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Making objects & craft

Arts & Design

Designing and making the physical things people use, wear and look at.

This suits you if…

You find the manufacturing problem as interesting as the aesthetic one, and working out what a thing would cost to make fifty of engages you rather than deflating you.

Look elsewhere if…

You want creative freedom without cost pressure, or steady employment. Prototypes and production runs make being wrong expensive, much of this area is freelance, so finding clients and chasing payment are permanent parts of it Manufacturing also sits in specific regions rather than wherever you live.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Sketching, prototyping and then the long tail of making an idea manufacturable: materials, tooling, cost per unit, and conversations with factories about what is actually possible. Fashion adds fittings, sampling and seasonal calendars; illustration and photography are more solitary and more commercial: briefs, revisions, licensing and invoices.

The catch

Physical products are expensive to be wrong about: a prototype costs money and a production run costs a great deal more, so creative freedom is tightly bounded by cost. Much of this area is freelance, which means finding clients and chasing payment are permanent parts of the job, and manufacturing is concentrated in specific regions rather than wherever you live.

What people get wrong about it

That the work is designing beautiful objects. It's designing objects that can be made repeatedly at a price, which is a manufacturing problem as much as an aesthetic one, and the constraint is usually where the interesting design decisions live.

The jobs inside this area

  • Industrial / product designer
  • Fashion designer
  • Illustrator
  • Photographer
  • Furniture or jewellery maker

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Making things · IndependenceA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

Industrial design, fashion or fine art. Design challenges and a maker portfolio are the entry point.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Make things physically and often, and photograph them properly. The portfolio is the qualification. Learn one CAD tool and, if you can reach one, a 3D printer or a workshop.

  2. What you study

    Industrial design, fashion, fine art or craft. Look for programmes with real workshops and industry projects; the technical half of this field can't be learned from a screen.

  3. How the first years actually go

    Junior designer or studio assistant on parts of a product: a component, a colourway, a technical pack. Or freelance work built one client at a time. Being known for delivering on time is worth as much as being known for taste.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

12 countries · 15 cities · 7 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

Without leaving home

1 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Design and actually make one object you'll use daily, then work out honestly what it would cost to make fifty of them. That second number is the part most people never think about.