A design specialist helps clients communicate an appealing image through digital, electronic, and print media. They design logos, brochures, signs, movie credits, and website graphics. Design specialists often work for advertising, marketing, and media management firms. They assess client problems and design graphic solutions to aid product branding and sales. They must be culturally sensitive in order to create images that are favorably received by consumers.

As a design specialist, your duties may vary according to your specialization. Design specialists work with computers and may also draw sketches. They choose artwork, colors, and type size to produce an effective visual image. Expertise in software graphics is required so you can design layouts and create animations effects are desirable.

Educational requirements include a bachelor's degree in graphic design. However, associate's degree and/or certificates from professional design schools may lead to entry-level jobs as well. For career advancement, the employer may require a bachelor's degree along with three or more years of work experience.

The average hourly salary for working in this capacity is $33.26, although you may be required to work flexibly, depending on the workload. The average annual salary amounts to $69,187. The career is projected to grow 4% and produce various opportunities across the United States.

What Does a Design Specialist Do

There are certain skills that many design specialists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed detail oriented, visualization and problem-solving skills.

Learn more about what a Design Specialist does

How To Become a Design Specialist

If you're interested in becoming a design specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 62.1% of design specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 6.6% of design specialists have master's degrees. Even though most design specialists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become a Design Specialist

Design Specialist Career Paths

Average Salary for a Design Specialist

Design Specialists in America make an average salary of $56,917 per year or $27 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $91,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $35,000 per year.
Average Design Specialist Salary
$56,917 Yearly
$27.36 hourly

What Am I Worth?

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Roles and Types of Design Specialist

The role of a design specialist includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general design specialist responsibilities:

  • Evolve and ensure consistency and integrity behind our company s brand
  • Develop elearning courses, convert existing courses to articulate or other online media work in company’s learning management system (lms), which includes the creation of courses
  • Pre-sales support to shoretel and partner sales teams including discovery, demonstrations, designs, proposals, rfp responses

There are several types of design specialist, including:

Graphic Designer

Role:

Graphic Designers are responsible for creating visual concepts either through a computer software or by hand. The goal of becoming a graphic designer is to really engage consumers through inspiration. So being creative is kind of needed.

Typically Graphic Designers need a Bachelor's degree, but perhaps the most important thing you can bring to an interview is having a well-rounded portfolio.

  • Average Salary: $49,450
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Designer

Role:

A career as a designer can go so many different directions. From fashion designers to floral designers or even graphic designers or interior designers, as long as you have an eye for detail and a steady hand you could design whatever you wanted.

The education that is required to become a designer can vary depending on what type of designing you're going to be doing. For example, a floral designer only needs a high school diploma, but a graphic designer may need a Bachelor's degre. It really depends on what direction you want to take your career.

  • Average Salary: $66,347
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Interior Designer

Role:

When we think of a dream job, interior design is probably high up on many people's list. Coming up with functional and beautiful interior spaces for a living does not fall short of glamorous.

Interior design, however, goes way beyond selecting harmonious colors for drapery and picking nice furniture. People interested in Oriental culture might already have some idea of how interior design affects our mood and outlook on life, how spaces might energize or calm us, depending on the way they are structured.

Studies have shown, for example, that the sight of windows may alleviate physical pain. The color blue often dominates business environments because it is a color that increases productivity. Natural materials seem to promote concentration, so investing in natural light sources and furniture made of wood or other organic materials is not only eco-friendly but would eventually return profits as well.

  • Average Salary: $52,482
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

States With The Most Design Specialist Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active design specialist jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where design specialists earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Design Specialist Jobs By State

