Evolving Job Titles in Design

There has been a relatively recent explosion in the number of titles for roles in UI and UX. A number of these reflect the changing job description and additional expectations of employers, while others seem to be attempts to consolidate or revise previously accepted titles and responsibilities.

The terms ‘graphic designer’ and ‘art director’ used to suffice to cover the majority of design roles, with the addition of senior or junior (or occasionally associate for entry level) to connote experience. Now those titles have fallen out of fashion. Newer ambiguous titles such as ‘visual designer’ are now used to cover graphic and/or web design and production. Obviously the emergence of UX has spawned an entirely new list of titles specific to the space.

Denny Mountain Media provides a handy listing of the present nomenclature:

Again some of these are long established such as Creative Director. But other are entirely new, such as Motion Designer or Mobile/Responsive Designer.
I’ve come across a few not listed here (and this is by far the most exhaustive list I’ve seen). Two of the more popular of these are Product Designer and UX Engineer.

While some of these permutations make sense, others appear to be rehashings of older more general categories. Illustrator/Infographics Designer connotes an obvious specialty, while Visual Designer could easily apply to most of the jobs here.

As an old school ‘graphic’ designer, I find this all a bit bemusing, but as print continues to relegated to a small but still necessary niche of design overall, it’s unsurprising that terms like motion, responsive, UX etc have come to dominate.