Graphic Designer vs. Web Designer: What’s the Difference?

3.3K

Some industries in the world have become quite popular in the last 15 years. The reason for that is simple – we live in the world of Internet technology. Indeed, the development of technology has brought some huge changes in the world. This especially counts when we talk about entrepreneurship. Most of the businesses changed the way of how they are reaching their audience. More precisely, a huge number of them are using the benefits of social media and similar tools to attract people.

Because of these changes, the need for web designers and graphic designers is huge. We do not want to say that these two professions did not have the chance to make money before that. Yet, obviously, technology improvement brought them many opportunities.

However, we have noticed that many people do not understand exactly the difference between these two professions. You will hear many people saying that “design” is only one industry. Yet, this industry has many categories. For example, a fashion designer won’t necessarily be a good web designer.

Because of these misunderstandings, we would like to explain the difference between a graphic designer and a web designer.

Let’s get started.

First of All, What is Web Design?

Well, if you want to become a web designer, then you will have to improve a set of skills and disciplines. The production and maintenance of the website may be seem like an easy thing. However, in reality, you need to know many things to build a website.

Many people have the wrong opinion about web designers. They believe that their task is to make the website look nice. However, that is far away from the truth. First of all, you should know that there are a couple of areas of web design. Some of them are – interface design, authoring, web graphic design, optimization of the website, etc.

It is hard to find a person that is an expert in all these fields. Because of that, web designers usually join in teams to cover all those areas.

You have probably heard about different website builders, right? They are making the website building process a lot easier for many entrepreneurs. Website like websiteplanet.com can give you more information about different site builders. All of them are easy-to-use and they do not require coding knowledge.

Yet, what if you want to add a function that different themes do not offer you? Well, in that case, you will have to contact a web designer. Despite that, picking the right design for your website is a tough challenge. In that case, you will once again need to contact some type of expert. According to Medium.com, here you can check top web design companies.

And…What is Graphic Design?

Well, we can say that graphic design is a process of problem-solving and visual communication. This process includes the usage of photography, illustrations, and typography elements.

The task of the graphic design sounds quite entertaining in the theory. For instance, their task is to make a combination of images, symbols, and content to represent ideas and attract customers.

Well, as you can see, the tasks that these two professions have are different. Yet, we would like to highlight three key differences between a graphic designer and a web designer.

Graphics

The first difference between these two jobs is graphics. When we talk about them, a graphic designer has more performances than the web designer. This especially counts when we talk about the product website.
When we talk about the size of an element, the graphic designer uses the concept of physical size. This includes centimeters, millimeters, inches, etc. When we talk about web designers, they use pixels.

Fonts

Well, when we compare these two professions, we can say that choice of font is more freely in graphic design. There is no need to worry about the implementation of the final effect. The content that is going to be used will eventually output for graphics printing. However, things are different for web designers. They need to consider fonts more comprehensive.

The range of options for web designers is not wide. The fonts are all based on the defaults of the user’s operating system due to the characteristics of HTML. Yet, together with technology development, this gap gradually narrowed. The API that web designers use now is based on HTML5. Because of that, web designers can personalize fonts on websites. All that can be done without the need for output for graphics.

Colors

It will maybe sound strange to you, but web and graphic designers are using colors completely differently. The graphic designers use CMYK color mode in most cases because of relying on printing. These color modes are more focused on visual impact and visual flow guidance.

On the contrary, web designers use RGB color mode. RGB is an acronym for Red-Green-Blue mode. This mode more focuses on teasing out the relationship between the information structures. For instance, the product category is a good example of that.

Required Skills

Okay, when we talk about talents, there is no big difference. They all need to have a talent for the arts. However, they also need to have the talent for psychology. Their work needs to be recognized and accepted by customers. That is their main goal.

However, that doesn’t mean that both professions need to have the same set of skills. More precisely, the tools that they are using to complete their work are completely different. For example, graphic designers need to know to use three different programs. Those three programs are – Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and CorelDRAW. Without these three programs, you won’t be able to work.

On the contrary, the number of skills that a web designer needs to possess is a lot bigger. For example, they need to know JavaScript, JQuerry, PHO, UI design, web application development, etc. If you are not familiar with all these programs/skills, we suggest you google a bit more about them.

They Don’t Have to Worry About Their Future

In the end, we need to mention one common thing for both professions. The demand for these two professions will definitely grow in the future. The number of businesses that are using the benefits of the online world is growing daily.

Each new business is a new challenge for each graphic and web designer. That’s why many people decide on these two professions. If you are one of them, we encourage you to continue the improvement of your skills. Money is not something you should worry about.