Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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Traits of successful designers

This is fitting as a part 6 installment to our popular series here at Design Sojourn. In the past 6 months, I have been having the most wonderful conversations with senior design managers and representatives from some of the best design recruitment agencies in the world. What came out of the many different discussions was a great picture of the design skills in demand at this point in time, and thus potentially what makes a successful designer today.

1) Designers who can create beautiful forms that are sensitive to the brand and design language requirements of the client or company.

2) Multi-disciplinary Industrial Designers who can speak the “language” of engineers, marketing and business leaders.

3) Industrial Designers that can understand that their work (form, sketching, 2D or 3D skills) is part of a larger product development process and how their small part gels and interact with the process on a holistic level.

4) Designers that work, not think, outside the box. Exploration and interests in other areas, hobbies or the arts are a plus.

5) Designers with an entrepreneurial mindset.

6) Designers with a strong understanding of business acumen and how their design affects the bottom line.

The idea is as design moves into a more strategic level in any organisation, a new breed of designers are required. Designers that are big picture strategic thinkers and yet understand the nuts and bolts of the design development process. Designers that have design skills, but still understand how it all fits into the business and finally designers that can be creative in all aspects of their work in addition to their designs.

Getting to this level is not easy, but knowing where you want to get to is half the battle won.

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