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Growth Industries for Design
Globally, since Covid-19, the sectors that have seen the greatest growth in demand for design services are web design and computer-aided design. These sectors have been discussed in detail below.
Web Design
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many brick and mortar stores took a hit and had to strengthen their online operations. There is, therefore, a growing demand for web designers to help these stores develop their e-commerce stores and continue to serve their customers online. Web design and development is increasingly becoming one of the "fastest-growing digital industries".
- As a result of the pandemic, e-commerce is expected to generate over $843 billion in sales in 2021, and has surpassed levels that were not expected until 2025. This means that businesses cannot afford to have a poor website. Moreover, 94% of the first impressions that customers have of a company's website are design-related, 38% will leave the website if the design is "unattractive and sloppy", and about 50% measure the credibility of a business based on how its website is designed.
- Web-design is a fast-growing career path which involves design as well as coding. In 2020, there were 23 million web developers globally, and this number is expected to reach 27.7 million by 2023. Over the next 10 years, the occupation is expected to grow at an annual rate of 14.9%.
- Most of the required baseline and specialized skills for e-commerce web design are similar to the that many other kinds of designers have. This means that other types of designers can adapt quickly to e-commerce web design. The skills required for e-commerce web designers are as follows:
Computer-Aided Design
- Whereas some industries have experienced a reduction in demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, other industries, such as computer-aided design, remain unaffected and continue to "show promising growth opportunities." The global computer-aided design market is expected to grow by $2.53 billion (or a CAGR of over 5%) between 2020 and 2024. This is driven by a growing demand for CAD for manufacturing products.
- Moreover, the interior design software market, which makes use of CAD, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.07% from $3.8 billion in 2019 to $6.4 billion by 2025. This growth is as a result of "improved productivity gained by reducing dependency on paperwork and documentation."