What are web designing and graphic designing? Are they both the same? If not, how is web design different from graphic design? If you are looking to hire a designer or expecting to start your career as one, understanding the differences between each of the roles is essential to decide which one is best for your specific requirements.
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This article will define web design and graphic design and discuss all the differences between the two roles.
Graphic design vs Web design
What is Graphic Design?
Graphic design focuses on making visual content with the use of images, graphics, typography, graphs, and illustrations to communicate an idea. Graphic designing works mainly on both print projects and digital projects.
In the past, graphic designing was mainly based on creating posters, logos, magazines, brochures, book layouts, and package designs. But with the developments of technology, graphic designing also has become digitalized, and people work on digital projects like graphic designs for websites than print projects.
Graphic designers are mastering sections including typography, page layouts, and color theories to make an outstanding output.
They do not work on programming websites, but they have sound knowledge of the fundamentals of designs.
Adobe Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator are some of the popular software they use daily to fulfil their graphic design related tasks.
What is Web Design?
Web design is the process of designing the visual appearance by focusing on the various elements. Web interface designing, web graphic designing, user experience designing, and search engine optimization are major web design areas. Web designers also should know design fundamentals that graphic designers know.
Web designers can be categorized mainly into two specialized designers as user experience (UX) designers and user interface (UI) designers. UX designers take care of the website’s overall feel, while UI designers work on the looks and functions of the website. These two are essential in web designing. It is said that a good web designer must have knowledge about both of the areas to draft a website.
Most of you might have confused about web design and web development. Are they both the same? If not, what are the differences and the relationship between them?
Web design vs Web development
While web designers work on creating the website’s visual look, web developers take care of the functions and structure of the website.
Web designers must have the knowledge of HTML and CSS, skills of branding, colour theory, wireframing, prototyping, typography etc. Web developers need to have a deep understanding of programming languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, management systems, testing and debugging.
Both of them are essential to build and maintain websites.
The relationship between these two can be described as; web developers build websites by programming under the creative designs done by web designers. Therefore, we can say both of the roles are crucial to run unique and professional looking websites.
As we discussed the relationship and differences between web design and web development, we will now explore how graphic design and web design is different from each other, which is our main topic in this article.
Web design and graphic design
Technical skills
The technical skills used in design work are the main difference between web design and graphic design. Graphic designers can d their work with less limitation, but web designers have to concern about file sizes and load time while knowing HTML and CSS.
Methods used in the presentation of designs
The presentation methods of graphic design are static, while the methods of web design are dynamic. In graphic
design, you can make changes after printing the cover or poster designs. But with web designing, you can redesign without worrying about anything because it has dynamic elements.
Information spreading
The information spreading task of graphic design is done through sales, posting, mails and other communication forms. This type of spreading of information is suitable for a small range of people.
The ability of information spreading of web design is powerful than graphic design. Even though the website information is not ideal for many people, the information from web design will be accepted by more audience in the future with the improvements of network information.
DPI (dots per inch) and pixel dimensions
Web designers should focus on technical limitations such as loading times and file sizes. But graphic designers do not concern more about file sizes because they need the highest resolution images. A printed image needs more pixels than an image an electronic devices’ displays. You must have noticed that it comes in too small in size, blurred or pixilated when you download and print a photo from a website. That is because DPI and pixel dimensions concerned with web design.
Working with different professionals
If you need to become a web designer, you will have to collaborate with professionals like web developers to give life to your designs. As we mentioned above, web design and development are vital in building websites.
If you are looking to start your career as a graphic designer, you will have to work with professionals like production artists.
We will now look at the responsibilities of graphic and web designers and understand the differences of each profession.
Responsibilities between web design and graphic design
What does a web designer do?
- Focusing more on technical sides, such as coding and programming
- A web designer must know and should be able to predict how the audience will react and feel about the designs
- Taking arts as a method of influencing technology
- Should engage engineering approaches to the designs
- Work with skills such as JavaScript, Jquery, PHP, web application development, UI design.
What does a graphic designer do?
- Focusing more on the artistic side
- A graphic designer must know how the design he or she gives the relevant message to the audience.
- Having a one-way relationship with the audience
- Should work with graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW
- Work with skills such as Adobe Creative Suite, typesetting, concept development, marketing material.
Conclusion
Whether you are expecting to hire a person or looking to start your career as a web designer or graphic designer, it is essential to have comprehensive knowledge of each field to make the best and the right decision.
Each of the professions has its features that a person should master. Thus, both of the tasks of each aspect are vital in website building and maintaining.
Source: prolificdigital
