A career in design...

Design is the process of visualising and physically creating anything from furniture to jewellery, products to theatre stages. Designers work in a wide range of disciplines, including communications, digital media, fashion and textiles.

There were around 185,500 people with careers in design in the UK recorded in the 2003-04 Labour Force Survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). These include designers, design directors and managers.

The design industry

Designers can work in-house in the design department of a company, in consultancies, or freelance. According to the Design Council, there are almost 12,500 design consultancies in the UK.

These consultancies employ more than 60,000 designers and around 350,000 non-designers. There are approximately 77,000 designers working in-house in nearly 6,000 companies, while there are 47,400 freelances.

Designers are based in all parts of the UK, but almost half (47 per cent) are located in London and the south-east of England. In-house teams are more evenly spread across UK regions, although there is still a heavy concentration in the capital and the south-east.

The north-west of England is another popular region with cities like Manchester and Liverpool attracting top talent.

How to enter the design industry

Entry into the industry is becoming more difficult, as there are more designers than there are job vacancies. As Ian Cochrane, managing director of management consultancy Ticegroup, recently told Design Week: 'There are still too many people coming out of design courses, and there simply aren't the jobs for them.'

Most budding designers start by building up their portfolio through freelance or contract/temporary work. However, this too can be very hard to come by and contracts generally go to people who have contacts in the industry or those who 'know how to play the game'.

Even so, there are many ways that people interested in careers in design can boost their chances of securing work in the industry. One method, according to Mr Cochrane, is to look outside the box. 'Look for jobs in industries that have vacancies - I mean, if you want to design restaurants, it is good to have worked in one or two,' he advises.

A changing design workforce

Ethnic minorities have not been well-represented in design in the past, but this is slowly changing. According to the ONS survey, 94 per cent of people working in the sector were ethnically white. More recent figures from the Design Council show that now nearly a tenth of design workers are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Similarly, what was once believed to be a male-centric industry now includes many more women than in the past. The ONS data shows that women made up only 21 per cent of freelance workers six years ago – the Design Council says that now 27 per cent of freelancers in the sector are women.

The importance of design

Design is emerging as an important element in the economy, particularly now that the UK is officially in recession. More than half of businesses (54 per cent) recently surveyed by the Design Council said that they planned to use the industry to get through the downturn.

The survey also found that 53 per cent of the 1,500 firms polled felt that design had helped them to achieve their business goals in the last three years, while the same proportion noted that design is necessary for the UK's economic performance in the future.

David Kester, the Design Council's chief executive, said: 'Recession is no time to be battening down the hatches. It's the moment when design becomes absolutely critical to survival, growth and success - and it's great to see that there's a growing recognition of this within the business community.'

The importance of design looks to continue in the future, if this survey is anything to go by, pointing towards more opportunities for people interested in careers in the sector.