Web Developer vs. Web Designer
By definition a web developer is “a programmer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications” (source: Wikipedia) and a web designer is “a person who plans, designs, creates and often maintains websites” (source: Dictionary.com). Since these two personality and professional types of individuals are involved in the big picture of website creation, here are some interesting facts to understand how they differentiate themselves, and why is it so important to have both in an agency working together as a team.
- A web developer builds back-end, a web designer creates visuals. Web developers are similar to engineers, they know how to code and create an structure in which the web designer will have the freedom to create the visual aid where users interacts, their work is a synergy.
- Web developers tend to be left brained, while web designers are mostly right brained. A person that naturally concentrates brain activity to the left side is often agile with language, logic, critical thinking, numbers and reasoning, while a person with a right brain dominance has the ability for reading emotions, recognizing faces and expressing emotions, also, they tend to think in color, image, and have creativity intuition.
- Degree. A web developer will often receive a degree in computer science or programming, however, a web designer will receive a degree in graphic design and the arts. This is one major differentiation, and responds to the brain dominance of each individual.
- Web developers are often well informed about HTML, Javascript, JQuery, CSS, some of the most important coding languages, to assure practicality and functionality of the websites they create.
- Web designers, in contrast, are trained and constantly learning about color coding, typography development and layout changes, to achieve eye-catching graphics.
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Are you a web developer or a web designer? Is there anything else you would like to add to our discussion?
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