“Web Development”
Web development is general, all-encompassing term for creating and working with websites on a technical level. For the average developer, it’s not really specific enough to mean much– though for a full-stack developer like myself, it does tend to be an apt description.
Web design, on the other hand, is… complicated. Technically, it’s a subset of the responsibilities of a front-end developer. A “proper web designer” deals with HTML, CSS and, depending on their range, JavaScript. All squarely in the front-end.
However, while the “web” part of web designer is pretty well defined, the “designer” piece is nebulous as all hell to the point that it even makes the web part fuzzy.
A “Proper” Designer
On one side of the spectrum, to claim to be a designer, all you have to do is “design things.” So, anyone who’s ever lined up two things, or attached one thing to another thing, congratulations, you’re a designer.
Of course, that’s hyperbole, but how dangerously close it comes to the truth is a major source of problem. Anyone who’s ever taken even a basic design course could tell you there are actually principles, rules, tools and methodologies you’re expected to understand and, presumably, use if you want to be called a professional designer.
In web development, it is very common to receive PDF “prototypes” that website owners wish to make real. Sometimes you get the impression someone just spent an hour or two on Photoshop. Oftentimes they lack foresight or functional knowledge. And sometimes they’re so generic I could’ve saved them time (and hopefully not money) by using a template.
But on occasion…
On occasion, there is clear know-how at work. Not only do the prototypes look cleaner, but building and programming them glides along so much more smoothly. No backtracking, no re-thinking, no complications. It literally saves the clients money, because everything only needs to be done once.
As any decent designer can attest, it is exponentially cheaper to change something in the design phase than in the production phase.
A “Proper” Web Designer…?
Crossing over into the web, we encounter the same initial problem: even applying no styling to a website is a design decision, so unless you’re just randomly banging on your keyboard, it’s kind of hard to bar anyone entry. (To say nothing of the fact that, the web being largely open-source, there are templates out there that any idiot can copy and present it as their own.)
But once we glide over the amateurs, we face a different problem: what even is a “web designer.”
A designer creates prototypes, most certainly. But when a design is taken from flat images to moving parts, a whole new level of design takes place. The principles of design portrayed in the prototypes have to be (a) recognized, (b) translated correctly to the new medium and (c) applied consistently across the site.
It’s not enough to match the exact images presented: the developer has to make sure their design is applied in a logical manner so that, in the likely scenario that the site expands beyond those pages, it won’t introduce a completely new project. And, in the freelance market, by this point in the process, the graphic designer has long since kicked off to another project.
Basically, “web designer” is muddy term even in the best case scenarios, even after you clear out those mud of those damn whippersnappers that just run around lackadaisically ‘making things prettier’ and calling it design.
All I can say for sure is this:
Doesn’t make a difference to me. Build my own prototypes, write up my own markup, code my own effects. All your titles are belong to me.
