The Philly Design Compensation Census was designed to help members of our community answer two questions:
These results represent how we are trying to answer those questions.
If you’re interested in how we selected the questions and our research methodology, read our methodology. In that section we also discuss the things that we could have done better, and some questions we were unable to answer.
For questions and feedback, you can reach us at phillydesigncomp AT gmail DOT com.
Surveyed designers in the greater Philadelphia area
Focused on designers who work on experience, visual, and/or content design
Based on 272 participants (from a total 331 survey responses)
The results are meant to give you more information when advocating for yourself and your peers. We do not recommend citing only this survey in a negotiating situation as it will likely not be effective.
Employers often use salary ranges from large-scale, national databases and will always have more information than employees. Instead, we recommend using these results as a benchmark to give you a point of reference in negotiations.
We use box plots to show compensation ranges:
The center line represents the median of the set, the center-most value and a good average. The “box” on either side of it represents 50% of all the values: 25% above and 25% below the median. The smaller the box, the more clustered the data around the median.
The “whiskers” on either end of the box represent the remaining 25% of data above and below the center.