Graphic Design and Web Design: How They Correlate

Graphic design has been the ultimate agent for brand recognition since essentially the dawn of history and will continue to stand as such for as long as humans have sight. However, with the advent of web design, many people assume that a web designer can do graphic design and vice versa without realizing they’re totally different beasts.

But how do graphic design and web design correlate? While they’re not the same by any stretch, web designers and developers can use graphic design to attract the brand’s target audience to their website and ensure higher retention and engagement levels. Graphic and web design can go hand in hand in achieving a company’s marketing goals.

In this short article, we’ll highlight some of the benefits of incorporating graphic design into a website’s design and development. But first, let’s review some of the main differences between both disciplines.

Web Design vs. Graphic Design: What’s So Different?

The distinctions between web design and graphic design are numerous, but we’ll try to narrow them down to the essential aspects just so as to get a clearer picture:

• Graphic design and web design rely on different skillset. Graphic designers are more concerned with the visual properties of an image or graphic element (e.g., color, shape, perspective, dimensions, etc.). In contrast, web design focuses on creating a website layout using various frontend programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Web design is dynamic and can change more fluidly, while graphic design normally doesn’t change. This doesn’t mean that a graphic design is “immutable”, but it typically remains unchanged for a long time.
• Web design is meant to be interacted with, so you may expect some animations when clicking or hovering over a website’s element. Graphic design, on the flip side, is stationary and doesn’t react to any type of action.
• Graphic design can be printed or digital. Conversely, web design is, by its very nature, digital.

How Does Graphic Design Help with Web Design?

A graphic designer’s primary role is to make a company or brand appealing to an audience by visually representing its values and goals. For this reason, graphic design is deemed one of the most vital marketing tools available to any entrepreneur.

When web design entered the scene -signaling the birth of web marketing – it didn’t supersede graphic design, for they still serve different functions within a larger framework. Nevertheless, it gave marketers a novel way to engage with potential leads while sharing some of graphic design’s main traits.

That said, graphic design can also be incorporated into web design to bolster a website’s success in a plethora of ways. These include:

• Enhanced UX (User Experience) – Since graphic design is a medium to get the audience emotionally invested via a combination of colors, shapes, and lines, it can be effectively employed as a primary visual element in a website to boost the user’s serotonin levels while navigating through it.
• Better brand recognition: The combination of enthralling graphic designs and consistent color schemes throughout a website’s different pages and sections should give users the necessary visual cues to identify the brand better as they browse the site’s content.
• Increased conversion rates: The ultimate goal of every marketing campaign is to generate conversions. If the audience feels a disconnect between the brand’s graphic and web design (or the landing page’s presentation is bland and uninteresting), they might think twice before hitting the “buy” button. The help of graphic design in reinforcing the brand’s image on a website is crucial in arousing the audience’s interest and prompting them to become customers.