What's the difference between a Web designer and a Web developer

 

What's the difference between a web designer and a web developer and which one would be a better fit for you.

When you're first starting out you kind of don't know maybe where you fit and so there are some people that are kind of both and there is a lot of crossover between the two fields. 

But I want to talk specifically about the roles the tools and the expectations of the two different kind of fields and then which one is the best kind of fit for you let's first start by kind of defining the two fields will start with web design I'm going to use a car analogy a web designer would be the person who kind of designs the aesthetics of the car what the car looks like what the car looks like on the exterior on the interior.

How it feels all of that stuff the experience the aesthetic that's a web designer the web developer would be responsible for all of those internal kind of components like the engine and the transmission and all the other parts of the car that you don't even realize. 

When you're using it that's the web developer it makes it function makes it move makes it go but just like an engine is useless without the car and the car itself is useless without the engine .

The two have to go together inevitably they're gonna go together they're either gonna be the same person a web designer and developer or they're gonna be working in the same team and they're gonna utilizing each other's strengths and skillsets to accomplish their goal. 

I'm gonna first start by talking about design okay so a web design or design in general the tools of the trade for designer are going to be aesthetic tools like Photoshop or sketch interface design tools user experience tools but these would be the tools that have the aesthetic of any sort of design. 

Whether that's print design web design product design whatever it is these are going to be the things that you can actually create things to look at okay so visual tools knowing.

How to use those tools and so it's important that you know those tools it's important that not only do you know the tools but you know some of the principles and the foundations of design so we're talking about color and space and line and form and all of those things this is the realm of a designer.

But yes also web designers now web designers don't need to know how to code you can be I know plenty of designers that are purely designers and they work at web agencies marketing agencies they do freelance and and they themselves do not code okay but knowing. 

What code is and how it kind of interacts will help you kind of better design for the medium does that make sense like knowing what's possible and what's not possible so knowing you don't have to code but knowing some ideas about code what's possible what's not possible what needs to be documented what needs to be explained that's  the signs of a good web designer web developers and all developers work with code the web developers specifically. 

I would say spend the majority of their time working with what's called client-side code okay so client-side languages like HTML CSS JavaScript and there's even some JavaScript frameworks like react or node or backbone working with those three that's the bread and butter of a web developer.

Now a developer in general learns and speaks coding languages so if you kind of drip into back-end development which a lot of web developers do they would speak more server-side languages like PHP or Ruby and and on all those different server-side kind of technologies. 

You I think both of them are awesome careers and we're really really excited for you to start down one of these paths both of these paths whatever it is that that kind of floats your boat and suits you. 

I just hope whether you go down the path of the design or down the path of like development I just hope that you enjoy yourself because this is really a career that has a lot a lot of people to escape jobs that they hate and be part of something and actually create something and make things that they really care about either way. 

You are a maker of things and that's huge that's just so huge and so I just really want to encourage you today to be making awesome stuff be designing be developing however it is that you make amazing things and do it in excellence 

if you have any questions please let me know down in the comments or if you want clarification on anything I would love to answer your comments.