Wondering what a career in design could look like? We talked with faculty and graduates from our College of Art & Design who are working in the field to explain 8 different design roles.
A designer develops and creates visual ideas. But depending on the type of designer you are, the work you do could be anything from designing magazines and digital interfaces to creating a navigation system for a public space. Wondering what a career in design could look like? We talked with faculty and graduates from our College of Art & Design who are working in the field to explain 8 different design roles.
1. Graphic Designer
Using visual elements such as typography, color, and image, graphic designers communicate ideas to the world. Graphic designers go beyond using computers. The design process is highly iterative and includes working with various media and materials to create visually meaningful and targeted messaging.
Coming up with a company’s visual identity and brand experience, creating designs for print, and inventing the look of product packaging are a few examples of where a graphic design career could lead.
Chrissy Kurpeski ’05, BFA Graphic Design and Illustration, is a freelance book designer who works with book publishers, doing everything from cover designs to page layouts.
2. Information Designer
Information designers are storytellers with an analytical approach, says Shalini Prasad, a Lesley faculty member, and a self-employed designer/brand consultant. She explains that information designers view graphic elements like imagery, type, shape, color, texture, and space as tactics to simplify, organize, and communicate information. Information designers study, synthesize, and translate data into intuitive information systems that evoke a response and action in the viewer.
Professor Prasad creates infographics for her clients that find their place across mediums in print, web, and space. At Lesley, she brings this professional know-how to students in her Typography II course. Acknowledging the importance information design holds in storytelling, she gives her students the opportunity to work on real-world projects from her client base of socially conscious nonprofit organizations. Past classes have created designs for NYC Medics and the Leadership Now Project, and her students have successfully completed work for Feeding America.
“I work with the client at the onset to study, collate, and synthesize a set of data that is both helpful for the client to share to their prospective audience while keeping in mind the best way for my students to explore the power of typography and interpret the data intuitively,” says professor Prasad.
Continue with the other types of designer.
Source: 8 Types of Designers You Could Be | Lesley University
