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Apparel designer vs interactive designer

The differences between apparel designers and interactive designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become an apparel designer, becoming an interactive designer takes usually requires 6-12 months. Additionally, an interactive designer has an average salary of $97,929, which is higher than the $65,467 average annual salary of an apparel designer.

The top three skills for an apparel designer include adobe illustrator, tech packs and sketch. The most important skills for an interactive designer are sketch, user experience, and UI.

Apparel designer vs interactive designer overview

Apparel DesignerInteractive Designer
Yearly salary$65,467$97,929
Hourly rate$31.47$47.08
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs46,43648,136
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 66%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3738
Years of experience612

What does an apparel designer do?

Apparel designers, also known as clothing or fashion designers, conceptualize and produce items of clothing. They frequently specialize in one type of design, like active, casual, or evening wear. Typical duties include monitoring current fashion trends and forecast future ones, sketching new designs, choosing patterns and fabrics to utilize in garments, and supervising production. They may present items to creative directors, clients, or retailers to determine if the garments are to be conventionally designed or mass-produced.

What does an interactive designer do?

An Interactive Designer takes the business product and transforms it into a product that the user interacts with perfectly. They support engineering efforts to develop designs and get the details right.

Apparel designer vs interactive designer salary

Apparel designers and interactive designers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Apparel DesignerInteractive Designer
Average salary$65,467$97,929
Salary rangeBetween $40,000 And $105,000Between $67,000 And $141,000
Highest paying CityRichmond, CASan Bruno, CA
Highest paying stateNevadaCalifornia
Best paying companyFanaticsMeta
Best paying industryManufacturingTechnology

Differences between apparel designer and interactive designer education

There are a few differences between an apparel designer and an interactive designer in terms of educational background:

Apparel DesignerInteractive Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 66%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeCornell UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania

Apparel designer vs interactive designer demographics

Here are the differences between apparel designers' and interactive designers' demographics:

Apparel DesignerInteractive Designer
Average age3738
Gender ratioMale, 32.8% Female, 67.2%Male, 66.8% Female, 33.2%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 7.3% Unknown, 5.6% Hispanic or Latino, 11.9% Asian, 11.6% White, 63.0% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5%Black or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage18%13%

Differences between apparel designer and interactive designer duties and responsibilities

Apparel designer example responsibilities.

  • Develop marketing and brand awareness initiatives through social media outlets; create and manage company Facebook and Houzz profiles.
  • Create detailed conceptual and sketch presentations for senior management seasonally.
  • Prepare PowerPoint documents for client presentation that include furniture and material selections.
  • Select NYC print studios to handle outsource design projects and monitor progress to ensure work are completed on deadline.
  • Design Missy sweater line for domestic sweater manufacturer.

Interactive designer example responsibilities.

  • Manage website properties including design, content and marketing using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
  • Create, implement, and manage web content projects (HTML emails, web sites, digitizing audio/video).
  • Use ASP.NET and XML to automate common workflow tasks due to extremely high volume of designs to be create.
  • Develop a custom object-orient prototyping model in the design of a highly dynamic user interface.
  • Work primarily with JQuery to design/develop full screen overlays and dynamic forms.
  • Develop clean, table-less web sites using valid XHTML and CSS according to standards.
  • Show more

Apparel designer vs interactive designer skills

Common apparel designer skills
  • Adobe Illustrator, 10%
  • Tech Packs, 8%
  • Sketch, 6%
  • Apparel Design, 6%
  • Technical Design, 5%
  • PLM, 5%
Common interactive designer skills
  • Sketch, 13%
  • User Experience, 7%
  • UI, 6%
  • Interaction Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Visual Design, 4%

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