Commercial and Industrial Designers

Design and develop manufactured products, such as cars, home appliances, and children's toys. Combine artistic talent with research on product use, marketing, and materials to create the most functional and appealing product design.

Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Artistic

Second Interest High-Point

Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Enterprising

Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Realistic

First Interest High-Point

Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Investigative

Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Social

Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Conventional

Third Interest High-Point

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed

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.

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.

Develop manufacturing procedures and monitor the manufacture of their designs in a factory to improve operations and product quality.

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.

Develop industrial standards and regulatory guidelines.

Coordinate the look and function of product lines.

Supervise assistants' work throughout the design process.

Design graphic material for use as ornamentation, illustration, or advertising on manufactured materials and packaging or containers.

Advise corporations on issues involving corporate image projects or problems.

Compact digital cameras

Desktop computers

Laptop computers

Liquid crystal display LCD video projectors

Personal computers

Universal serial bus USB flash drives

1CadCam Unigraphics

Adobe Systems Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Systems Adobe AfterEffects

Adobe Systems Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Systems Adobe Fireworks

Adobe Systems Adobe FreeHand

Adobe Systems Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Systems Adobe InDesign

Adobe Systems Adobe Photoshop

Apache Maven

Ashlar-Vellum Cobalt

Autodesk 3ds Max

Autodesk AliasStudio

Autodesk AutoCAD

Autodesk Maya for Design Visualization

Autodesk Revit

Chaos Group V-Ray

Computer aided manufacturing CAM software

Corel CorelDraw Graphics Suite

Corel Painter

Dassault Systemes CATIA

Dassault Systemes SOLIDWORKS

Delphi Technology

Email software

ESRI ArcGIS software

Finite element analysis software

Geometric CAMWorks

Hypertext markup language HTML

IBM Notes

JavaScript

jQuery

MAXON CINEMA 4D

McNeel Rhino software

Microsoft Access

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Office

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Publisher

Microsoft Word

Minitab

National Instruments LabVIEW

PTC Creo Parametric

QuarkXPress

Siemens NX for Manufacturing

Siemens PLM Software UGS NX

Softimage XSI

The MathWorks MATLAB

Trimble SketchUp Pro

Verilog

Web browser software

Xara Xtreme

Start with a solid foundation and a good company.

I had no money to start my company, but luckily I applied for loans and have paid them all back.

A great day at work is a day when we close a deal.

"You're not going to make money from this." "Why would you even think that this would work." "There's too much of that already."

Ricardo Roiz

CEO

Milestones

Education

Career

Career Roadmap

My work combines:

My work combines:

Food

Business

Problem Solving

Day to Day

Advice for Getting Started

Recommended Education

Hurdles

The Noise I Shed

From Peers:

Challenges I Overcame

Financial

Ricardo Roiz

CEO

Milestones

Education

Career

Career Roadmap

My work combines:

My work combines:

Food

Business

Problem Solving

Day to Day

Advice for Getting Started

Recommended Education

My career is not related to what I studied. I'd recommend this path instead:

Hurdles

The Noise I Shed

From Peers:

Challenges I Overcame

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