Which Designer Job is the Best? (Infographic)

Dec 7 2010 by Wix | 28 Comments

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs teaches us that food, safety and a roof over our heads all come before "self actualization". In other words, it’s hard to tap into your inner-unicorn if you can’t afford to pay the rent. To help you designers out there, we’ve researched different design sectors to see which one has the most fulfilling, unicorn-friendly jobs. And it turns out, you can’t have it all. When it comes to design jobs, you can be well-paid, well-employed, or love your job — but not all three.

Here is an infographic comparing the different types of design professions.

Click to enlarge.

Infographic by Shane Snow. Shane Snow is an entrepreneur, writer, and recent Columbia MS/Digital Media graduate. Visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter @shanesnow.

About the Author

Wix is a free website builder tool for quick and easy creation of quality Flash websites. Follow them via Twitter as @wix, and subscribe to their blog where they post useful articles for website owners.

28 Comments

Rich S

December 7th, 2010

Ha ha…reality bites.

Jenny

December 7th, 2010

Interesting, wish web/graphic designers salary were #1.

june

December 7th, 2010

Since there are 5 types of designers listed, shouldn’t the stats for all five be shown in each comparison? It’s nice knowing there are lots of graphic and web design jobs, but how much do they make and how happy are they? As it stands, I only really learn about industrial designers.

Though, these stats are always so far off anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ve never met a single designer who makes near the annual salary listed in reports. I’d really like to see a breakdown of salary versus cost-of-living for designers in multiple areas. You can find the information separately, but I’ve yet to see it broken down together, giving a realistic idea of how much more or less the industry is earning in a particular area.

Super cute though. :)

Vitor

December 7th, 2010

Hahaha, really good!
And I just wish we (web/graphic designers) earned more…

felipe

December 7th, 2010

“Your mommy uses drop shadows” LOL

Arshad Cini

December 7th, 2010

A totally true info

thanks

Galen Gidman

December 7th, 2010

Very funny. I love that it’s a follow-up to the last one.

Elena

December 7th, 2010

Haha, I think it’s really nice to work for Google, doing any type of work ;)

Josué

December 7th, 2010

Being a graphic design student, it’s nice to know getting a job will be the least of worries… But as June said, I wish it showed the rankings for all the fields instead of just the top three. Just so I had something to ballpark my future on, haha

Luis

December 7th, 2010

The first one was nice, this one is ok.

trent reker

December 7th, 2010

i couldn’t get past the first paragraph.

the article was written by a jewish grandmother telling her granddaughter to settle for less than she dreams.

i have had perfect jobs. they were creative (a word you don’t mention once and therefore you should expect me to be less than kind following this ellipsis), i made great scratch, and i dug it.

besides, how can one “love your job” if they feel underpaid or um, what is “well-employed?”

idiot.

Imran Khan

December 7th, 2010

yeah good info!!! Web/Graphics Designer FTW!!!!

Richie

December 8th, 2010

Nice infographic but can you please cite your sources?? Without a reference to the actual source, I am forced not to believe the statitistics.

Thanks

Accelerant

December 8th, 2010

why are graphic/web designers left off the first salary graph, but on all the others?

Daquan Wright

December 8th, 2010

Interesting, I put a lot of time into researching what fields pay and WHY.

Web design jobs are closer to teaching jobs in terms of demand, in other words the supply outweighs the demand.

Something like engineering or computer science fields are closely linked and because of the technical/mathematical substance of these fields, supply isn’t nearly as high I find. This is backed by the fact that CS people get payed a lot more money, sometimes twice as much.

Like…I see a lot of web design jobs pay between 35k – 55k. Then I see CS jobs that pay 50k – 100k (sometimes going as high as 135k).

It’s all about supply and demand. The harder a job is, the more you’ll get paid for it since less people would want to do it (or be capable).

Of course you don’t have to take anything I say as being written in stone, but these are just some of my thoughts after researching.

I think teachers should get paid more, they do a ton of work doing many things.