What a web designer really does
What a web designer really does
A web designer is someone who starts the process of creating a website. It not only makes a beautiful design, but also analyzes user behavior. And what else?
It takes into account their wishes and designs the site to help visitors do what they want – for example, buy a product, find out the news or chat with friends.
Design – a balance of beauty and logic
Many people think that a web designer paints websites like an artist, adding embellishments and pictures. This is not entirely true: a web designer must be able to make a website look beautiful, but this is only one of his tasks.
In fact, a web designer is primarily a designer and analyst who creates simple and understandable websites based on the analysis of user behavior. The designer works with data, studies users and their interests, and only then places blocks on the site, thinks over the color scheme, placing visual accents.
The word “design” now means not how the site looks, but how it works and how easy it is for users to achieve their goal. Creativity and art in design faded into the background.
A web designer creates sites sites so as to attract the attention of the visitor, interest and convey the necessary information.
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To achieve this, the designer must develop in areas related to web design:
- Internet marketing and analytics to analyze data about the needs and desires of users, to know how advertising works and why create a website at all.
- Negotiations to communicate with customers and colleagues.
- Text writing and editing, because text and design are inextricably linked.
- Psychology to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the site visitor and understand what is important to him.
- Layout and frontend development in order to know how a layout drawn in the program is turned into a working site that is posted on the Internet.
- Other areas of design include illustration, graphic design, animation and interactive banner creation.
What does a web designer do
A web designer draws layouts for landing pages, websites for companies, online stores, and also designs interfaces for online services. What else he can do: create templates for email newsletters, design and draw Internet banners.
What is a designer workflow?
- The designer receives data from the customer – why the site is needed, how it will work, which users will visit it. A good option if the customer knows exactly what is needed. But this is not always the case, so the designer must ask the questions himself and get the data he needs. The designer writes down the task, site requirements and answers to questions in the brief.
- A web designer creates sketches or prototypes of the future site: on paper or in special programs. Prototypes are more like diagrams, which indicate the location of the main elements on the pages of the site.
Website development begins with prototypes to see all the layout options and agree with the customer.
Important!
A prototype is easier to modify than a drawn layout, so structure and placement issues are decided at the prototyping stage.
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- Based on the prototypes, the designer draws a color layout. Here you can already work on color combinations, add animation.
- The designer transfers the finished layout to the customer or developers, who will transfer it to the site.
Often, a great design agency in Miami will also handle the development phase of the website, once the layout is ready.
In which direction to develop a web designer
As the designer develops, he either delves into one of the areas of web design or learns to work on the entire product, applying knowledge from different fields.
Here’s what a web designer can specialize in:
- UX / UI design – designing the appearance of sites and applications, taking into account the convenience for different users.
- UX, short for user experience, literally means “user experience”. Here, attention is paid to the user and what impression he gets from working with the interface, how he navigates through the pages, whether he achieves his goal and how difficult it is for him to do it.
UI – user interface – means the appearance of the interface, its characteristics and design. The location, the size of the elements, and the color accents are important here. Because, first of all, you need to make the design user-friendly.
For example, in a mobile navigation application, the controls are made large so that the driver can navigate maps and get directions while driving.
UX and UI are two areas that are next to each other: the line between them is gradually blurring, so experts are increasingly combining both names and writing UX / UI.
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Front-end designers don’t just design regular websites; they work on the appearance of various Internet services, mobile applications, computer programs.
Microinteraction creation and motion design. Microinteractions are short animations on a website or application that occur in response to user actions.
Branding and logo creation. In addition to a good website, companies are asked to create a logo and corporate identity. To work in this direction, you need a creative approach and preferably the ability to draw.
The identity designer stands apart from other specializations in web design, but this does not prevent the digital designer from developing such skills.
Some designers become analysts, run A / B tests on finished products, interview users, and ask customers questions to make the product better.
Product designers don’t specialize in a specific area, but try to learn about everything. They work on the product as a whole, test ideas and hypotheses, prototype, design, and gather opinions.
Web design is constantly changing, new directions and technologies appear every year.
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A designer needs to constantly update his knowledge – to look at what is fashionable now, what technologies have appeared, and also to understand several related areas in order to create modern products. Therefore, a designer is not only an artist, but also an analyst, designer and subtle psychologist.
Source: Skillbox
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