Design Industry Earnings & Salary Opportunities

In 2004, Sessions commissioned Eduventures, the leading information services company for the education market, to assess the opportunities for professionals with design-related educational backgrounds.

We're happy to share with you the results of this study. We hope it gives you a better understanding of the field of study you are pursuing and how your work at Sessions will help you prepare for the best of the opportunities available.

We looked at several career paths within the design industry, the outlook for those jobs, and the current earnings of those positions. We also took a look at some regional differences in pay scales.

What types of career opportunities are available to Session graduates?

There are many career opportunities for skilled and talented design professionals. Take a look at the Career Descriptions page for a more definitive list and description. For this study, we looked at three rather broad professional categories:

Who Gets the Jobs?

We found that design professionals with bachelor's and master's level designers account for about as 56% of open positions open to newly trained workers. Those degrees may not necessarily be in design but employers do seem to appreciate a sound educational background coupled with solid design skills and creative ability.

However, there's plenty of room for those with educational levels below the bachelor's level À in fact, a sizable percentage of newly positions are awarded to designers with as little as a high school education! This reinforces all the more strongly how important your professional portfolio can be in competing for positions!

See "Building a Strong Portfolio" for some real helpful tips on optimizing your design portfolio.

Art Directors and Multimedia Artists and Animators.
(Education Levels Ages 25 to 44)

Graphic Designers.
(Education Levels Ages 25 to 44)

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Show Me the Money!

What are typical salaries based on experience and location?

The HighestÄ.

Highest average median salaries for design related occupations are in New York City and San Francisco . The median salaries for the largest US based design markets are as such:

• San Francisco $61, 901
• New York City $61,377
• Los Angeles $59,226
• Chicago $57,180
• Denver $55,082
• Atlanta $52,721

Jobs with the highest average median salary differential reflect the significance of geography on compensation. For example, the highest and lowest median salary for a Web Designer with 3+ years experience varied by over 17% with Atlanta offering the lowest median salary ($69, 252) and San Francisco offering the highest median salary ($81,311).

And the LowestÄ

The lowest average median salaries for the US based design markets paid for positions that typically did not require any level of college education and less than 2 years of work experience in a related field. Here's a sampling of average median salaries for this type of position:

• Painter/Illustrator $35,934
• Industrial Designer $47,491
• Videographer $50,385

Now, let's look at web designers and see how they fare when looking at both their years of experience and their geographic location.

Web Designers Annual Salaries
(2 years experience)

Web Designers Annual Salaries
(3 years experience)

Annual Salary Estimate for Web Designers (Experienced)

Source: Salary.com and Eduventures analysis

How will Sessions prepare me to compete À and win À the higher paying positions?

Our certificate programs give you a head start on your competition. Here's just a few of the benefits that translate into making you a competitive force to deal with in the real world job market:

1. Comprehensive Program. You benefit from a comprehensive program that enables you to focus in a specific field while selecting courses that complement your career objective. Certificates are invaluable if you're searching for a new job or promotion and need to document a broad understanding of a field.

2. One-to-One Feedback. We provide you private faculty mentoring and critiques in all of your courses. Unlike online tutorials or even a traditional brick and mortar school where one instructor teaches a course to many, at Sessions you receive personal one-on-one feedback from your instructors for every assignment.

3. Flexibility and Choice. Our Foundation program includes an advanced elective in addition to the 8 required foundations courses. Advanced and Masters Programs offer the option to expand your field of study with the inclusion of 18 career-focused concentrations to choose from. Program Concentrations are combinations of four advanced courses focused in one discipline. These Concentrations allow you to better hone your educational experience and better reflect your career goals.

4. A Portfolio you can show the world. One of the most important factors in getting a job in the design industry is an online portfolio that you can show prospective clients and employers. Assignments in your courses are geared towards creating professional-looking sophisticated works that you can use in your portfolio. Sessions Advanced and Masters Programs include a portfolio review by a faculty panel to help you better edit your work to guarantee that you are showing clients your strongest work.

What other factors can affect my ability to obtain a great design job?

Being comfortable and productive in a business environment is a key component of how you are perceived by a prospective employer. We provide you with the necessary skills to work with companies by providing –real life” assignments. Each lesson in a Sessions course replicates actual job tasks, giving you not only valuable virtual work experience, but also leading to the creation of strong, professional work for your portfolio.

In addition, Sessions offers a certificate program in Business Marketing Design.. The Business Marketing Design Certificate focuses on developing the visual identity, advertising, and marketing design skills required for a corporate or small business environment. Understanding the importance of marketing, advertising, and branding, both in concept and practice, is a necessary skill in the business market. The Business Marketing Design program has been developed to give Sessions students the added edge by educating them on the corporate ideology and how it is expressed through design.

And what if my entrepreneurial spirit is calling me?

Working as a freelance designer or digital artist can be an exciting and rewarding career path. As with any entrepreneurial initiative, it requires a high level of commitment since, as an independent worker, one is required to fill all of the roles typically represented by a company (HR, administration, marketing & advertising).

What kind of income can I expect as a freelance designer?

The easy answer is that there is no easy answer! Income from freelance work varies considerably as project costs are dependent on different factors, including:

How can Sessions prepare me for a career as a freelance designer or digital artist?

In addition to helping you create professional portfolios to show potential clients, we have developed the Design Business Developers Kit. We have paired two of our most popular career-building courses, Graphic Design Business and Web Portfolio Design.

Here you will learn the essentials of setting up and managing your own graphic design business or going freelance. You'll be guided through everything from how to present your portfolio, find work, and how to market yourself. We go even further to the more daunting tasks of registering a company name and establishing an accounting system. In the Web Portfolio design workshop, you'll learn how to identify your strengths and weaknesses as a designer, how to select works that best showcase your talents. Finally, through feedback and critique, you'll be guided through the process of creating and launching your own design online portfolio.