From designing websites to entire virtual worlds, there’s so much happening in the tech sector for creatives
If your favourite subject at school is art or English, or if you’re more likely to be found sketching in your spare time than coding, then the idea of a career in the tech sector might not be on your radar right now. But we’re here to tell you that it actually should be!
Apps and websites don’t just need to work – they need to be visually appealing and easy and enjoyable to use. Making that happen is generally the job of tech + creativity pros like user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers, who often come to the tech sector via a graphic design study pathway, combining their design knowhow with tech skills.
But they aren’t the only tech + creative gigs on offer. How about building an entire virtual world straight from your imagination? That’s the job of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) designers, who create beautiful, realistic 3D digital interfaces, not just for video games, but with applications in sectors like healthcare and education.
And no matter what job you have, creative people will have an edge in the tech sector, which is all about original thinking, playfulness and thinking outside the box. That’s because creativity means more than being good at art; creativity means using your imagination and being an original and playful problem solver.
Ping-pong tables, scooters and video games in big tech company offices are about more than just making the workplace fun – they help workers tap into their playful, creative side, which tells you something about how important creativity is to tech employers!
AI as an artist
AI as artist Artificial intelligence learnt how to beat humans at chess ages ago – now it’s edging into the world of arts. Here are some cool examples:
AI + music
Did you know AI already has its own music album? Released in 2018, Hello World started as a research project spearheaded by French AI expert and musician François Pachet. François is director of the Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab, where he designs next-gen AI-based tools to help musicians (tech + music career goals much?). You can listen to the album here.
AI + visual art
Salvador Dali was ahead of his time – but could the Spanish painter, born in 1904, ever have guessed an image-creating AI tool would one day be named after him? DALL-E was revealed by AI research company OpenAI in 2021.
The machine learning model creates images and art from text prompts (think “baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog” – a real example!). DALL-E is one of many text-to-image AI systems out there – Google has one called Imagen and another was released in August by TikTok as an effect called AI Greenscreen. AI, show me a “person with mind blown by how fast tech is evolving”.
AI + writing
With just a few prompts (a headline and some keywords) the following was generated by AI using the website copy ai – which is just one of many such online AI-driven copy generators. TBH, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves!
“As you probably know, computers are good at math and logic. But can they write? In the last few years, we’ve seen AI programs get better at writing news articles and poetry. But is it possible for an algorithm to write a novel? The answer is: maybe!
“There are plenty of algorithms that can generate text from scratch – like those used by bots on Twitter or Facebook Messenger. These programs use machine learning techniques that allow them to learn from examples of human language so that, over time, their output sounds more natural. These programs aren’t great yet; they still have trouble with certain tasks like making sense of pronouns in sentences or using proper punctuation. And these shortcomings make it harder for machines to do things like write original prose or poetry without relying heavily on pre-existing material (for example, turning existing text into new sentences).”
Start your career here
Technology + creativity study
- Bachelor of Creative Technologies, Auckland University of Technology
- Bachelor of Design (Digital Technologies), Deakin University
- Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments, QUT
- Certificate IV in Information Technology (Front-End Web Design), Australian Institute of ICT
Technology + creativity jobs
- 3D animator A$40K-A$83K /NZ$48K-$94K
- UX designer A$54K-A$111K /NZ$49K-NZ$114K
- Web designer A$43K-A$93K /NZ$42K-NZ$123K*
- *Salaries according to payscale.com
This article was was originally published in Careers with STEM: Technology.
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One Response
Product (UX/UI) Designer here. It’s a FANTASTIC and meaningful field of creative and technological work to be involved in. There is a huge shortage of us at the moment so there is high demand. I love designing digital products because they don’t contribute to tangible waste around the world like print collateral or textiles do.
If you are considering a career in this field, it’s the most rewarding thing you can do in the creative world. Designing products for everyone means that you are making it accessible to all users.