Design programs in Ontario

45 programs across 17 campuses, with published admission ranges starting at 70%. Sorted by the range each one publishes, lowest first, so you can see where you land.

Programs

Campuses

Lowest range

70%

What this leads to

The picture for design as of 2026-08-17, not a description of this particular program.

There are 1,489 product designer jobs open in Canada, where you'd design interfaces, digital products, or physical objects. You might also work as a graphic designer or technical designer, creating visual content and production-ready designs for brands and companies.

In its favour

High demand: Product designer roles exist across tech, startups, and established companies—there's active hiring happening right now.
AI tools boost rather than replace this work: AI handles repetitive production tasks like resizing, reformatting, and template generation, freeing you to do strategic and creative direction.
Salaries vary widely by specialization: Product designers can earn $65K–$80K starting, UI/UX designers $75K–$90K, while senior design engineers reach $85K–$110K.

Worth knowing

Junior graphic designers start at the bottom: Entry-level positions pay $40K–$50K and often involve repetitive production work before you do meaningful design.
Design competition is intense and portfolio-based hiring is brutal: You won't get jobs on credentials alone—you need a strong body of work to even get interviews.
AI is automating chunks of the work you'd learn first: Background removal, asset generation, and resizing used to be how junior designers learned software and built projects. That's increasingly just clicking a button.
Junior roles may be disappearing upward: As teams use AI for production overflow, they hire fewer junior designers and expect more experience from entry-level positions.

How AI is changing this work

AI currently automates repetitive tasks like resizing images, applying filters, and generating templates, which speeds up production and lets designers focus on strategic and creative aspects. Strategic thinking, client collaboration, and the ability to know what designs will actually work for a business are not being automated yet. However, background removal, format conversions, and asset production now happen instantly instead of taking hours, and teams can produce high volumes without hiring more designers. This means companies need fewer junior production designers but more designers who can think strategically about problems. Starting in 2027, you'll be competing against AI-assisted tools from day one—the job has already shifted toward the strategic end.

Where this came from (6 sources)