A designer produces and develops visual concepts. However, the work you do as a designer might range from designing publications and digital interfaces to producing a navigation system for a public area, depending on the type of designer you are. Have you ever wondered what a design profession may entail?
Visual components like typeface, colour, and imagery are used by graphic designers to spread ideas around the world. Computers are just one tool used by graphic artists. In order to produce visually compelling and targeted messaging, the design process is extremely iterative and involves working with a variety of media and materials.
Examples of where a graphic design profession may go include developing a company's visual identity and brand experience, producing designs for print, and developing the appearance of product packaging.
According to Shalini Prasad, a Lesley faculty member and independent designer/brand consultant, information designers are storytellers with an analytical mindset. She argues that graphic elements like images, typography, shape, colour, texture, and space are used by information designers as tools to organise, simplify, and express information. Information designers research, analyse, and interpret data into user-friendly information systems that motivate viewers to react and take action.
According to The Society for Experiential Graphic Design, experiential designers produce displays and surroundings that convey a message or a mood inside a physical context. Marketing campaigns, art exhibits, and public installations are transformed into experiences by experiential designers who combine graphic design expertise with spatial problem-solving and a comprehension of human behaviour.
User experience (UX) designers are concerned with how users interact with various goods, services, or environments, both physical and digital (think of apps and websites). They enhance people's lives by identifying problems that consumers have and then imagining solutions.
Working with researchers, strategists, developers, and designers are just a few of the several professions that must collaborate for this position. To make sure that a product addresses the needs and goals of an end-user, UX designers are involved at various phases of the design process. In order to make the presentation clear and simple for users to use, UX designers collaborate with user interface (UI) designers, who create the interface's visual elements. Numerous UI designers are also UX designers.
User interface (UI) designers create rough sketches of an interface based on the findings from user experience designers and interaction designers' research. User interface designers plan and create a website, app, or tool based on research into how people use them.
Wireframing, prototyping, and testing are all components of the process, just like for user experience and interaction designers. However, user interface designers are also engaged with the visual aspects that would show in a digital environment, such as buttons, menus, colour, images, and font.
Websites that are functional, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing are created by web designers. They design a website's general aesthetic so that it complements their client's brand and appeals to their client's intended audience.
To connect with developers, web designers must have a rudimentary understanding of coding, but their primary concern is the organisation, structure, usability, and aesthetics of a website. Web designers use programmes like HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript to make their designs come to life on screens. Front end work is the majority of what web designers do. Additionally, they make sure that websites are accessible to people with a range of skills or disabilities and are responsive, i.e., they function flawlessly across all device sizes.
According to Professor Spitz, the field of web design has developed along with our rapidly changing technological environment. As businesses started building websites in the 1990s, it was usual for designers to handle only web design. There is more overlap today because interaction, user experience, and user interface designers may also be responsible for web design.
Video games' layout, programming, plot, setting, characters, and music are created by game designers. In addition, they might develop additional forms of immersive entertainment that put the player or viewer in the middle of the action, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 3D audio, or the use of an LED wall to produce a movie experience in a real-world setting.
Complex games and immersive experiences demand a wide range of abilities to create. Realistic visual effects are created by game designers using high-end digital software tools like Maya, ZBrush, Nuke, and the industry-standard real-time game engine, Unreal Engine. Game designers are also storytellers and programmers (VFX). They also plan ahead for how users will navigate and engage with their works so that players and spectators can enjoy themselves to the fullest.