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The UK’s official graduate careers website
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In the past, a formal career structure for designers existed in both the film and television industries, but this has now been superseded by a trend towards employing freelancers.
In the early stages of your career, you may work across more than one genre to maximise your chances of finding work and to develop skills. It is also quite common to work in exhibition design, museum design or design for corporate events.
Once you start to get paid work as a production designer, you build up your portfolio, contacts and expertise on an ongoing basis. This may take a substantial period of time but as your career develops you may be able to command higher rates and work on higher profile productions. At this point, many designers choose to employ an agent to negotiate on their behalf.
Sometimes, as a designer's career progresses, daily work activities become more conceptual. Bigger productions with larger budgets often have art department staff who do much of the practical realisation work, while the production designer focuses on the design ideas and concepts.
Some designers move into teaching on foundation, degree or postgraduate courses in art and design. Other designers move into directing their own productions.
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