What is Web Design?
Web design is the creation of a new solution to a problem in the web medium. It includes graphic design, because the output will be consumed through a visual medium. But it goes further than the purely visual. It stretches to incorporate every aspect of a web experience.
For example, choosing the right text contents for a web page is part of web design. This text may be viewed on search engine results, which is part of the user experience. And the position in the rankings of that result is also part of the experience, so I would argue that search engine optimisation is part of web design also.
Designing a web experience may incorporate some or all of the following list of disciplines. Some come under graphic design, others are broader design.
- Logo design
- User interface design
- Copywriting
- On-site SEO
- Link-building
- Social media promotion
- Information architecture
- Navigation design
- Design for accessibility
- HTML mark-up
- Design for ease-of-use (usability)
- Selecting content imagery
- Flash animation
- JavaScript coding of UI elements
- Conversion rate optimisation
- Pay-per-click advertising
The bottom line is that all these skills and activities can impact the success of a web site and the experience of using that site. This shows the breadth of the web designer’s toolkit.
Anyone who only offers the graphic aspects is not a web designer. They’re a graphic designer who is doing graphic design for web pages. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But do not trust a person with only graphic skills to build your web site, and it will not be anywhere near as successful as it could be.
