buyer—Purchases the highest quantity of goods and services at the most competitive rate in order to meet specific user needs.
• Agency account executive—Makes potential customers aware of a product and its advantages to them; includes market research, marketing and packaging. Communication skills are vital.
• Marketing executive—Understands and meets the needs of the consumer in order to market a successful product.
• Sales executive—Maximizes the sale of a company’s goods or services in a variety of settings. Understanding and meeting the needs of the customer are essential if a product is to be successful.

In an increasingly competitive job market for graduates, more and more students are continuing their studies and enrolling on graduate courses. Masters and doctoral study enables you to extend your skills and thinking, and helps differentiate yourself from the competition.

Masters courses usually require one or two years of study, and enable students to deepen their knowledge and expertise within the discipline, providing a clear progression from undergraduate education while maintaining distinctiveness from industrial training. Masters students are expected to challenge boundaries, think originally, and develop intellectual and critical approaches to the discipline of product design.

Starting your own business

The decision to start your own creative business can be a daunting step for the young designer, but this offers a creative freedom and sense of achievement that can be hard to match working for a company. It requires commitment, energy, and a large amount of emotional investment. You’ll need to consider if this really is the right time in your life to launch a business venture, and why you wish to do this. But if you do, you need to ensure you have the tools to design, develop, promote, and control your business.

Building a business requires you to identify and define the foundations of your idea. Begin by asking yourself some challenging questions such as:

• What are your ambitions for the business?
• What are the values that underpin why you want to start a business?
• Will the business provide a product or service?
• How can you identify, protect, and exploit your intellectual property?

Having identified the key attributes that your business needs to be built upon, undertake a S.W.O.T (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of your business proposal to evaluate its strategic positioning:

• What strengths do you have?
• What weaknesses do you need to address?
• What opportunities can you exploit?
• What threatens your business idea?

Once you have explored your business idea, you will need to develop a clear mission statement and decide what impact you hope to make. This will help you to pitch your idea to potential clients, customers, and investors. Try to succinctly describe your idea/s through a one-minute short verbal description known as an “elevator pitch.” When trying to compose this ask yourself:

• How does it enhance life?
• Does it revive something of the past?
• What does it make less desirable?
• Are there any possible negative backlashes to the idea?

When you have developed your business idea and defined its aspirations, you will need to identify your customers and ensure there is a viable market for your product/s and/or services. If extensive research indicates that there are enough customers prepared to purchase your business offer then you should explore the relationships you will need to help you develop your business.

Every business needs a set of relationships to take a product to market successfully, develop a viable brand identity, and maintain a successful company. These can be categorized into four types:

• Customers—The people buying, using, and experiencing your product/s.
• Distributors—Individuals and companies that are involved with the delivery, sales, and marketing of your product/s and company.
• Generators—Individuals and companies that will help you develop new ideas, give you direction and help you grow your business.
• Realizers—Manufacturers who will produce your finished product.

When determining your business plan you should evaluate these relationships and carefully consider which activities you need to keep inside your business, and which can be outsourced. By carefully evaluating these relationships you will be in a strong position to bring your business idea and products to market.

Whatever sector of the product design industry you are entering, you will come across a unique network of must-know people. You should make a concerted effort to network as much as possible and ensure you make a positive impression on everybody you meet and have business relationships with. There is a wide range of support available for aspiring entrepreneurs, from government agencies, enterprise networks, and chambers of commerce, to trade organizations and national design councils. Much of the advice is free, so ensure that you make the most of these support agencies, and the advice of instructors, colleagues and peers, when deciding which jobs to apply for, how to work as a freelancer, or how to set up and run your own business.

Conclusion

Product design is an extremely competitive field, and you need to show your commitment to a challenging yet exciting discipline. Getting a job, launching your own company, or bringing a product to market may sound like daunting tasks, but the design world of the twenty-first century offers you great opportunities. If you study hard, take the time to review and select your work, and develop a thoughtful and innovative body of work, you will be rewarded with a successful career in product design.