The Tips for Successful Web Designer

You often hear of all of these word or phrases, but unless you are deep in the technology, you may not completely understand the difference between these related terms. Lets examine the different roles of each and how they contribute to a project, highlighting the path this takes over the years in the process.

Graphic Design

  1. Creating an emotional response in a viewer
  2. Involves skillful use
  3. Balance of characteristics
    1. Colour combining,
    2. Relational layout positioning,
    3. Form of smooth lines,
    4. Hard corner, rough edges and gradient - all used to set a tone or theme.

Knowing how to work with these elements takes talent and experience. We always felt that designers have the most creative freedom as they're not as bound by technology and can express themselves through a plethora of media, from print to digital to 3D. Our attention spans are fleeting, making an impression in a few seconds takes a skillful artist who knows not only the medium but the audience. Graphic designers work with page layouts, logos, anything that can present an image.

Web Design

  1. Basic HTML and CSS
  2. Photoshop,
  3. Illustrator and later on,
  4. Fireworks and others became essential to know.

Web designers then had to adapt to new devices such as tablets and touch-screen mobile devices where screen real-estate was at a minimum. Always, image optimization was key in addition to finding new and creative ways to capture the viewer's attention. Nowadays, the term 'web designer' is rather ubiquitous and you can get away with little knowledge of coding.

Web Development

  1. Taking a graphic layout, often provided with Photoshop, Illustrator or other design applications and turning that into a website. T
  2. Requiring the use of client side languages such as
    1. JavaScript, jQuery
    2. Server-side languages like PHP
    3. Database, often run with MySQL.

Web developers can appreciate both the needs of design and the functionality of programming to bring much more life and dynamics to a website. Static html sites are quickly becoming a thing of the past, and web developers are helping lead the way to creating more practical, useful websites.

Programming

  1. Procedural languages, which go from step to step, or
  2. Object-oriented languages which use packets of code, called in various places
  3. Languages and frameworks
    1. Python,
    2. Ruby on Rails,
    3. PHP, ASP, .NET,
    4. Java, Apache, Perl, and many others.

Programmers keep the processing happening, the servers running, the transactions secure. They are responsible for the building blocks of the web.