Web Designer vs Web Developer: Understanding the Difference

In the tech world, web designers and web developers are two professions that are all too often confused. Not as often as to happen during job interviews, although if it did, it would instantly give you an idea of the place where you applied for the job. But even some of the places that should know better, like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, still lump designers and web developers together, further making the “web designer vs web developer” dilemma murkier.

Then again, it could easily be said that web designers and web developers just have too many things in common to be easily distinguishable by people without an intimate knowledge of the field. A web designer and a developer will turn to the same sites when looking for a job. They’d use the same resources for inspiration and news. Both would take very much care in developing their portfolios.

Still, web design and web development are two separate professions, although the same person can technically draw on both while doing their job. To make sure we get the web designers vs web developers dilemma settled once and for all, we’ll dive into explaining what these professions are, what people who practice them do, and what kind of skillsets you’d need to become a web designer or a web developer.

The topics we’ll cover include:

What Is a Web Designer?

Even though they can and should be created with ease of access in mind, websites are primarily built to be experienced visually. The many elements of a website are created to make sense to our eyes, both in terms of aesthetics and functionality. If you were ever wondering who were the people whose job it was to ponder on how to make beautiful websites look beautiful while also being a joy to use, here’s your answer.

It was web designers.

They didn’t do it all on their own, of course, as there are many other types of professionals whose input is crucial for the birthing of a website. Still, when it comes to how a website looks, and to a certain extent how it feels when you’re using it, it’s a web designer who deserves the praise for a job well done. And also the scolding when the job wasn’t done that well – that happens sometimes, too.

What Types of Web Designers Are There?

To a regular visitor, a website shouldn’t usually appear too complex to use or navigate. Still, that façade of simplicity is something that takes time and effort to develop well, and there are several different roles a web designer can play while doing it.

User experience (UX) designers are the people who’ll make website visitors want to browse your website, usually through good design choices. It’s their job to make sure that the experience people have on your website is conducive to the goals of your website.

User interface (UI) designers are concerned with the meeting points between the website and its visitors. They are the people who’ll make sure the buttons on your website look nice and highly clickable, for example.

Visual designers do both – they make sure that everything looks good and works well. They can also be in charge of how the website relates to the business on a different level, for example, in terms of branding. You could say they combine the functional side of UX and the aesthetic side of UI with a symbolic language of visuals.

What Are the Skills Web Designers Need?

In their everyday work, web designers will have to rely on a variety of skills to fulfill all the tasks they are presented with. Some are technical, others are artistic. The designers that freelance will also need a mix of business skills and soft skills to navigate running their one-person show.

Still, some of the more common skills a web designer would need include:

That’s only the starting point, however. Depending on their niche, a designer might focus more on UX or UI design. They can boost their soft skills with negotiation and personal accounting or learn different development methodologies.

How to Become a Web Designer

As with many other careers, having a degree will help you open many doors early on. You can focus on web design and get a bachelor’s degree in it, even though IT degrees and graphic design degrees can help you out too – as long as you’re able to demonstrate that you know web design. That might be all you need to get your feet through the door and land an entry-level job.

You can give it a go without getting an official degree, too. In that case, you’ll still have to acquire a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge. Your portfolio will become even more important, however, as you’ll have nothing but your job history as your credential.

What Is a Web Developer?

It’s all good and well that designers create those immersive user experiences and stunning user interfaces, but someone has to make sure it all works. There has to be a person or two – or a whole team – out there whose job it is to make sure the stuff under the hood works and doesn’t break down all the time. Someone has to be there, wielding the code that props up the stuff designers create, right?

That’s what developers do, day in and day out.

Websites, for all their simplicity, are pretty sophisticated bunches of code. They are a mix of things that happen in front of the visitors’ eyes and behind the scenes. For a good website, the two halves have to work together well. It’s the web developer’s job to make sure that they do, even after the website was initially built.

What Types of Web Developers Are There?

Because there are two separate areas of workings any website has, it seems only natural that web developers will have a categorization of their own much like web designers do. We can stratify web developers into three distinct categories.

Frontend developers are the developers whose work is concerned with creating and maintaining all the user-facing parts of the website. To do so, frontend developers might use some of the same programming languages designers rely on, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Backend developers work on the things that go on in the back end of the website. That’s where you find things like databases and frameworks, and you better be fluent in PHP, Java, or another more advanced programming language if you plan to work in the backend.

Full-stack developers have the skills and knowledge required to work in both frontend and backend. This gives them the flexibility to fulfill any role on a web development team and switch roles as needed.

What Are the Skills Web Developers Need?

Even though they don’t work in the same environments, web developers share with web designers the need for some of the skills. Even though their skillset relies more heavily on programming than a designer’s skill set, developers can still benefit from developing some of the soft skills necessary for freelancing.

A web developer should know how to:

Interpersonal and communication skills can also be a boon to developers. Knowing how to manage projects might be required if they want to advance their careers in that direction.

How to Become a Web Developer

The fundamentals of web development – your knowledge of coding languages – are something you can learn completely on your own. There are plenty of places online where you can learn how to become a web developer, and some of them are even free. From there, it’s just a matter of building up your resume and making sure your skillset remains up-to-date and relevant.

You can speed up the process by earning a college degree, having a certificate of some sort, or even by taking a respectable course. That won’t preclude you from having to keep your skillset fresh, however – learning never truly ends.

The Differences Between Being a Web Developer vs Web Designer

As professions, web development and web design differ in many aspects and overlap in some. Web designers might spend most of their working hours without having to write a single line of code. Web developers might not do anything but write endless lines of code. The designers will make sure the visitor has a path through the website that looks enjoyable, while the developers will make sure it doesn’t fall apart around the visitors.

In some cases, the two might work close together. Frontend developers and designers might find themselves working closely together on creating a good user experience. For the most part, however, development remains technical, functional, and structural. The design remains artistic, experiential, and usable.

Depending on the type of team they work on, designers and developers might have different salaries and enjoy different levels of prestige. The good news is that both professions can expect to grow in the future – that’s what they have in common – even though the shift towards the no-code concept might change the way they perform their jobs. The shift towards full site editing that was finalized with WordPress 5.9 is a great example of that happening.

Why Learn Skills from Both Web Development and Web Design?

If you wanted to make a case for learning the skills for web design and web development, you’d probably start by saying that it’s only natural for designers and frontend developers to dip into each other’s field. Both work on the user-facing part of the website and having a deeper and more functional understanding of what the other does can only make them better at their job.

The role of a creative developer, for example, requires a combination of development and design skills. Creative developers are very much at home in the front, usually working on motion or interactivity design.

Things might not be so obvious when it comes to backend development. Backend is fairly different from frontend, so it’s harder to see what kind of benefit would either the backend developer or the designer get from learning how to do the other one’s work.

There’s also a core difference in the nature of the work of a backend developer and a web designer. The developer tends to rely more on logic while the designer relies more on creativity. It’s like the difference between math and arts – no reason why you can’t do both, but a lot of people won’t see the reason to do it, or find they have the necessary affinities.

That being said, combining the skills of a full-stack developer and a visual designer can make you a creative powerhouse and afford you full control over all aspects of website creation.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

When you’re at the crossroads of choosing a first career or maybe even switching to a new one, it’s very important to understand all of the options you have and what comes with them. In some cases, like in the web designer vs web developer pairing, the differences will be significant but not so obvious at first sight. All the more reason to spend some time thinking about your options even when they’re a bit clearer to you.