Industrial Designers

Industrial Designers typically perform the following tasks: • 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.