RankStateNumber of JobsAverage Salary
1California4,470$67,602
2Texas2,371$59,181
3New York1,748$67,705
4Florida1,605$39,068
5Massachusetts1,132$52,053
6Pennsylvania1,113$64,307
7Illinois1,108$48,631
8North Carolina1,050$56,309
9Georgia1,050$46,485
10Washington1,020$46,055
11Virginia1,020$47,891
12Ohio931$49,726
13Michigan922$51,949
14Oregon734$50,838
15Minnesota692$46,138
16Arizona686$47,241
17New Jersey666$58,780
18Maryland629$52,396
19Colorado614$43,557
20Wisconsin534$53,754
21Indiana504$37,859
22Missouri494$39,269
23Tennessee445$37,824
24Iowa441$51,694
25Alabama383$39,264
26Connecticut373$64,423
27Utah369$31,407
28South Carolina355$40,151
29Kansas284$50,729
30Kentucky266$48,306
31Oklahoma250$35,697
32Louisiana235$44,070
33Nebraska219$36,979
34Arkansas207$53,752
35New Hampshire199$52,850
36Nevada192$41,253
37Idaho158$45,372
38New Mexico156$59,463
39Delaware147$60,838
40Rhode Island137$61,406
41Mississippi127$31,979
42Maine125$51,099
43Montana114$35,399
44Hawaii108$41,734
45West Virginia107$55,687
46South Dakota98$36,445
47Vermont97$34,931
48North Dakota96$57,390
49Alaska90$34,826
50Wyoming81$29,966

Design Specialist Education

Design Specialist Majors

13.5 %

Design Specialist Degrees

Bachelors

62.1 %

Associate

22.4 %

Masters

6.6 %

Top Colleges for Design Specialists

1. Cornell University

Ithaca, NY • Private

In-State Tuition

$55,188

Enrollment

15,105

2. University of Washington

Seattle, WA • Private

In-State Tuition

$11,207

Enrollment

30,905

3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Minneapolis, MN • Private

In-State Tuition

$14,760

Enrollment

31,451

4. Ball State University

Muncie, IN • Private

In-State Tuition

$9,896

Enrollment

15,529

5. University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA • Private

In-State Tuition

$55,584

Enrollment

10,764

6. Stanford University

Stanford, CA • Private

In-State Tuition

$51,354

Enrollment

7,083

7. University of Maryland - College Park

College Park, MD • Private

In-State Tuition

$10,595

Enrollment

30,184

8. University of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX • Private

In-State Tuition

$10,610

Enrollment

40,329

9. Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, GA • Private

In-State Tuition

$12,424

Enrollment

15,201

10. University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA • Private

In-State Tuition

$56,225

Enrollment

19,548

Top Skills For a Design Specialist

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 12.8% of design specialists listed customer service on their resume, but soft skills such as detail oriented and visualization are important as well.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Design Specialist Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Design Specialist templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Design Specialist resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

Design Specialist Resume
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Design Specialist diversity

Design Specialist Gender Distribution

Male
Male
55%
Female
Female
45%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

  • Among design specialists, 44.9% of them are women, while 55.1% are men.

  • The most common race/ethnicity among design specialists is White, which makes up 82.1% of all design specialists.

  • The most common foreign language among design specialists is Spanish at 52.8%.

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Best States For a Design Specialist

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a design specialist. The best states for people in this position are New York, California, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Design specialists make the most in New York with an average salary of $67,705. Whereas in California and Connecticut, they would average $67,602 and $64,423, respectively. While design specialists would only make an average of $64,307 in Pennsylvania, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. New York

Total Design Specialist Jobs: 1,748
Highest 10% Earn:
$111,000
Location Quotient:
1.25

2. California

Total Design Specialist Jobs: 4,470
Highest 10% Earn:
$113,000
Location Quotient:
1.4

3. Rhode Island

Total Design Specialist Jobs: 137
Highest 10% Earn:
$98,000
Location Quotient:
1.03
Full List Of Best States For Design Specialists

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Top Design Specialist Employers

Most Common Employers For Design Specialist

RankCompanyAverage SalaryHourly RateJob Openings
1SAP$107,759$51.81103
2Activision Blizzard$86,730$41.7049
3IBM$85,571$41.1426
4CDK Global$82,989$39.9024
5Fluor Corporation$78,353$37.6779
6AT&T$78,344$37.6753
7Accenture$77,465$37.2424
8BAE Systems$75,746$36.4222
9Direct Energy$73,812$35.4920
10Saks Fifth Avenue$50,908$24.4825