What is web design?
Web design has become one of the most ubiquitous parts of modern life.
Today, the average American spends just over seven hours a day online, and Google — the most visited site on the web — gets 89 billion visits per day. We see and interact with hundreds of web pages a day — for work, for entertainment, and for running our daily lives.
Web design is what makes every single one of those online interactions work, but web design itself is surprisingly hard to define. What is web design? Is it art? Is it graphic design? Is it user interface or user experience design? Are coding and engineering an essential part of web design? What about search engine optimization, accessibility, and copywriting?
At its simplest, web design is the art of designing sites for the web. But that definition falls short of describing the true scope of a web designer’s work. There are so many ways to answer that question. To learn more, we spoke with five experienced web designers to get their perspectives on the work they do.
When attempting to define something, sometimes it’s best to start with the most direct answer. Web design is designing for the web. The openness of this definition is exactly what makes it so appropriate for the way we build for the web today. Mobile web, apps, and responsive design are all inherent parts of web design, and a definition that avoids those is going to miss a huge chunk of what designers actually do.
In 2022, web design means designing responsive websites.
We are no longer making static pages for use on one device exclusively. Every site needs to be adaptable to be viewed across different devices in different formats and contexts. For a lot of users, mobile may even be the primary or only way they’re accessing your site.
So if designing any site published on the web is web design, how do we differentiate web design as a craft? What makes web design good? “The annoying answer is — it depends. The simple answer is — if it works, can it be considered good?” says Mark, “Can the person using your website or product do what they’re trying to do? If so — great.”
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