.png)
Brand designers and web designers are both crucial for growing your brand. But it's easy to get a little confused and have no clue which one you need, or what each of them does, so what's the difference? Let's go over what designers do and what web designers do!
The primary difference between a brand designer and a website designer lies in the scope of their work. Brand designers are responsible for creating and developing a company’s entire brand identity, which includes creating a logo, a color palette, typography, and more. Website designers, on the other hand, focus on creating an interactive, engaging digital experience, often using coding and design tools to create a visually appealing website that is also easy to use.
What Brand Designers Do
Brand designers generally have a more comprehensive understanding of how to create a cohesive brand identity across all platforms. This includes print design, digital design, and sometimes even motion graphics.
They are also responsible for creating your brand's visual identity from start to finish— including the creative direction, logo suite, brand patterns or icons, business cards, print materials, color palette, and typography pairing, brand strategy, and your brand’s style guide or brand guidelines, which sets out all the guidelines for how your brand should look across all mediums both digital and print. It's also important to note that not all designers offer brand strategy, but it's absolutely necessary!
In our brand strategy process here at Thrive Design Co, we work with you to really analyze the ins and outs of your business, your specific goals, and your vision for your business, dive deep into your target audience and dream clients and find out what they're looking for, identify any gaps in the market of your industry where you could be taking advantage of, conduct a comprehensive competitors analysis of your top competitors, and more.
Afterward, we wrap it up all nicely in a PDF presentation that you can keep on hand internally within your business to help train employees and show them how you want your brand to be perceived and consistently carried out.
What Web Designers Do
Website designers are focused on designing the user experience for a website, making sure that it looks good and on brand, functions properly, and is easy to use, and if they specialize in SEO and/or accessibility (like us!) as well, then they will use that knowledge to help make your website more discoverable and accessible to more users.
We use various, innovative design tools to create your website’s look and feel, and will often be involved in the user testing process to ensure that the website works correctly and is optimized for mobile devices— the scope of work for a web designer can be vastly broad, just like that of a brand designer.
Website designers should have to have a very keen eye for detail (as should brand designers) and should leave your website feeling aligned with your company's branding that's already been established by you working with a brand designer (or a company or designer that does both, like us!)
A website designer might also have some good insight into some things that might enhance your website visitor experience, such as tools, apps, or integrations that might help convert visitors into paying customers. For example, when working on a new website for one of my clients,
I came across a super informative blog post with all the info you could possibly know if you're wanting to plan your wedding yourself, and I helped my client actually turn that into a checklist and we monetized it by adding it available for purchase on her website.
Web designers can be so much more than just someone who designs a pretty website. With all of our clients, for example, we design websites that are functional and easy to navigate, stunning and on-brand, and we try to help you streamline some of your business processes and other things to help create a better visitor experience and give you back your valuable time.
We like to help our clients utilize their websites as more than just a means to provide information to potential clients and customers. We design websites that work hard for you so you can spend your time doing more of what you love.
In conclusion, brand designers and website designers both have important roles in creating a successful, cohesive brand identity. A brand designer is tasked with creating a brand’s look and feel across all mediums, while a website designer focuses on creating an enjoyable and productive digital experience.
Some designers specialize in both branding and website design, like us here at Thrive Design Co. If you find a studio or freelance designer that can do both well, be sure to use them for both your branding and website if you can! Being able to use the same designer for all visual aspects of your brand can help make sure everything stays cohesive throughout all touchpoints of your business.
I hope this helped! Wanting to transform your branding or website? We'd love to work with you! You can book your free 30-minute discovery call and we'll talk about all the deets of your project!