You often hear a good number of individuals say words they either don’t know the meaning of or misunderstood the meaning entirely. Talking about making mistakes in understanding the terms, people tend to miscue web design for web development and vice versa. You won’t blame them though, especially if people have no idea about coding, programming, etc.
This article will help you differentiate between web development and web design using their definitions, functions and so on as a means of driving the point home.
Definition
Web design is a process of configuring the outlook of a website page by changing the color, adding some features and plugins, etc. Web development, however, is the process of writing codes or programs on which the website will run. This can be termed as decorating the internal part of a website. Simply put the developer’s focus more on how the customer will be able to get things done.
Functions
Web design is concerned with how a website will look like at the end of the day. This includes the color, theme, graphic, content, etc. While web development is concerned with the functionality of the created website. It can be considered as the foundation on which website design stands. Web design is concerned with code and program on which the website will run when it is eventually designed.
Tools
Tools like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and other wire-framing software are in the web designer’s toolkit. Most web usually works with already made demo templates or themes provided by any of the various content management systems.
Programmers, however, can develop a website from scratch as they have adequate knowledge of programming and coding. They are more focused on bootstrap, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and so on.
Skills
Web designers need only primary skills such as knowledge of SEO, Magento development, etc. Their main skill is creativity as they have to be adventurous when designing web pages. This does not mean web designers usually design web pages in a way they like. No, they are creative and adventurous in line with certain requirements else they may end up designing poor and unoptimized web pages.
Web developers, in best web development companies, however, are more analytical in their approach and they need secondary skills such as programming and coding. In addition, to enhance with superb code writing technology, it’s also necessary for good web developers to cultivate a strong aesthetic ability. Improve themselves with the more profound development of knowledge to achieve the designer’s function prototype or visual effects chart.
To make the internet be a better place for users, the web designers can’t ignore the coding completely, and the web developers should try to understand the designer and get a better cooperation. Qualified web designers should understand the code better than graphic designers and understand design better than programmers. You can say that web developers are the builders of the website (they lay the foundation, put the blocks in place, the roof etc) while the web designer paints the website, plants the flowers, etc. Though they may be similar, they cannot function without each other as they both need each other.
