Australia's economy has a strong emphasis on exporting commodities rather than manufacturing. Surprisingly though, Australia employs a similar percentage of its workforce in design occupations as Germany, with the only difference that industrial designers make up only 5% of people in design occupations, compared with 10% in Germany.

This article is a personal reflection on the Australian industrial design landscape. Having been trained and worked as an industrial designer in Germany, I moved to Australia more than ten years ago and continued my career in industrial design consultancies in Sydney. I quickly realised that even though the statistics don't differ as much as I suspected, the design culture and design consciousness did; and with it the emphasis in project work.

Australian product design consultancies are generally distinguished by their expertise in design for manufacture. Australian industrial design consultancies excel in design engineering. In my experience, it appears to be widely accepted that industrial designers in Europe and North America work in sequence with design engineers. In Australia, design for manufacture and design engineering are well-developed skills within industrial design, and design consultancies use these as a key selling point for their services.

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