A 3-part article series of personal experiences and industry tips to take your design career to a different level.
Part One: the difference between graphic & UI design
What is the difference between a graphic designer and a UI designer?
It’s a question I get asked fairly often, especially since I come from a graphic design background. But it’s not really a ‘one-sentence-answer’.
According to Wikipedia:
“A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed, or electronic media, such as brochures and advertising.”
“A user interface design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience.”
In my opinion these definitions are not wrong, but they’re not 100% right either. Here’s my take on the differences between the two:
- Different Roles/Functions.
- UI design uses a lot of the aspects of graphic design (images, typography and motion graphics) only it does it in a slightly more structured and precise method because it’s constrained to the platform being designing for, as well as taking into consideration the behaviour required to drive the interaction.
- It becomes more than just making a design look good. It needs to look good but also function and be easy to use.