DISCOVERING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WEB DESIGN AND WEB DEVELOPMENT
Web development and web design have lately become two of the most explored fields in the software industry. The websites we see on the internet to the mobile apps we use, web development, and designs are employed everywhere! However, since both are so often interchangeable, people get confused between the two.
Let’s understand what most beginners get confused about.
So web design, fundamentally, means putting down together the layout of the website and adding what functions might be introduced in the layout to offer a better user experience, whereas web development, on the other hand, is majorly concerned with building that website and adding all the functionalities that work almost like adding structure, style, and behavior to the website.
One can think developers as construction workers, and web designers as architects — both necessary, but with different skill sets.
WEB DESIGN
Web design, as introduced earlier, is all about the layout of a website and aesthetics involved.
Web designer’s work on how the website would look like they also understand what might or might not be feasible in the project; they understand design theory and work around structuring a better user experience.
So to describe the appearance, for example, relates to the colors used, the typography as in the fonts used, the layout as in what content lies where which images are placed where and whatnot.
A good web designer always makes the project look aesthetically pleasing and also easy to use. There are a few aspects that designers have to pay extra attention to, and they are:
• Responsive design
• Adaptive design
Responsive design:
These days are considered the days of the mobile, and so it’s essential to make websites that work well on all the platforms, be it desktops, mobiles, or tablets.
In this type of design, the content is supposed to fit the screen size dynamically.
Adaptive design:
This type of design is static, so these layouts don’t respond once they’re initially loaded, the adaptive design will first work to figure out the layout size and then load the appropriate layout. So, in this case, six standard widths are designed based on sizes, and then the website shows up displaying appropriately sized content.
Now both of these designs are used frequently, and each has its pros and cons based on the complexities involved and the target audience engaged with.
WEB DEVELOPMENT
As we mentioned earlier, web developers are similar to those who build, and web designers like the visionaries. They take the design created and build a fully functioning website.
We can think of the design as a non-interactive “picture” of a website which the developers use as reference and break up into its components.
While the designers use software’s like Photoshop, Figma, Adobe XD, Illustrator, etc. to create designs, developers have programming languages which help them create these functional websites.
As designers, the web developers have some specific roles:
• Back-end Developer
• Front-end Developer
The back-end of a website is its core-structure, and users do not see the work they do as it involves coding on the web servers and databases, and not on the browser. For this, the developer has a range of programming languages to choose from and is not limited to one.
Front-end is the part of web development which people confuse with design often. This is also known as client-side development. This involves using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create things the user can see and interact with. Here the developer can take the help of many frameworks available to add micro-interaction to its website, which helps in providing better user experience.
CONCLUSION
The difference between a web designer and a web developer is more significant than one thinks. A web designer’s responsibility is to bring a brand’s idea into an on-screen reality and precisely knows what the specific audience will enjoy. A web developer builds the site’s structure, using coding languages to construct functional and interactive websites.
However, just like mustard and ketchup on a hot dog, sometimes one needs both to get the best experience. When building a website from scratch, you need a web developer to build the foundation, and web designers to make it look and feel the way you and — more importantly — your users want.
This article is written in partnership with Shambhavi Sharma.
