Web Design VS Product Design (UX / UI Design)

 what's the difference between a web designer and a product designer and which one should you work on becoming hey everybody what's up and welcome to another blog post today I want to discuss the difference and the pros and cons of learning what do you want to become when you'll grow up as a designer do you want to become a web designer do you want to be a product designer do you want to be a full-stack designer that does everything so let's discuss those and then kind of what you do in each one of them what skills do you need and what is more appropriate then maybe you should learn and improve your skills with it let's start with web design so web designer is obviously somebody who builds websites and web sites can be anything from you know marketing websites blogs ecommerce website all these type of general websites that you see when you're browsing the Internet on the other hand product designer is somebody that works on building apps designing apps and usually when people sing think about apps they think about mobile phone apps which is true this is a product designers job is to do mobile apps but it's also a lot of the apps that we're working on on the desktop are also I would say product design whether it is software like Photoshop or it's software like Gmail or any of the other apps that you're using when when you're browsing you know Google Docs or something like that that's also an app and the people who work on that are product designers now each of these skills requires kind of different different skills as a designer right so when you are a web designer your most important goal here is probably to communicate right you want to explain something what is this website that you just arrived here what what why are you here what's in it for you and try to tell the story of the brand or the project or the cause that this website is trying to promote and help get to their goals now those goals might be to have somebody to sign up have something somebody to purchase something have somebody to register or just you know because consume content on your website so those are basically the skills that you'll need to have it's a little bit more I would say a visual and creative because on website which is again generally as I said storytelling right you need to explain something usually you'll see a much more I would say kind of like beautiful or creative ideas around that that's when you go into awards the the website are all Awards it's a web design awards so you can see beautiful website and you can see how people are being really really creative when it comes down to website design on the other hand product design is much more I would say analytical design right you still need to have UI still needs to look good you might still use illustration and use creativity but in that place your your job as a product designer is much more analytical in terms of you need to understand flow you need to understand where they start where they need to be you have to have a huge focus on usability in terms of do they understand what this button does where does the menu come from and it's a much more analytical type of work now it's not to say that it's less creative it's just I would say a different type of creativity so if we have kind of like two two sides in the brain the left side of the brain which is more like I would say analytical and the right side of the brain which is more like free free style creatively association that type of stock so I would say that the right side of the brain is more kind of like web design and the left side of the brain is more the product design type of thing so which one should you become or if you're trying to learn one of them where where is the words a job how can you make a living being a web designer or a product designer so the way I see it is this I think that product design product design is being hired by usually by tech companies who have those products so it might be either startup companies or established tech companies or maybe just big companies who are building a digital product and thethe pay usually for product designers which they might be listed as product designer or maybe UX UI designer or whatever those are much higher paying jobs if you're going to work for a company that those are much higher paying jobs then I would say a graphic designer or a web designer usually usually speaking like generally speaking those companies are paying higher salaries than you know in general when you'll work in a marketing agency doing websites for for client you might earn more money by being product design this is you know as the world moves forward and you know a lot of design is being automated kind of like I would say thee I don't want to use the word elite of designers but the a lot of the the talent and the pay and the money goes into those people working in you know companies like Facebook Google Amazon who can pay the highest salaries they're trying to get the best talent and usually it's product design so if you're aiming that if you want to be part of that top designers working in those one of those big tech companies or startup tech startup working then you might want to start learning product design UI design understand how products are being built and designed and try to go in that direction on the other hand website design is I would again if the if there's a pyramid and there's only a few spots at the top for product designers at amazing companies I would say that the base of the pyramid in terms of not in terms of low pay but in terms of demand is web design because everybody in the world needs a website right so even though only a few companies are building digital products and they need digital designers every company in the world is building a website so if you are a lawyer you're not gonna have an app so you don't need a product designer but you definitely need a website for your law firm so that's just one example but the demand for web design is just huge now right not all the website projects are going to be profitable not all clients are going to pay a lot of money but because the base of the pyramid is so huge in terms of demand there is just so much more work as web designers so if you can find the right clients within them you can make great living doing that and I would say that and of course you can't go and work at an agency but as I said the the wage at an agency would probably be lower for a web designer than it is for a product designer generally speaking depending on location depending on seniority and that type of stuff but I would say that if you're aiming to be a freelancer if you want to run your own business and do your own thing then I think that you have much better chances to have bigger clientele and have you know lots of work coming in if you offer web design because that that's just what there's a huge demand for now me personally I I was freelancing and I was my specific niche which was tech startups so in that specific niche both skills were needed and so as a freelancer I got to do both web design and product design so I learned both skills and I enjoy doing both of them even though they're they're different and as I said require different skills but I think this is a very very close and small small segment of the market that needs both those skills most of the market does not need more both skills most you know big companies they have different roles for web designer and and product designer so you don't have to do both of them I like doing both of them but depending on where you are you might want to focus on just one of them when thinking about your future career hope this post was helpful for you let me know in the comments which one would do you like better which one do you want to become and learn how to be better at and what's your where you are in your journey so far see on the next post .