What does a Web Designer do: Hacks to keep Expectation for 2021

Who, and what of a Web Designer

Today, one of the biggest myths is who a web designer is, what they do, and who they are. No matter whom you ask, everyone defines web designers differently. Now, this is because “web designer” is a widely used terminology encompassing a lot of different tasks when it comes to designing a website.

However, to explain this is complicated than saying. To plan, create, add some artistic effort, code, and integrate all this makes the reality daunting.

When it comes to the practicality of what a web designer does, they have a very specific role in what they do. Therefore, if you are someone aspiring to become a web designer, or on the verge of hiring one, you should always be in acquaintance with what they do, and who they are. Otherwise, it will just turn up to be a waste of capital, and time, or both.

Hence, to help you with this, we are today going to help you understand who a web designer is.

Defining the term “Web Designing”

A web design is a process of integrating all the differential variations to establish the appearance of a website or the layout. A web designer is typically responsible for arranging all the design elements in an order that appeals to the user and helps them interact with the website.

A web design encompasses choosing the photographs that are on the website, the content, their arrangement, the font used, symbols, icons, and all the other things that are related to design.

Therefore, a web designer is not the one responsible for making the website work, and their job is strictly focused on how to make the website look from outside. The one who writes the code to make the website work is a coder or the development team. And, they have altogether a vastly different work domain than a web designer.

The process included in Web Design

Understanding the working domain of a web designer and what their responsibility is can be a bit difficult job to do. Therefore, we have broken all the steps to understand where a web designer fits well in the role.

  • Graphic Designing – Creating all the visual branding elements i.e., the logo, color, the typography, a graphic (if required), and icons.
  • Copywriting – Writing all the contents to be published on the website.
  • UX Designing – Designing and sketching the user’s need and requirements that sounds appealing to the users.
  • UI Designing – Designing an interactive element like all the buttons, and forms.
  • Website Strategy – Doing the market research and establishing business goals for individual pages and the website overall.
  • Front-end Web Developing – Formatting languages and making codes for the website work.
  • Back-end Web Developing – Using codes and formatting languages to make the website work behind the web page.
  • Website Designer – Focuses on all the visual elements and brings a layout to a finished web page and ultimately the full website.

Therefore, in short, a web designer combines all the content from the graphic designer, copywriter, and UI designer to finish the page and meets the goals set by the website strategist, UX designer.

Roles and responsibility of a Web Designer

Now that we have already discussed the process of web designing, it will be relatively easy to understand what a web designer generally does and where they contribute to help build a website.

Creating a layout and visual design

A web designer generally uses the site maps, and wireframes to arrange the website content so that to optimize the visual communication, following the hierarchy, and sensibility.

Responsive Design

They not only design the website to make it appealing for desktops, but they are also responsible to make mobile and tablet versions look appealing.

Replicates files

Create the image file for the final version of web page representation.

Design Assets

A web designer also makes sure that the mocked-up file can be easily separated by the developers to implement a piece-by-piece working web page.

Photo editing and formatting

They also are responsible to edit all the media asset that appears on the website. Also, a website designer uses some formatting language like JAVA to test the design on the web browser.

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What a web designer does not do

A lot of times understand what “do not” is far easier than what needs to be done. Therefore, as we have already gone through all that needs to be done, let’s now see what a web designer is not responsible for.

  • Coding – A job of the web designer is to make the website visually appealing and not to make sure that the website works. This job is done by the website coders i.e., the front and the back end team.
  • Writing the content for the website – Web designers are not content writers who write the content for the website to be published.
  • Branding – The branding i.e., the logo designs and making the broad visual brand choice, and taking care of the fonts and colors is not the job of a web designer.
  • Photography – Web designing, and photography are two different domains. If a client wants realistic photos, they should hire a photographer, or the web designer is liable to use any of the stock images available.
  • Animation – All the animation that needs to be done is done by a professional animator. A web designer just integrates it with the page.
  • Market Research – This is fully taken care of by the website strategist and not the web designer.

Skills needed to be a Web designer

If you are an aspiring web designer, you should always be aware of all the key skills that are required to become a web designer. Increasing competition and demand has led to being more skillful. One should always make sure that they have extraordinary knowledge when it comes to graphic design, Industry based knowledge, and should be acquainted with programming languages for testing the website on a web browser.

In addition to that, a web designer should also be known with all the process that leads to website development and their implementation.

Getting a professional web designer

If you are looking to hire a web designer, you have plenty of options today. Choosing a web designer fully depends on how much capital, time, and effort you are willing to put in to get your job done.

You can get a web designer on a freelancing website on a contract based. You can hire one on Fiverr, or Upwork. Getting a freelancer is the cheapest method of getting a web designer but there is no guarantee of quality. You can approach a design agency. Well, contacting a design agency will be relatively the costliest method but you can expect a world-class result. Not just that, you can also get your website fully built by them.

However, if you think that you have a highly tight budget but simultaneously, you are not willing to risk the quality of your work, the best thing is to get contact crowdsourcing design websites like Designfier, or Designhill.

Back to you

Getting a web designer is easy but making your expectation can be a tough job. Especially, when you are not aware of what they do and what you can expect from them.

And that’s one of the reasons we come up to help you get aware of a job like this. The myths that surrounded on the roles and responsibility of a web designer is plethoric, and that’s one of the many reasons why many businesspersons lose a lot of time and effort on hiring a web designer. However, we are sure you won’t.

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Vikash is a content writer, currently active in the field of designing and brand building. He is an avid reader and a internet savvy, always keen to learn more about brands and the way they communicate with their wide audience.