Have you ever wanted to become a designer but don’t know what area to specialize in, then this article is for you.
What is Design:
Design isn’t about beautification nor is it about drawing as most people may think, some may say design represents an art, but truth be told that design is well in science as in Art. The term 'design' remains a topic that sits between these two areas and is widely used by both, so being a designer doesn’t make you an artist or a scientist.
Design is the materialization of an idea, or theory into a drawing, plan, specification, or model that makes it possible to achieve or solve several goals. It can be a drawing, an art, a painting, a wireframe, an architectural drawing, a product, etc.
Having a more proper understanding of what design is and the diverse areas of design help engineers one into becoming better in a specific design field. Also, it helps the designer to know what he/she is supposed to do as a particular designer working in a particular field.
Types of Design:
There are different types of designers, ranging from the fashion industry to entertainment, to fine arts, to technology, etc. Here are the basic types:
- Visual Designers
- Fashion designer
- UX designers
- Ui designers
- Motion/Animators designers
- Interaction designers
- Product/Industrial designer
- Web designers
- Interior designers
- Architectural designers.
Visual Designers:
Visual designers are also called graphic designers in the graphic and arts industries. They carefully put together images, typography, or colours to produce design works. Visual designers primarily create graphics for publication, print, or electronic media. (for example, Ads)
Fashion Designer:
A fashion designer is a person who uses his/her creativity to introduce new designs and product ideas in the fashion and clothing industry. He/she is responsible for bringing out fashion trends and styles that would be later idealized into wearable products.
UX Designers:
User experience design is associated with User interface design and is mostly confusing to some people. User experience designers improve the product experience to give users a feeling. These improvements include making the product faster, easier, or more interesting to use.
UI Designers:
User interface designers are designers that create the look of a product. A User interface designer focuses on the look and layout like buttons, images, text, checkboxes, icons, and other visual elements people interact with. Mostly mobile applications, websites, and software.
Motion Designers/Animators:
Motion designers have the responsibility of making turning static images, illustrations, text into motions. Animations, etc. They give static images, images, and illustrations motions.
Interaction Designers:
This is a design field that focuses on meaningful communication or "interaction" between people and technology. They enable people to understand each screen and what the device can do for them, thereby helping people perform tasks intuitively.
An Interaction designer needs to be a good UX designer to be able to understand the interactions very well.
Product or Industrial designer:
Industrial designers or product designers are responsible for creating designs for various physical products like electronics, automobiles, hardware products, game consoles, etc.
Web Designer:
A web designer typically focuses on carefully designing web products or products that can be viewed with a browser or designs that can be viewed using the internet.
They major in website design and mobile applications.
Interior Designers:
Interior designers shouldn’t be mixed with decorators. Interior Designers make interiors beautiful and safe by determining the space requirements and choosing important and decorative elements like colours, lighting, and materials. They should be able to edit blueprints or draw.
Architectural Designer:
An architect's designer is responsible for making plans for buildings, houses, offices, and other places. The difference between An architectural designer and an actual architect is that the designer focuses more on the blueprints, designs, and drawing while the architect focuses on making proposing concepts.
Paint Artist or a Paint Designer:
The key role of a paint artist is the beautification of interior and exterior parts of a building, offices, and structures. They make use of paints and other artistic materials to instantly realize their art.
Having known different types of designs and designers, including what they do, it is now easy to know the sole function of a designer. Sometimes, we see designers functioning in more than one design field like UI, UX, Interaction, and graphics. It is more common in Africa and small companies or start-ups where a single person would assume the role of several others.
Also having known these, the good part is it is easier for the user or people to migrate from one to the other, but having the necessary skillset and tools.
Have an awesome day ahead.