FlightWay / Careers / Commercial and Industrial Designers

Creative & Media

Commercial and Industrial Designers

Design and develop manufactured products, such as cars, home appliances, and children's toys.

Sector: Creative & Media
Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
O*NET code: 27-1021.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Drafting, Laying Out, and Specifying Technical Devices, Parts, and Equipment

central to the job — rated 89/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

a major part of the work — rated 85/100 for importance.
Working with Computers

a major part of the work — rated 85/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

a major part of the work — rated 84/100 for importance.
Getting Information

a major part of the work — rated 80/100 for importance.
Thinking Creatively

a major part of the work — rated 74/100 for importance.

Design and develop manufactured products, such as cars, home appliances, and children's toys. Combine artistic talent with research on product use, marketing, and materials to create the most functional and appealing product design.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Reading Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Complex Problem Solving

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 63/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Design

Needed at expert level (86/100), and rated 93/100 for importance.
Engineering and Technology

Needed at expert level (81/100), and rated 93/100 for importance.
Production and Processing

Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 76/100 for importance.
Mechanical

Needed at a high level (65/100), and rated 76/100 for importance.

Abilities

Originality

Needed at a high level (63/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Near Vision

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Fluency of Ideas

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Deductive Reasoning

Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A four-year bachelor's degree is the usual entry ticket.

Experience

Two to four years of related work, internships or research on top of the degree.

Training

Most of the learning happens before you are hired, not after.

What it pays

These are typical creative compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Commercial and Industrial Designers specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

WPP · Pentagram · Google

$100k – $180k

Mid-size Agencies

$70k – $110k

Freelance & Boutique

$45k – $80k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Commercial and Industrial Designers. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

More in Creative & Media

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See your fit for Commercial and Industrial Designers

Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Commercial and Industrial Designers and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.