Does Graphic Designer now mean Web Designer and vice versa?

cu3ed

cu3ed

cu3ed

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Long story short I work mostly in Graphic design most of my days, working on publications such as Magazines, Newspapers, end of yea Annuals etc.

Recently being made redundant from a large Newspaper company ( yea, that part of publications is going to the toilet any ways!), I seem to find myself when applying for jobs that when they ask for a graphic designer, they seem to be looking for people that are really web designers/ developers.

Is this just the norm now?...the problem I have is I have tried my hand at webdesign and being honest just couldn't get into it....it doesn't really appeal to me in terms of general interest.

Was wondering what others in the industry thought, kinda feel I'm at a cross roads job wise in my life and not completely sure what to do.
 
No it shouldn't do. I would take it as more of a reflection on the company looking for the wrong person, or simply not understanding the titles/requirements. Although, if it is listed as either title, the detailed job requirements should always clarify any confusion as to what the role involves.

I can see where the confusion comes from though. As a graphic designer, web designer and developer (lightly) a lot of the expertise are transferable. But I wouldn't want to be a web designer finding myself in a print role, or a graphic designer finding myself in a world of CSS.
 
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Agreed with gord; I'm a graphic designer who happened to learn basic to medium web design skills in order to create my personal site among other things, but the general rule I'd say is not to go for a job which is advertised as web design if you've not learnt specifically about it (HTML, CSS, PHP as a bare minimum).
 
Case in point I had an interview to day, they asked for a graphic designer, then during the interview started asking me about my website skills....I told them what i had done..the usual like optimizing graphics and photos for web, updating some sites text wise usually through a backed server user interface...but nothing to do with coding and developing.

Looks like im looking for a new career then.
 
Most job sites and work places simply demand massive amounts from web people. They like saving costs by hiring a developer, design and slicer all in one.

IMO there should be 3 distinct principles in the website process..

1. Design
2. Build
3. Develop

2 and 3 merge a lot, but the cost of having a developer do HTML/CSS work isn't overly effective.

So many roles now ask for 1, 2 and 3. The standard of role 3 has gone from. "Know a development language" to "Know how to run/fix and keep servers, use basic photoshop, slice pages, know 3+ languages etc... etc..."
 
The 3 roles are graphics, web design and developer.

Many companies get these roles mixed up and you often find one person doing all three. I am a case in point. I am a web designer by trade, but find myself doing the development and sometimes even creating the graphics. I should really ask for a pay rise!!
 
ITV Structure:

Graphic Designers - There designs was purely for print, magazines, posters and tv visuals and designs. The graphic designers took no part in any web aspects of ITV web side.

Web Designer - Pure design role no coding required, this was all about building web site visuals and pixel perfect web designs for the developers.

Front End Developer - This involved manly CSS, HTML, JavaScript, AJAX and Jquery. Small knowledge of backend technologies can be required at times but it wasn't essential.

Back End Developer - There mainly dealt with the server side languages ASP.net, PHP, AJAX and the databases SQL Server or Oracle, intermidiate knowledge of front end development was normally required.
 
Well never mind what I posted above, in what was a fed up, told them what I cant and can do interview...they have asked me in for a second...lol.....go figure.
 
Where I work, I am basically the design and marketing dogsbody so I take care of all design - be it for the web or for print. I have about three different job titles because I do so much :D
 
reflux said:
Where I work, I am basically the design and marketing dogsbody so I take care of all design - be it for the web or for print. I have about three different job titles because I do so much :D
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Do you mind if I ask how much for?

I am in a similar position. I also provide on-site IT support and web server administration. Across 2 companies.
 
I've worked with a few graphic designers who were pretty good, but couldn't design for the web at all. They keep designing like it's a flyer to be mailed out or something and it gets a bit frustrating

If you want to add web design to your skills, imo the best thing you can do is learn how to make your own html/css websites. I found htmldog.com helpful

Once you've made one or two then that's probably all you need. You'll then have much more clue on how the graphics should be done etc

I do think graphics vs web design is a lot different though. Web design is worth learning

I know you say you don't like it, but how much have you tried it? If you dabble a bit, make one or two sites, then see how you like it. If you still hate it, at least you learnt a bit more :)
 
gord said:
Do you mind if I ask how much for?

I am in a similar position. I also provide on-site IT support and web server administration. Across 2 companies.
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£18k. It's not very good compared to what I could get elsewhere but it's an easy job and they're very good about hours.
 
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