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Freelance designer vs interactive designer

The differences between freelance 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 freelance designer and an interactive designer. Additionally, an interactive designer has an average salary of $97,929, which is higher than the $57,260 average annual salary of a freelance designer.

The top three skills for a freelance designer include sketch, CSS and HTML. The most important skills for an interactive designer are sketch, user experience, and UI.

Freelance designer vs interactive designer overview

Freelance DesignerInteractive Designer
Yearly salary$57,260$97,929
Hourly rate$27.53$47.08
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs45,91448,136
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 73%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3838
Years of experience1212

What does a freelance designer do?

Freelance designers are creative, independent contractors who create visual and graphic designs for their clients. They develop text and illustrated versions of brands, messages, and communications with strong visible influence with their clients. Typical activities include networking, seeking projects, and negotiating prices to their customers. They manage client proposals, develop concepts, present solutions, and ensure the timely completion of projects. Freelance visual and graphic designers are creative, self-motivated as well as result and deadline oriented.

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.

Freelance designer vs interactive designer salary

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

Freelance DesignerInteractive Designer
Average salary$57,260$97,929
Salary rangeBetween $39,000 And $83,000Between $67,000 And $141,000
Highest paying City-San Bruno, CA
Highest paying state-California
Best paying company-Meta
Best paying industry-Technology

Differences between freelance designer and interactive designer education

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

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

Freelance designer vs interactive designer demographics

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

Freelance DesignerInteractive Designer
Average age3838
Gender ratioMale, 48.0% Female, 52.0%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 freelance designer and interactive designer duties and responsibilities

Freelance designer example responsibilities.

  • Lead the transition from paste-up, typesetting, pasting up page layout to digital ad/page building and web printing.
  • Hand-Code HTML, CSS, JS and PHP for custom design solutions and form processing, validation, and animations.
  • Provide identity and stationery design, web design, HTML / CSS development and WordPress integration (content management system).
  • Image manipulation in platforms such as Photoshop and illustrator as per assign.
  • Develop high-qualityshop drawings for all casework to be build by in-house woodshop.
  • Design websites, landing pages, banner ads, pop-ups, and HTML emails.
  • 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

Freelance designer vs interactive designer skills

Common freelance designer skills
  • Sketch, 11%
  • CSS, 7%
  • HTML, 6%
  • Adobe Photoshop, 6%
  • Adobe Illustrator, 6%
  • Photography, 5%
Common interactive designer skills
  • Sketch, 13%
  • User Experience, 7%
  • UI, 6%
  • Interaction Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Visual Design, 4%

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