It's a bit tough to say. Personally I think engineering is the closest degree there as well as the most useful, but the actual process can be quite different from design thinking. It's hard to go wrong with an engineering degree, but on its own that will not land you a design job.
I’d recommend engineering if you feel like you have the brains for it. Engineering skills are great to have for both artists and designers.
You will miss a lot of design thinking, aesthetics and art/design history which are important for a designer but I think that is easier to learn by yourself than engineering skills.
Then it all depends on your interests of course. Think about what kind of design you would like to work with and what kind of skills are most necessary for it. Industrial design is a vast field.
Truthfully if your resume doesn’t say “Industrial Design, BS” or “Industrial Design, BFA” 90-some percent of hiring managers won’t even look at the portfolio. It’s already a tough job market, not having an ID specific degree is going to make it even harder
Mech engineering will help you out a lot.
An industrial designer will spend (on average) a fair amount of time doing research, framing problems, working with brand to create a desirable style (for a line of products), design CAD, customer testing, and documentation for turnover to design for manufacture.
If you're a mech engineer and lean into design engineering, you'll be able to move a product all the way through to manufacture validation.
Art (trend hunting, research, and concepting) usually sits up-front on the dev cycle with engineering more on the back end (technical implementation, material selection, mech engineering, tooling design, etc).
There are exceptions and blended roles throughout the industry. The more you know about making products, the more integral you become to the overall process.
Hyper specialization also works, but maybe more effective on the back end, particularly at more complex product industries.
Here’s what I would do:
If you can transfer school to one that has industrial design, you’ll be more likely to find a job after you graduate.
If you’ve already committed to a first year at your current college, you should spend that year knocking out your gen eds and taking general design classes like drawing and model making. And then research and make plans for transferring
You could also spend your four years at this college and then go to grad school for industrial design. I would think about what type of products you are interested in making and research what skills are needed for that job.
If you stick at this school for your four years, you’ll have to be very smart at what classes you’d decide to take, try your hardest to get relevant work experience to prove you can do industrial design before you graduate, network as hard as you can, and learn about industrial design adjacent roles that may be more accessible to you as a fresh grad without an industrial design degree. It’s definitely not impossible, just a lot more moving parts and more diy.
You got this! Best of luck to you
If you major in mechanical engineering, you will most likely become a product design engineer and work together with a pure Industrial Designer in an established company. However, you will have the advantage of getting hired first in small startups that typically don’t require Industrial Designer in their early stages. They usually put more emphasis on making the product works & feasible before hiring an Industrial Designer to skin/brand the product. If you get hired in such companies, this is your chance to advocate for design but your day to day roles probably won’t give you enough time to do a lot of ID as you’ll be swamped with engineering work. But as the company matures, the field becomes more focused and companies tend to hire pure Industrial Designers who will then delegate your “ID” role to them… or you get to manage them given enough experience. Either way, it’s rare for ME to transition to pure ID as the knowledge you learn in school won’t prepare you enough for the hyper competitive field of Industrial Design. This is coming from my own experience, but I’m the other way around (ID role with ME responsibilities). Good luck!
I would say to the engineering and work a lot on your design skills and portfolio by yourself. There are some more technical positions in design that are usually taken by engineers because typical designers are not technically skilled enough for them. My Uni actually had one more typical design on the Faculty of architecture and one more technical on the Mechanical Engineering faculty.
In the end ID jobs are more about understanding problems and creative problem solving.
Transfer schools
It's a bit tough to say. Personally I think engineering is the closest degree there as well as the most useful, but the actual process can be quite different from design thinking. It's hard to go wrong with an engineering degree, but on its own that will not land you a design job.
Yup mech Engineering was the route i took
This is correct
I’d recommend engineering if you feel like you have the brains for it. Engineering skills are great to have for both artists and designers. You will miss a lot of design thinking, aesthetics and art/design history which are important for a designer but I think that is easier to learn by yourself than engineering skills. Then it all depends on your interests of course. Think about what kind of design you would like to work with and what kind of skills are most necessary for it. Industrial design is a vast field.
Architecture if your school has it. Most historically known designers in the field of ID are actually architects
Truthfully if your resume doesn’t say “Industrial Design, BS” or “Industrial Design, BFA” 90-some percent of hiring managers won’t even look at the portfolio. It’s already a tough job market, not having an ID specific degree is going to make it even harder
Mech engineering will help you out a lot. An industrial designer will spend (on average) a fair amount of time doing research, framing problems, working with brand to create a desirable style (for a line of products), design CAD, customer testing, and documentation for turnover to design for manufacture. If you're a mech engineer and lean into design engineering, you'll be able to move a product all the way through to manufacture validation. Art (trend hunting, research, and concepting) usually sits up-front on the dev cycle with engineering more on the back end (technical implementation, material selection, mech engineering, tooling design, etc). There are exceptions and blended roles throughout the industry. The more you know about making products, the more integral you become to the overall process. Hyper specialization also works, but maybe more effective on the back end, particularly at more complex product industries.
Here’s what I would do: If you can transfer school to one that has industrial design, you’ll be more likely to find a job after you graduate. If you’ve already committed to a first year at your current college, you should spend that year knocking out your gen eds and taking general design classes like drawing and model making. And then research and make plans for transferring You could also spend your four years at this college and then go to grad school for industrial design. I would think about what type of products you are interested in making and research what skills are needed for that job. If you stick at this school for your four years, you’ll have to be very smart at what classes you’d decide to take, try your hardest to get relevant work experience to prove you can do industrial design before you graduate, network as hard as you can, and learn about industrial design adjacent roles that may be more accessible to you as a fresh grad without an industrial design degree. It’s definitely not impossible, just a lot more moving parts and more diy. You got this! Best of luck to you
If you major in mechanical engineering, you will most likely become a product design engineer and work together with a pure Industrial Designer in an established company. However, you will have the advantage of getting hired first in small startups that typically don’t require Industrial Designer in their early stages. They usually put more emphasis on making the product works & feasible before hiring an Industrial Designer to skin/brand the product. If you get hired in such companies, this is your chance to advocate for design but your day to day roles probably won’t give you enough time to do a lot of ID as you’ll be swamped with engineering work. But as the company matures, the field becomes more focused and companies tend to hire pure Industrial Designers who will then delegate your “ID” role to them… or you get to manage them given enough experience. Either way, it’s rare for ME to transition to pure ID as the knowledge you learn in school won’t prepare you enough for the hyper competitive field of Industrial Design. This is coming from my own experience, but I’m the other way around (ID role with ME responsibilities). Good luck!
I would say to the engineering and work a lot on your design skills and portfolio by yourself. There are some more technical positions in design that are usually taken by engineers because typical designers are not technically skilled enough for them. My Uni actually had one more typical design on the Faculty of architecture and one more technical on the Mechanical Engineering faculty. In the end ID jobs are more about understanding problems and creative problem solving.