A letter from the Executive Director

The AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries is the most comprehensive survey of compensation for the communication design profession in the United States. It represents the salary ranges that are currently offered within the design practice.

AIGA is committed to raising the awareness of business to the value created by effective designers. For many AIGA members, there is a strongly held belief that the business community neither understands nor respects the contribution design can make toward achieving strategic objectives and competitive advantages. Many of AIGA’s activities are aimed squarely at demonstrating the value of design, which, in the long run, will also increase the value received by designers.

Just as we believe design and designers are often undervalued, there are also nonfinancial considerations designers should consider as they move along the arc of their career. While this report provides a measure of actual salaries, we have supplemented those data with observations from a number of prominent designers on the non-monetary considerations that each designer should bear in mind when evaluating his or her opportunities for employment.

Almost every designer is driven by a passion for design; many are also deeply committed to social issues, cultural factors, the opportunity to learn and the desire to work on projects that make a real difference. Compensation is critical to us all; yet many of the most gratifying professional experiences are defined by other attributes.

In a larger sense, businesses have increasingly come to grasp design’s importance to their competitiveness in the marketplace, with tremendous support coming from the business trade magazines that spotlight stories where design has propelled a product or strategy’s success. AIGA provides this tool to aid designers’ own success stories, so they will find enrichment in all aspects of their careers.

Richard Grefé
AIGA executive director

Summary of findings

Designers’ salaries increased modestly in 2007—below the increases that other, similar professions experienced, yet still above the rate of inflation.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the increase in wages between December 2006 and December 2007 for comparative occupation and industry sectors was in the range of 3.3 to 3.5 percent. The urban consumer price index increased 2.8 percent during the same period.

Those findings obscure a number of trends. Employed designers reported high business activity during 2007, yet this did not translate into higher compensation as the budgets for design projects were consistently characterized as extremely tight (whether for clients or within corporations). In addition, there appeared to be only limited expansion of staff and very selective hiring in corporate design departments, studios and agencies, despite the fact that few designers reported that the design economy had slowed.

The modest increases seem to also reflect a focus within the business sector toward cost control in view of uncertainty in general economic conditions; a lingering memory of how the contraction of the design economy in 2000–2002 had been so severe; and a clear concern among both business and design leaders that the economy is softening.

One unanticipated discovery from this year’s survey is how the broad range of salaries for similar positions that previously related to geographical location has narrowed substantially across most positions.

AIGA remains confident in the important roles designers and design thinking play in creating value for both the corporate and civic sectors. Hence, we believe that the demand and compensation for design services will rise as the economy grows. It is also worth noting that, as the essays in this publication articulate from a range of perspectives, compensation should be only one criterion in a young designer’s consideration of employment.

Design salaries 2000-2008

Median total cash compensation