The Secrets of Successful Web Design
Website design, web development, and website programming – what’s the difference? You’ll hear these phrases buzzing about but unless you’re conversant with technology, you may not completely understand the difference. This article will explain the differences between these roles, and how they contribute to a project.
Graphic Design and Web Design
Before we move into the web development arena, we’ll briefly look at design. Graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography and illustration. Graphic design takes place prior to development, and in this phase we create and combine symbols, images and text to form visual representations of ideas and messages with the goal of providing a great user experience (UX). We work with your existing brand to design storyboards for your website’s visual appearance. When graphic design is presented on a storyboard related to a website, this is referred to as “web design“. A good graphic/web designer is not only talented and creative artistically, but also has a good sense of designing for responsive and mobile websites.
Web Development
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications (or just ‘web apps’), electronic businesses, and social network services. Among web professionals, “web development” usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding. Most recently Web development has come to mean the creation of content management systems or CMS.
There are three kinds of web developer specialization: front-end developer, back-end developer, and full-stack developer. Front-end developers deal with the layout and visuals of a website, while back-end developers deal with the functionality of a website. Back-end developers will program in the functions of a website that will collect data.
Once a website design is complete, a “web developer” will take the storyboards – usually provided in Adobe® XD or Photoshop format, and convert that into a functional website. Beyond being competent with code, a good web developer has exceptional attention to detail and a good eye for design and balance.
Website Programming
So what is “website programming? Website programming refers to the writing, markup and coding involved in web development. This includes but is not limited to web content, client and server scripting, and website security. The most common languages used in website programming are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Web programming is different from just programming, which requires interdisciplinary knowledge on the application area, client and server scripting, and database technology. Solid knowledge of these programming languages allow a good website developer to quickly convert static storyboards into interactive websites.
Programmers keep the processes happening, the servers running, and websites secure, and are responsible for the building blocks of the Internet. A good programmer has a strong sense of order and continuously looks for ways to make complex elements simple to use and maintain.
In Summary
So now you know the difference between website design, web development and website programming. In a nutshell, the designer is fully creative with an eye for the needs of web design, a developer can take a web design and convert it into a functioning website, and a programmer keeps things running in the background.
If you’d like further information or would like a free consultation, feel free to contact us.