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Media designer vs interactive designer

The differences between media 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 media designer and an interactive designer. Additionally, an interactive designer has an average salary of $97,929, which is higher than the $54,018 average annual salary of a media designer.

The top three skills for a media designer include graphic design, animation and motion graphics. The most important skills for an interactive designer are sketch, user experience, and UI.

Media designer vs interactive designer overview

Media DesignerInteractive Designer
Yearly salary$54,018$97,929
Hourly rate$25.97$47.08
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs52,98948,136
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 69%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3838
Years of experience1212

What does a media designer do?

A media designer is a marketing professional who plans, visualizes, and creates marketing materials such as printed documents, electronic or web-based media based on the business needs and guidance from team members in a company. Media designers must develop brand loyalty among customers about the company's line of products. They are required to make known the image of a given company using graphics, design, video, or interactivity to draw in users or customers. Media designers must also create a social marketing presence by establishing blogs or networking pages on a company's website.

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.

Media designer vs interactive designer salary

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

Media DesignerInteractive Designer
Average salary$54,018$97,929
Salary rangeBetween $39,000 And $73,000Between $67,000 And $141,000
Highest paying CityBrookline, MASan Bruno, CA
Highest paying stateMassachusettsCalifornia
Best paying companyMcKinsey & Company IncMeta
Best paying industryMediaTechnology

Differences between media designer and interactive designer education

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

Media DesignerInteractive Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 69%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania

Media designer vs interactive designer demographics

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

Media DesignerInteractive Designer
Average age3838
Gender ratioMale, 66.6% Female, 33.4%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 media designer and interactive designer duties and responsibilities

Media designer example responsibilities.

  • Manage and develop a stream line Intranet site for better communication purposes and quicker access to documents and company information
  • Create and design an online asset management tool using CSS, PHP, and MySQL.
  • Create UI design elements for the simulation.
  • Design web graphics for social media platforms, such as Facebook.
  • Create and maintain web sites using HTML, Java, and SQL programming.
  • Develop innovative concepts for both UX to UI layouts base on customer brand and functionality needs.
  • 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

Media designer vs interactive designer skills

Common media designer skills
  • Graphic Design, 9%
  • Animation, 9%
  • Motion Graphics, 6%
  • Video Production, 5%
  • JavaScript, 5%
  • Adobe Creative Suite, 4%
Common interactive designer skills
  • Sketch, 13%
  • User Experience, 7%
  • UI, 6%
  • Interaction Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Visual Design, 4%

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