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A web designer is a professional responsible for creating the visual layout, user interface, and overall aesthetic of websites, with a focus on the appearance, layout, and content presentation. These visual aspects include color schemes, navigation, menus, fonts, typography, and graphics.
Who is a web designer?
A website designer is an IT professional who creates the design and layout of a website or web page. Web designers are mostly focused on the visual aspect of a website, such as layout and usability, which also includes user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). This is in sharp contrast to the role of web developers, which includes creating new website structures and the code that makes up these websites.
Web designers require limited coding skills to design a website.
Web Design Skills:
1) Graphic design
3) User Experience Design (UX)
4) HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
5) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
6) JavaScriptJavaScript (JS)
A web designer ensures that websites are aesthetically pleasing, easy to use and effectively communicates information relevant to the brand.
What do web designers do?
Web designers are professionals who identify the goals of an individual, brand, company or organization and use such information for web design. Web designers ensure accessibility of website content for all categories of users, including those with disabilities. Web designers play very important roles in web design, such as creating content, images and videos across pages and posts, as well as implementing certain elements and integrating applications on the website. A professional website designer uses several coding languages, such as HTML, for website layout and organizes elements on pages and style pages as per requirements. Web designers carry out the following job requirements.
1) Creating or selecting the most appropriate theme or website layout
2) Choosing the best fonts that suit the website tone or brand
3) Selecting attractive color schemes as per the website or brand requirement
4) Put in place intuitive navigation for a positive user experience as per web design requirements
5) Create responsive designs and mobile optimized versions for different types of screens
6) Place images, logos, videos across pages and websites
7) Integrate applications, APIs and scripts to perform specific web functions.
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Responsibilities of a Web Designer
Here is a look at their responsibilities.
Visual Design
They create the look and feel of websites, such as color schemes, images, typography and videos. Web designers choose fonts, colors, images and other visual elements to create cohesive and brilliant website design.
Layout
The layout of a website must be designed and structured such that its content and elements provide for easy readability and navigation.
A web designer creates the overall structure of a website, such as content organization on each page.
User Interface Design (UI):
A web designer is responsible for designing the user interface of the website to be intuitive and user-friendly. This is of immense importance for a positive user experience.
Content Organization
Organizing content such as text, images, and videos for coherence and enhanced user experience.
Responsive Design
Ensuring that websites have a responsive design and are easily adaptable to different screen sizes and devices. Web designers play very critical role in mobile web design.
Team Work and Collaboration
Ensuring team work and collaborating with web developers and other content creators to align design with technical requirements and content strategy.
Testing
Testing websites to ensure they function according to technical requirements and provide a positive user experience.
Maintenance
Maintaining new and existing websites by making periodic updates and improvements for continued optimum performance.
Skills and Knowledge:
The following skills and knowledge are required.
Design Principles:
A web designer should understand design principles relating to layout, typography and color scheme.
Software Proficiency
Designers should have software proficiency relating to Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, or Illustrator.
Coding
Basic knowledge of coding and the use of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for implementing designs is mandatory. Other skills such as JavaScript may be required in certain cases. In most cases, designing may require collaboration with web developers to handle coding. A WordPress web designer may require little or no coding experience because the WordPress content management system (CMS) provides tons of tools and plugins for effective web design.
User Experience (UX)
Knowledge of how users interact with websites is required for designing user friendly websites with incredible user experience (UX). They must ensure intuitive navigation and clear information architecture,
Communication
There must be strong communication as for effective communication. with clients and collaboration with other .
Problem-solving
Must have the capacity to identify and address design challenges and other problems that may affect user experience (UX).
Tools and Technologies
Design Software
Should be familiar with several design tools and software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Sketch, Illustrator, Figma, prototyping tools etc.
These tools and software are used to create mockups, prototypes and final designs.
Coding Languages
A web designer hould be familiar with design softwares and coding languages at least at the basic level, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Must be familiar with CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Wix, OpenCart etc.
Wireframing Tools
Familiarity with wireframing tools such as Balsamiq, Axure, etc.
How to become a web designer
Certain skills are required to become a website designer, some of which are
1) Limited coding skills
2) Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
3) Extensive knowledge of software applications such as Illustrator, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Figma, prototyping tools etc.
4) Knowledge of UI and UX
5) Should posses problem-solving skills
Website Designers for Small Business
These are professionals who design websites for small businesses using their extensive knowledge of specific industries to craft compelling designs according to business needs.