Career Profile: Industrial Designer

An Industrial Designer is a creative professional who must be good with both the creative as well as technical aspects of product design. The Career Profile of the Industrial Designer will be described in this article.

Many popular consumer products look physically attractive because they are designed by Industrial Designers.

To give you an idea of what an industrial designer do, think of him or her as someone who come out with appealing, creative product concepts and designs.

Famous industrial designers include Philip Starke and Marc Newson. However, the majority of the industrial designers are not celebrities. They work quietly behind the scene and away from the limelight, producing products that are visually appealing, innovative and user-friendly.

Modern-day and typical industrial designers must be able to create conceptual drawing and illustrations of the design ideas. They must also be able to create technical drawings of their designs to communicate precise design dimensions and specifications. Additionally, 3D modelling skills is also essential knowledge. Increasingly, proficiency in 2D and 3D digital design software program is important.

In the 2D illustration arena, an Industrial Designer may have to know software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Freehand.

In the 3D Digital Design area, an Industrial Design may have to know programs such as Rhinoceros 3D, Autodesk Alias Design, Solidworks, Pro-engineer (Croe). Most of these 3D software programs are relatively complex to use and employ technologies such as Non-uniform Rational B spline (NURBS) and/or Solid Modelling. Although these are 3D Design Programs, that differ greatly from the 3D programs used by 3D animators for the movie and entertainment industries. Typically, the technology used in 3D programs for product and industrial design demands higher level of accuracy than those for the visual, entertain industry. This is because the 3D Data created by product design software tools will eventually need to be used for tooling for mass manufacturing or physical model prototyping.

Here is an awesome video on Industrial Design

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