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Designer vs interactive designer

The differences between designers and interactive designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 6-12 months to become both a designer and an interactive designer. Additionally, an interactive designer has an average salary of $97,929, which is higher than the $66,347 average annual salary of a designer.

The top three skills for a designer include sketch, customer service and graphic design. The most important skills for an interactive designer are sketch, user experience, and UI.

Designer vs interactive designer overview

DesignerInteractive Designer
Yearly salary$66,347$97,929
Hourly rate$31.90$47.08
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs52,43348,136
Job satisfaction5-
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 61%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3838
Years of experience1212

What does a designer do?

A designer is someone who creates a master plan of the look or workings of something before it will be made. It could be tangible or intangible objects, products, procedures, laws, events, games, graphics, services, and even experiences. Designers are creative thinkers with a great eye to configure the skeletal and structural properties of the targeted output. They work in several fields, such as fashion, architecture, web graphics, and user experience. In spite of the variety of professionals in the design industry, all of them are artistic, passionate, inspiring, and emotionally connected to their projects and brands.

What does an interactive designer do?

An Interactive Designer takes the business product and transforms it into a product that the user interacts with perfectly. They support engineering efforts to develop designs and get the details right.

Designer vs interactive designer salary

Designers and interactive designers have different pay scales, as shown below.

DesignerInteractive Designer
Average salary$66,347$97,929
Salary rangeBetween $45,000 And $97,000Between $67,000 And $141,000
Highest paying CitySeattle, WASan Bruno, CA
Highest paying stateWashingtonCalifornia
Best paying companyMetaMeta
Best paying industryTechnologyTechnology

Differences between designer and interactive designer education

There are a few differences between a designer and an interactive designer in terms of educational background:

DesignerInteractive Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 61%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania

Designer vs interactive designer demographics

Here are the differences between designers' and interactive designers' demographics:

DesignerInteractive Designer
Average age3838
Gender ratioMale, 56.9% Female, 43.1%Male, 66.8% Female, 33.2%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%Black or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage13%13%

Differences between designer and interactive designer duties and responsibilities

Designer example responsibilities.

  • Lead & design all creative content stemming from apparel design to web identity.
  • Manage various PCB designs utilizing state of the art DFM techniques and comply with company standards.
  • Utilize CSS, DHTML, HTML, and JavaScript for cross browser, cross platform compatibility and consistency.
  • Develop different kinds of functions globally, locally for the development of forms using JavaScript, CSS.
  • Transform customer specifications into usable SolidWorks 3D models and assemblies from which all manufacturing are derived.
  • Process ECR's and ECO's using Windchill.
  • Show more

Interactive designer example responsibilities.

  • Manage website properties including design, content and marketing using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
  • Create, implement, and manage web content projects (HTML emails, web sites, digitizing audio/video).
  • Use ASP.NET and XML to automate common workflow tasks due to extremely high volume of designs to be create.
  • Develop a custom object-orient prototyping model in the design of a highly dynamic user interface.
  • Work primarily with JQuery to design/develop full screen overlays and dynamic forms.
  • Develop clean, table-less web sites using valid XHTML and CSS according to standards.
  • Show more

Designer vs interactive designer skills

Common designer skills
  • Sketch, 10%
  • Customer Service, 7%
  • Graphic Design, 6%
  • CSS, 5%
  • HTML, 4%
  • PowerPoint, 4%
Common interactive designer skills
  • Sketch, 13%
  • User Experience, 7%
  • UI, 6%
  • Interaction Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Visual Design, 4%

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