WEB DESIGN VS. WEB DEVELOPMENT 

What does Web Development involve? Can we refer to Web Designing an Web Development as being the same thing? Can these two terms be used interchangeably?

Short answer, no; and below is why.

WEB DESIGN

Web designing could be compared to the work of an architect, just as an architect would build the plan for your home before you start building it is so also with Web Designing. Web Designers are involved in designing the layout of a website which is comfy referred to as a wireframe or a UX/UI design. They transform the idea of a client into visual designs, working on a model the developer will work on. Basically, web designing oversees everything that involves the creation of a visual image of a website, like the colour and web layout in lay man’s terms. This could include the use of tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Indesign and other UX/UI software applications to design a wireframe for a webpage or the entire website. While Web Design involves what the user sees on any viewing gadget, and being less concerned about the technicality behind the running of the website it is imperative to work hand in hand with a developer with a common objective.

Good Web designers are generally always up-to-date with recent and popular design trends. They make sure they create a website with easy to operate user interface and friendly to the eye of a user.  

WEB DEVELOPMENT

Just as Web Designing is like creating the plan for a house, Web Development is involved with the turning of designs into a website. Web Development is further divided into two main categories; front-end development and back-end Development. Front-end development is where a Web Developer turns the visual design created by a web designer and codes it in. HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JS (JavaScript) are the three main coding languages used by the front-end developers. With these three languages, they are able to build a full website interface including the main layout, application of animations, linking of different webpages, insertion of images and much more. A back-end developer on the other hand is responsible for the functioning of the webpage or website. They are tasked with the job of making the site work, and use programming languages such as PHP to do it. The main job carried out by Web Developers in a nutshell involves developing the functionality that enables a webpage user to communicate with and take action on the website.

Although we have just skimmed the surface, we hope when you next find your self in a discussion about these two terms, you find this article useful.