What is Web Design?

Web design refers to the broad skills of designing, building, and maintaining modern web pages. This includes designing the web page's visual elements, coding the infrastructure, and maintaining the infrastructure of the web page. Learning how to build web pages is vital in today’s digital landscape, as virtually every industry uses some measure of client-facing web pages. As a result, these skills are in high demand. In this overview, you’ll learn more about what web design is, what it can do, who uses it, and how to learn it so you can determine how to add this skill to your professional toolbox.

What Can You Do with Web Design?

As the name suggests, learning web design skills will teach you how to design, develop, and maintain web pages. This means that whatever you can do on the digital canvas of Web 2.0, you can learn to do with web design. You can learn to build professional working websites as a career path or build your own personal brand using elaborate WordPress designs. Students can build a digital CV to make themselves more attractive to employers, or they can launch a digital art project hoping to advocate for a cause that is important to them. Students can turn their passions into a business by building a digital marketplace to advertise their wares or get an idea off the ground with a rhetorically appealing pitch website. The sky's the limit for talented web designers.

Web design also covers a diverse field of specializations and skills so that individuals can create even more specific niches for themselves within the field. Programmers can enter a vibrant community of like-minded designers who iterate on and improve programming languages, making them more versatile and accessible to new users. Developers may find themselves specializing in a specific programming language for things like Data Science and SEO purposes. User Experience Designers will make web pages themselves more accessible and easy to navigate. Given the amount of time individuals spend online each day, there is no shortage of unique opportunities for skilled web design students.

How Do You Download/Get Web Design? How Much Does it Cost?

The cost of web design will vary depending on the aspects of web design in which you plan to specialize. Learning how to code in HTML/CSS and JavaScript is free, and students will be able to download a code editing program for free. This means that students looking to learn the web development aspect of coding will find that they have an ample supply of free resources and libraries.

Students looking to learn the visual side of web design will need to acquire a few different design applications, such as a web layout design application and a vector animation design program. These tools can vary in cost, depending on the specific programs they wish to use and how many programs they intend to use. Users who want to learn how to use industry-standard programs such as Adobe Illustrator will need to license the program as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, which can cost upwards of twenty dollars a month per program. 

What Are the Benefits of Learning Web Design?

In the modern digital landscape, it is more important than ever for companies and organizations to develop a strong web presence. They will want to hire employees who can design, develop, maintain, and upgrade those web pages to ensure they are putting their best possible presence online. This means that web design and development skills are in high demand across almost every professional industry. Plus, the public and nonprofit sectors also need to maintain millions of web pages, so anyone interested in working in more advocacy or community-focused environment can also find gainful employment opportunities.

In addition, learning web design skills may also be helpful for your own creative and commercial ambitions. If you have a project that you are working on, whether it is a new product that you are releasing on an e-store or you just want to create a personal website for collecting job materials, learning web design skills will help make sure that those web pages are functional and visually evocative. Whether or not you know how to code, even just learning the design aspect of the process can be incredibly professionally rewarding, as more and more web pages are running on platforms such as WordPress.

Read more about why you should learn web design.

Web Design Careers

Web design skills are used in every profession that uses web pages, which, in our digital landscape, is virtually all of them. While most web design professionals will work for firms contracted to work with clients or as freelancers, many are employed in-house by large corporations, organizations, institutions, and nonprofits. This means that no matter what kind of industry you want to work in, learning web design skills gives you a chance to get your foot in the door. Just a few common web design careers include:

Web Designer: Web Designers are creative professionals tasked with designing a web page’s visual appearance. They will be responsible for working with clients and project managers to create layouts, designs, and prototypes for web pages using applications such as Figma and Adobe Illustrator. Since they are primarily concerned with how a web page looks rather than how it operates, they may work with Web Developers, but they are unlikely to be tasked with coding operational web pages. This means that most professional Web Designers won’t need extensive coding experience.

Web Developer: Web Developers are professional programmers who are responsible for building and maintaining web pages in line with the designs that their clients or employers request. They will need to know how to code web pages using languages such as HTML/CSS and JavaScript and may be required to update and maintain existing web page code. Web Developer careers are broadly grouped into three categories. Front End Web Developers build a web page’s interactive, client-side aspects, while Back End Developers maintain the server-side infrastructure upon which the web page operates. Full Stack Web Developers are responsible for both sides of the development process.

User Experience Designer: User Experience (UX) Designers are concerned with the feel of a web page and are tasked with ensuring that launched web pages are accessible, user-friendly, and easy to navigate. UX Designers will conduct user testing and research, as the position is far more data-oriented and scientific than other web design responsibilities. UX Designers understand that how a client wants a web page to be used is rarely how it will be used, so their job is to ensure that web designs are thoroughly tested and iterated upon to avoid providing users with a negative experience.

How to Learn Web Design

Students looking to learn web design skills will have a few different ways they can go about receiving training in web design. They will have to choose the environment in which they learn the skills and the delivery method of the course in which they enroll. While each student’s needs are different, there are a few key differences between the types of courses that are worth considering.

