Coroflot recently held is 6th Annual Design Salary Report and there were some pretty interesting results. Some things came as a surprise while others where pretty much expected. Although mainly based on North American statistics, a lot of it probably rings true for the rest of the world especially to the new global conscious and globalization. Fashion and Interaction design come in top with not only the highest salaries at ‘Design Director’ level, but also has the widest gap between Junior Designers and the top spot. Industrial and Interior Design come in neck and neck with Graphic Design and Architecture coming in with the lowest variation in income. This is interesting considering all the fuss and hype that Architects have been responsible for in the past including many super-star designers.
“2979 respondents from 64 countries reporting $158,480,126 in wages earned in the fields of Design Management, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Interactive Design / Web Design, Interior Design and for the first time, Architecture and Fashion Design”
The report includes four different visualizations of the data, and it was one of these that caught my eye. The graph seen above (click to enlarge), shows “Where Designers are Rock Stars“, in other words, where designers typically earn the most money and are seen as an important workforce. In at number one? Hong Kong of course, with 11 Rock-osity! Of course inaccuracies aside this is pretty interesting and just shows the giant economical change sweeping through China. The Chinese are willing to pay a lot for designers so design is obviously a sought after commodity to a nation thats made its growth out of manufacture. One can only wonder where to next for China, will they continue to pay higher and higher salaries to compete with the American and European design scenes? Or will manufacture recede with a design maturity that could be embraced by China through work and co-operation with the Western design communities? Our ideas about design are still pretty different from the East, its possible money will continue to play the influencing factor in the direction that Chinese/Hong Kong design progresses. It should be exciting to see that direction from an outside view as it could be and should be something we haven’t seen before.
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Great post that I found very interesting. You have answered a lot of my own questions! I have already bookmarked you to return at a later date….