What is the difference between a web designer and a web developer? Within the youth of the online, the solution thereto question was simple: the designer’s design and developer’s code. Today that question requires a touch more nuance–you’d be hard pressed to seek out a web designer who didn’t know a minimum of a touch HTML and CSS, and you will not need to look far for a front-end web developer who can whomp up a storyboard.
If you’re properly speaking about the overall concepts of web design vs. web development, however, the excellence may be a little more clear. Let’s take a glance at these two concepts and therefore the roles they play in building the websites and apps we all know and love.
Web designer vs web developer: a quick overview
Web Developer builds a website’s core structure using coding languages, while designers are more visually creative and user-focused, and also Developers use their programming knowledge to breathe life into the designer’s creative vision. Consider developers as construction workers, and web designers as architects – both necessary, but different, skill sets.
We’ll dive into the small print later where we’ll explain the sorts of web designers and web developers you’ll have, so you’ll have all the knowledge you would like to select the proper option for your site.
What’s a web designer?
Web designers are liable for the online visual design,web designer must have an excellent sense of aesthetics and have the power to form the web site look beautiful. What’s more, they’re using web design tools like Photoshop, CorelDraw, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver to form the web site stand out of the gang.
But wait – there’s more. Web designers usually have a specialism, which we’ll jump into immediately.
User Experience (UX) designer
A UX web designer’s job is to stay your visitors hooked. They know exactly the way to craft a website that your specific audience will enjoy because they’ve administered thorough research into the users’ demographics and website-needs, to not mention plenty of prototype testing and site restructuring.
User Interface (UI) designer
A UI web designer helps to enhance the way users interact with elements, or the interface, on your website. This is often done by translating complex brand ideas and values into a website that’s enjoyable and straightforward to navigate.
How does it differ from UX? It’s a subtle one, really. UX involves research into building a solid foundation for positive user experience, while UI focuses on the aesthetics (the look and feel) of the particular website.
Visual designer
A visual designer may be a mixture of both UX and UI. It’s their job to not only improve the user journey using their creative and coding skills but to unravel design issues. They also help to conceptualise a brand’s unique style or tone of voice.
What is web development?
Web development governs all the code that creates a web site tick. It is often split into two categories—front-end and back-end. The front-end or client-side of an application is that the code is liable for determining how the web site will actually display the designs mocked up by a designer.
The back-end or server-side of an application is liable for managing data within the database and serving that data to the front-end to be displayed. As you’ll have guessed, it’s the front-end developer’s job that tends to share the foremost overlap with the web designer, and some common skills and tools traditionally viewed as unique to the front-end developer are listed below:
- HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- CSS preprocessors (i.e., LESS or Sass)
- Frameworks (i.e., AngularJS, ReactJS, Ember)
- Libraries (i.e., jQuery)
- Git and GitHub
Web designer’s salary VS web developer’s salary
- Web developer’s salary in 2019: $99,112/yr
- Back-end developer’s salary in 2019: $164,786/yr
- Full-stack developer’s salary in 2019: $98,332/y
- Web designer’s salary in 2019: $76,177/yr
- UI designer’s salary in 2019: $97,494/yr
- UX designer’s salary in 2019: $109,062/yr
- Visual designer’s salary in 2019: $91,383/yr
Web designer vs. web developer: Summary
You should now have more developed knowledge of web design, but let’s just quickly recap what we’ve learned.
The difference between a web developer and a web designer is greater than you think that. A web designer brings a brand’s idea into an on-screen reality and knows exactly what the precise audience will enjoy. A web developer builds the site’s core structure, using coding languages to construct logical, programmatic websites.
However, a bit like mustard and ketchup on a hot dog, sometimes you would like both to urge the simplest experience. When building a website from nothing, you would like a web developer to create the inspiration, and web designers to form it look and feel the way you and – more importantly – your users want.