What is the Difference Between a Web Designer and a Web Developer?

 

What is a designer or a developer really? Do you need both?

A huge pet peeve of mine is when people use the wrong terminology. So to understand the difference between the two we much first understand them individually. This also gets confusing when you’re looking to hire someone for a website. Do you hire one of do you hire both? I going to say 98.9% of the time you will need both and 100%of the time you should have both.

What they do

Web Designer – will create a visual landscape of your website goals, preferences, and address problems. This is usually created in either Photoshop or Illustrator. Normally would include branding and strategy to achieve those goals and fix the problems you’re facing (don’t be like Tom Cruise and jump on the couch). They create a concept that includes fonts, colors, and graphics into a mockup. Coding skills are limited to some CSS and HTML (enough to put images on a pre-made theme).

Web Developer – will take that visual landscape and turn it into a real boy I mean site, a real site. The focus of the developer is functionality, clean code (CSS, HTML, PHP, JavaScript/jQuery) while staying within the web standards and best practices. They understand the proper use of prefixes when writing code and when to use a plugin over CPT (custom post types).

Here’s how the process works:

You send an email to the designer and hand her your content she then hooks you up with a visual treat. She then creates a layered and grouped files in Photoshop, kinda like an insane wedding cake with various tiers. The designer then sends it off to the developer. The designer gets wasted off of margaritas for the rest of the day to celebrate the victory of passing the baton. The developer gets hyped of off 80 cups of coffee while staring at a screen of codes. Bangs their head on the desk because they whole thing came down because of a missing semicolon. After a 15-minute cursing session, the developer then makes that mockup into a rocking functional ready to use web site.

You see, it takes a fucking village. What were your definitions for each?