Today's Posts Follow Us On Twitter! TFL Members on Twitter  
Forum search: Advanced Search  
Navigation
Marketplace
  Members Login:
Lost password?
  Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 24,254
Total Threads: 80,792
Total Posts: 566,471
There are 1550 users currently browsing (tf).
 
  Our Partners:
 
  TalkFreelance     Business and Website Management     Contracts, Business and Legal Help :

do you call yourself a web, digital or user interface designer

Thread title: do you call yourself a web, digital or user interface designer
Reply    
    Thread tools Search this thread Display Modes  
10-25-2012, 04:29 AM
#1
HuntedByAGeek is offline HuntedByAGeek
Status: I'm new around here
Join date: Oct 2012
Location: sydney
Expertise: interface design
Software: photoshop
 
Posts: 2
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

HuntedByAGeek is on a distinguished road

  Old  do you call yourself a web, digital or user interface designer

Hello,

I'm new and I hope that this forum has a friendly community!

I was after opinions on what I should call myself. I design websites using photoshop but I don't use code. It's all well and good to call myself a Web Designer but tell a client that and they expect the whole shebang. So I have been told to call myself a Digital Designer but I feel like clients won't understand what that is. The other option I guess is to call myself a User Interface Designer however I feel that is also difficult to explain to clients and perhaps UI Designers perform different tasks to me.

What do you call yourselves and how do you explain it to clients so they understand straight away?

10-26-2012, 05:47 PM
#2
derek lapp is offline derek lapp
Status: design rockstar
Join date: Jan 2005
Location: guelph, ontario
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 2,246
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

derek lapp is on a distinguished road

  Old

call yourself a designer. labels are stupid and they mean something different to every person. it's futile to find an all encompassing label for your capabilities.

now, having said that, UI is a fairly understood concept because it crosses multiple industries - iphone/smartphone/tablet app, touchscreen, video game, elevator, automobile console... they're all varying forms of user-interfaces. imo there are 2 types of people when it comes to UI: those who know what it really is and those who use it as a buzzword because they don't know the correct term.

i deal with this by comparing myself to a musician. i'm a designer the same way a musician is a musician - he's not just a guitar player, or a piano player, or a drummer, or a vocalist, etc. you could make a beautiful song using only one of those instruments, or you could make a beautiful song using some or all of those instruments. now, replace musician with design and those instruments with things like typography, UI, composition, photography, etc; development falls into there as well.

i would recommend against labelling yourself as a UI designer/specialist, because it's like saying you only know 1 tool. if you're ever in a situation where someone has a different expectation of what you do, pull out the musician comparison.

ultimatelty it's irrelevant if you, yourself can do the task. as long as you know someone who can do it with/for you, they'll deal with you.

10-31-2012, 09:27 AM
#3
HuntedByAGeek is offline HuntedByAGeek
Status: I'm new around here
Join date: Oct 2012
Location: sydney
Expertise: interface design
Software: photoshop
 
Posts: 2
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

HuntedByAGeek is on a distinguished road

  Old

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I do wish sometimes I could say that I'm a web designer and then not have a million people ask me to build their sites for them. I guess I could say digital designer, then people will say "what's that?" then I can pull out the muso comparison

Reply With Quote
12-02-2012, 06:02 AM
#4
concerto49 is offline concerto49
Status: Junior Member
Join date: Dec 2012
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 29
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

concerto49 is on a distinguished road

  Old

I think you are a Web Designer. A Web Developer is the one that does the actual coding. Designers design and developers develop. As far as I know that's what it means.

Unfortunately there are a lot of misunderstandings from people that don't know the industry too well. There are always people that knock and say - "Hey you know computers, you should know <insert anything IT related>".

Reply With Quote
12-05-2012, 05:35 PM
#5
seanuk is offline seanuk
Status: I'm new around here
Join date: Dec 2012
Location: UK
Expertise: Web Design, SEO
Software:
 
Posts: 8
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

seanuk is on a distinguished road

  Old

Web Designer - pretty much designs websites on the whole, including the user experience, information architecture and maybe a bit of front-end HTML & CSS

UI Designer - pretty much designs the interface only, and others worry about the UX, IA and coding, etc

Digital Designer - is more a blanket term for someone doing web design, multimedia, flash, video, motion graphics, etc

Web Designer is easier for others (especially those outside the industry) to understand what you do without an explanation

Reply    


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

  Posting Rules  
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump:
 
  Contains New Posts Forum Contains New Posts   Contains No New Posts Forum Contains No New Posts   A Closed Forum Forum is Closed