Web Design Vs Graphic Design: What You Need To Know

Recently updated on October 25th, 2022 at 11:32 am

Looking to update your website to a new design but can’t tell if you need a web design artist or a graphic design artist?

The two are both parts of a creative field, but web design will tend to focus on user experience. With graphic design, this could be anything like a piece of art for merchandise to something complex like a new logo.

Here is how to tell the difference between web design vs graphic design.

What Is Web Design?

Web design refers to the layout of a website. Good web design will focus on how a user interacts with a website.

This can mean something simple like how the menu is laid out for users. Or it can be something more complex like the load times and how quickly someone can interact with your website.

Web design also gets into the appearance of a website. Web design artists will make sure to incorporate your brand colors into your site in an appropriate way. This can include making the buttons the right color, putting the right font for content pieces, or even where to display images.

Designing websites is more than just what you experience on your desktop or laptop. Many website designers now have to work separately on the mobile and tablet versions as well. They need to make sure that the websites respond to touch and can scroll with ease.

In certain instances, web design also tackles web copy. Like a product description or text that appears on landing pages.

What Is Graphic Design?

Graphic design gets more specific. These artists will focus on creating images and other media files to distinguish your company.

The job of designing graphics can include everything from the brand logo, the icons on a website, or even images like infographics. Most people will hire a graphic designer before they hire a web designer, as the graphic designer will give the web designer the colors and brand that the web designer needs to work with.

While someone doing website design will focus on how someone interacts with a website, a graphic designer can instead focus on what someone feels when they enter a website.

Graphic designers will work with a variety of different programs. They might opt to do icons in Adobe Vector while doing graphics and images in Photoshop.

Who Should Hire a Web Designer?

Almost every company should hire a person or company that is competent with web design. Whenever someone enters your site, you want to ensure that they have a pleasant experience. Without a web designer, your website can start to look like it is right out of the 90s.

If you’re finding that your website has a hard time ranking with search engines, then it might be time to hire a web designer. They can identify elements that are negatively impacting your Google Lighthouse score that need to be fixed.

Web designers are going to ensure that your website runs smoothly as well. If you want to make a visual change, it is better to leave it in the hands of someone that knows what they’re doing. Trying to do it yourself can lead to the website breaking and becoming unusable.

Web designers can also help keep the website cohesive no matter if someone is visiting on their computer or laptop. If you find that your website looks fine on the computer but becomes clunky and unusable on someone’s mobile device, a web designer can step in to fix that.

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Who Should Hire a Graphic Design Artist?

If your company is just starting out, you should hire a graphic designer. These designers will help put together your brand, voice, and appearance that your company wants to give off. Even if you have no place to start, a graphic designer can help shape and walk you through the process.

Graphic designers will often create the assets that a web designer needs to put onto the website. So while your web designer needs to optimize where your new icons go, you need a graphic designer to create those icons in the first place.

Graphic designers are also an essential part of a social media marketing strategy. They can create pieces of media that can be posted to the companies profile, meaning that a graphic designer is useful for more places than just a website.

A web designer can then take these posts and allow them to become part of the website.

If you’re looking to create ads or merchandise for your brand, a graphic designer can also help. They can help create new designs that still represent your company without necessarily focusing on your logo or colors. These graphic ads can be used for brochures, posters, or other signs.

For those that are in the animation business, like for movies or video games, graphic designers can help create the models you’re looking for. They can also do special effects, since they need to be drawn and animated just like anything else.

If you’re already an established company but want to expand, then a graphic designer can still help. You can hire a graphic designer to help design the new packaging of a product. If you want to up the feeling of your office, graphic designers can take their work out of the digital world and help paint it on a wall.

Web Design vs Graphic Design: Key Takeaways

There is no true winner when it comes to web design vs graphic design. They both need each other to thrive and help your company grow.

A graphic designer can give you the assets your website needs to look cohesive. A web designer will focus on putting those assets on the website in a user-friendly way.

If you want to learn more about web design, then be sure to check out the rest of the blog. Know someone that needs a brand and website overhaul? Share this article with them so they can start the process.