Most students find that live instruction, available through in-person classes and live online instruction, is the most effective way to learn new skills. Particularly for novice coders, the presence of a live instructor can be a significant boon, as they are present to help ease students into the process of programming by answering questions and providing feedback. These classes also allow students to learn alongside a cohort of like-minded students, and many students find that having regular classes to attend and regular deadlines helps keep their learning on track. These courses are somewhat restrictive regarding their scheduling, as they are only offered at specific times of the day/week. They are also the most expensive training options, but most students find that training is not something they want to pinch pennies.

Students looking for more flexibility in their training will want to consider an on-demand web design course. These classes are asynchronous, self-paced lessons, meaning that students will be able to watch lectures, study material, and work on exercises as their own schedule allows. This makes them an ideal fit for students with work and family obligations that prevent them from attending regularly scheduled classes or who need to learn a specific set of skills in a very condensed period. These classes tend to be the most varied in their content and style. Still, there are also a great variety of on-demand classes to choose from, so students who desire a more flexible scheduled learning experience should explore their options.

Finally, students may be interested in free introductory classes to determine whether web design training is the right fit for them. These classes, which often take the form of pre-recorded lectures, are a great place for students to experiment with learning web design in a low-pressure, low-commitment environment. Noble Desktop provides students with a few options for free training courses, including their Getting Started in Web Design course, which provides an overview of the responsibilities of web designers and the tools that they use to make functional web pages. Noble also provides students with a series of more targeted web design videos on their Web Design and Development playlist, which is frequently updated on their official YouTube page. Students looking to learn how to design web pages in a professional capacity will still require more training, but since these classes teach fundamental skills, it won’t be a waste of your time to view them before enrolling in a seminar or bootcamp.

Read the full guide on how to learn web design.

Comparable Applications/Programming Languages/Fields

Since web design is such an expansive field, it encompasses a number of different subfields with significant but not total overlap. For simplicity's sake, the biggest divide in the field relevant for students hoping to learn web design is the difference between learning visual design skills and web development skills. Many Web Designers will learn both, but some students may find that they want to specialize in one field or the other.

Visual design emphasizes the look and feels of a web page, and it is a creative field. Using design tools like Adobe Illustrator and Figma, Visual Designers will create outlines and layouts of web pages that will be handed off to developers for launch. Visual Designers won’t need to learn how to code since the tools for creating the visual assets of a web page will not require them to program the actual infrastructure underlying the web page. Another significant subset of visual design is user experience design, which focuses on the tactile feel of a web page when it enters users' hands.

Web development is concerned with the technical aspects of running, maintaining, and launching web pages. Learning web development skills will entail learning how to code and debug web pages using languages like HTML/CSS and JavaScript. Oftentimes, Web Developers won’t be involved in the planning stage of designing the visual look of a web page and will only enter into a project once the desired design has been approved. Web development skills are broken up into front end development, which concerns the visual and interactive elements of a web page that users interact with, such as the links and menus, and back end web development, which concerns itself with the infrastructure and databases that work behind the scenes to make the web application operate. Some developers, called full-stack developers, handle both sides of the operation.

Learn Web Design with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Students looking to master web design skills should consider the hands-on training options available to them through Noble Desktop. In these courses, students can learn how to design and code web pages using a variety of platforms and programming languages. These courses, which are all taught by live instructors with years of experience in their respective fields, give students the opportunity to interface directly with their instructors, ensuring they can receive the assistance and feedback they need to succeed. Students can enroll in a web design class or bootcamp either in-person or online.

Students looking to start off their web design and development career without investing too much time into their training may want to consider Noble’s Web Development with HTML/CSS course. In this class, which requires no prior coding knowledge, students will learn the fundamental skills that go into designing and developing web pages using the HTML/CSS programming languages. This class will teach students how to design basic web pages using the coding languages that form the basic infrastructure of a modern web page. Students will learn how to use HTML to build basic web pages and how to use CSS to add a visual flair to their designs. While anyone wanting to design web pages that look up to modern standards will need more training in other, more advanced programming languages, learning HTML/CSS is essential for anyone wanting to build web pages.

Noble offers a Web Design Certificate program for students who want a more immersive, career-focused experience in their training course that aims to take students from novice programmers all the way to professional designers in just a few short weeks. In this course, students will learn how to code web pages with HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and through the WordPress hosting platform. They will learn how to build elaborate, multi-page websites that replicate the kinds of projects they will be hired to work on as professional Web Designers and Developers. In addition, since these are career-focused courses, students will receive extra professionalization training, including one-on-one career mentorship sessions and seminar time dedicated to helping students construct a sample design portfolio that they can take with them onto the job market. For students looking to start a new career in the field of web design, there is no better way to prepare themselves.

Key Insights

• Web design refers to the broad range of skills that go into designing, developing, and maintaining web pages. It covers both the creative and technical sides of designing web pages.
• Students who want to learn how to code web pages need to acquire a code editing application, but those tend to be free. Outside of this, there is no cost to using programming languages.
• Students who want to learn how to design the visual elements of web pages will need to acquire design software applications. These will require students to pay a licensing fee or purchase the full program upfront.
• Since so many industries need to maintain a large number of web pages, students trained in web design will find numerous career opportunities.
• Once students have decided to learn web design skills, they can consult Noble Desktop for comprehensive web design training, online or in person.