Graphic Designers and Web Designers Are Not the Same: Differences You Must Know

Graphic designing and web designing are often confused as same thing, as are graphic designers and web designers. But in reality, despite having some similarities, they are very different. This is the very reason businesses when looking for reliable graphic designers or, in that matter, web designers, face a lot of ambiguity.

In this post, we will clarify this ambiguity and discuss the key differences between graphic designing and web designing. It's essential for a service seeker to know the differences between these two professions to correctly figure out the kind of service a business needs to render. 

Let's move forward and start by getting a brief overview of graphic and web designing.

What is Graphic Designing?

Before discussing graphic designing, let us go through the definition of graphics. Graphics can refer to any visual content you see on various physical and digital media, such as newspapers, magazines, books, videos, TV, and newsletters. 

Graphics refer to images, infographics, illustrations, drawings, diagrams, and animation for every visual content you see. Those who design graphics, no matter what media and purpose, are called graphic designers. 

Graphics usually convey some message or information to the public. Graphic designing is a significant market, with the worldwide graphic designers' market valuation anticipated at 45 billion USD for 2023, with a growth rate of 3.8%.

The infographic below lists some of the roles and responsibilities of graphic designers. Take a look.

Now let's move ahead and have a look at web designing.

What is Web Design?

Web designing, as the name suggests, deals with websites. Web designing is all about websites, the look of the website, and its UI. A web designer is responsible for creating the website's UI, layout, and visual content. 

Web design holds a lot of importance as it is part of the website that the public can see and interact with. A web design acts as the first impression of your website. As they say, "first impression is the last impression," whether a visitor would stay and revisit the website highly depends on the web design. 

Web designing, just like web development, is emerging as a vast market. According to a report by IBIS, the industry is anticipated to reach 58.4 billion USD by 2023, with a growth of 2.9% USA.

Before moving to the next section, let us look at some roles and responsibilities of web designers. 

Suggested Reading: How Can Web Design Make or Break Your Digital Marketing Campaign   

Graphic Designers Vs. Web Designers 

Graphic and web designers are two distinct professionals, as we can gather from the above discussion. Now, let's move forward and discuss the key differences between the two to understand the difference these two share better. 

#1 Technical Knowledge 

Graphic Designers: They need no specific programming language knowledge as most of their work requires artistic talent and often knowledge of using simple and easy-to-use tools. 

Web Designers: Web designers are more technically involved in their profession as they must know languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. 

#2 Nature of Work

Graphic Designing: Graphics are often sort of permanent and in the form of prints; hence, they can't be changed. In some cases where they are not in print, such as in digital media, they are in the form of illustrations, animations, or just simple images, which often don't require any alteration. 

Web Designing: Now, web designing is much more dynamic; the web design must be updated from time to time based on customer feedback and development purposes. Unlike static graphics, web design is updated by a bit every day.

#3 Tools Used 

Most of the tools used by graphic designers and web designers are mostly similar, except that web designers might use some sophisticated tools like web builders that might require coding. 

Photoshop, Sketch, InVision, Figma, and Adobe Illustrator are some of the top tools widely used by graphic designers. 

Apart from the tools used by graphic designers, web designers also use website builders such as Weebly, Wix, GoDaddy, WordPress, and many others.

Businesses looking forward to hiring graphic designers specialized in particular tools must take help from GoodTal. From Goodtal’s carefully curated list, companies can choose the right Photoshop designers, Sketch designers, Figma designers, and many others.

#4 File Sizes 

Graphic Designing: For those graphics in printed form, the file size doesn't matter to the designers. In cases of digital media, file size and pixels of graphics do matter and need to be handled by graphic designers as demanded by the platform. 

Web Designing: Web designers need to put a lot of effort and time into optimizing the file size of their designs, which highly affects the website's load time. Web designers need to work on what visual content to keep and avoid in order to keep the file size within limits to prevent an increase in website load time.

#5 Challenges to Tackle 

Graphic designing: When comparing challenges designers face while doing their job, graphic designers usually stand on the less challenging side. But it isn't the case that graphic designers don't face problems. They do face problems such as creating designs that fit every media they are displayed in. 

Sometimes certain graphics look well on digital platforms, but the same doesn’t come out well in printed forms. Graphic designers often have to work on such problems to ensure that their graphics look better on every media and are easily understandable to the public. 

Web designing: Web designers face a subsequent number of challenges. One of the major challenges they face is creating a user-friendly layout that helps the website build a solid first impression. Usually, web designers go for responsive web design as it is considered the most user-friendly website design. 

Another problem that web designers often face is creating a web design that is unique and consists of great features but doesn't lead to higher load time. Website load time highly depends on the content the website has. The higher the number of visual content and features the website has, the more will be its load time. Similar to these, there are many challenges web designers must tackle to build a robust web design.

#6 Audience-Friendly Requirement

When we are talking about curating audience-friendly content, both graphic designers, as well as web designers have to put considerable effort into making their designs easy to comprehendible by people. Let's compare how the two types of designers react to and work on audience-friendly design requirements. 

Graphic Designing: Graphic designers often have significantly less audience interaction as their work is static and hence doesn't change easily. Although graphic designers often put a lot of effort into creating graphics that are easily understandable by the audience. An excellent graphic elegantly conveys the message to the audience at first glance. 

Web Designing: Web designers and their whole work revolve around the audience. Everything they do, from designing layouts to UI and UX, all of the phases of web designing are done keeping audience and accessibility in mind. Hence when it comes to audience interaction and effect, web designers are more affected and responsible for the website visitors' needs than graphic designers. 

Suggested Reading: All the Reasons Why Graphic Designers Love Adobe Photoshop

The infographic below summarizes the core differences between graphic designers and web designers we discussed above. 

Wrapping Up

Graphic designing and web designing are two distinct and huge markets and are often assumed by people as the same thing. Meanwhile, in reality, both are different professions and have different responsibilities and tasks. In this post, we tried to clear this ambiguity between graphic and web designing and discussed their key differences. 

We also discussed some similarities between graphic designing and web designing. Many times businesses confuse these two operations and hire the wrong one. This post will help such onlookers understand the key differences and similarities so that they can choose the right service for themselves.