What is the difference between Web Design and Web Development?

Interested in learning more about Web Design and Development before you start one of our courses such as the City and Guilds Diploma for IT Users in Web Design? Web Design and Web Development may sound like they are similar or even one and the same to those not in the know but be assured that web design and web development are two completely different beasts altogether.

Web Design

Web Design is the visual aspect, the functional aspect, as well as the user experience (UX) and interface of a website; Any visuals, be they images or text, such as the header and footer of the website, navigation bars, even the specific placements of advertisements on a webpage are all plotted and planned out by the UX designers and the visual/graphic designers to make sure the website is visually appealing, coherent, and to ensure information is placed in such a way that it is as easy and effortless to access as possible.

The specific layout of a website, the placement of buttons, navigation bars, input fields, search bars, potentially checkouts and item baskets on a website made for shopping, among other things are all the user interface (UI) of a website, being what a web browser such as yourself would use to interact with the website.

Web Development

Web Development is the actual implementation of the designs created by the visual/graphic and UX designers as well as development of front-end systems (design, user experience, general functionality) and back-end systems (server hosting, cybersecurity). The most common tools used for development of websites are HTML (HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript/TypeScript, there are also libraries such as jQuery that make development of websites a lot easier by lessening the amount of work that needs to be done on basic things such as animating parts of a website or adding interactive elements.

In a nutshell; web design is how a website looks and feels, and how an end-user would interact with it and web development is the implementation of the design, look, feel, and interface of a website using tools such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript. 

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