Graphic Design vs. Digital Marketing: Decoding the Difference  

In a typical week, 170 million people will log into social media. The digital advertising industry now has a value of around $200 billion, with Google bringing in most of its revenue through online advertising. There are 3.1 billion people around the globe who are online, and blogging and Instagram have created a world where influencers bring in $1 billion in revenue each year.

What do all these statistics mean? They indicate a huge market of potential customers and clients to be reached through online advertising. For this reason, digital marketing is one of the fastest-growing forms of marketing. Every company, regardless of industry and size, needs to be online to take advantage of this market. They must utilize social media and other online marketing platforms to increase brand awareness and engage with customers, or they will lose customers to their competition and struggle to grow. You must go where the people are – and the people are online.

Yet within the world of online marketing are terms that are sometimes confusing. Digital marketing and graphic design fall into this category. Because of how closely these two career paths work together, many people are confused about their differences. Here is a closer look at digital marketing and graphic design, how they differ, and how they work together to create effective marketing materials.

What Is Digital Marketing?

A digital marketing career or degree focuses on marketing a brand through any digital means. Brands work with digital marketing professionals to create far-reaching programs. Digital marketing professionals need to understand the basics of visual design to create effective, eye-catching websites and marketing materials. This involves planning, launching, running, and evaluating digital marketing campaigns. Therefore, digital marketers must understand both how to create effective visuals and how to build and analyze an effective online marketing strategy.

Digital marketers utilize a variety of computer or web-based marketing techniques, including:

• Website design and optimization
• Social media marketing
• Video marketing
• Podcasting
• Affiliate marketing
• Blogging
• Influencer marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Mobile marketing

Digital marketing campaigns incorporate all these elements into one over-arching marketing campaign to better reach a brand’s goals.

What is Graphic Design?

Graphic design involves the creation of digital marketing materials. The American Institute of Graphic Arts defines it this way: “The art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual context.” In most graphic design projects, the goal is to combine text and pictures, either photographs or digitally created images, into an effective advertisement for use in magazines, books, or online distribution.

Graphic designers understand design concepts, including how to use texture and color to create effective designs. They have artistic abilities and a good eye for what makes a design work well.

Though modern graphic design is done through digital platforms, this career started as a type of art designing for printed materials. The craft remains focused on using art, now digital art, to convey a message. Graphic design creations often end up used both online and in print.

Digital Marketing vs. Graphic Design

What is the difference between digital marketing and graphic design? These two courses of study have many areas of overlap or similarities, but they also have distinct differences.

Similarities

Digital marketing and graphic design are alike in their goals. They are both looking to draw customers to a product or service. Both digital marketing and graphic design involve tech and the creation of marketing products via tech.

With both digital marketing and graphic design, the professional will need to stick to a strict set of rules and standards to match the branding and voice of the company. They may need to use certain colors and fonts in their projects, for example, or they may have formatting standards.

Differences

Though the goals and the tools may be similar, digital marketing and graphic design have distinct differences. Graphic design focuses solely on creating marketing materials using images and text with an artistic flair that helps create the right look. In contrast, digital marketing involves large marketing campaigns that look at all aspects of marketing and multiple media channels, but the primary focus is not creating the graphics and text.

Digital marketing involves a lot of analytics to determine if marketing campaigns are working. While graphic designers may employ some analytics to analyze the effectiveness of one design over the other, this is not a primary focus.

Finally, digital marketing is fully online, not in print. Graphic design uses software and tech, but the finished designs may be used online or in print. Sometimes, the work of graphic designers shows up in both places to create a uniform marketing message.

How Graphic Design and Marketing Work Together

Graphic design and digital marketing are not the same, but they are tied closely to one another. Many digital marketers also do graphic design work to create their marketing materials. Sometimes, graphic designers are employed by digital marketing firms as part of their marketing teams. Either way, the two fields are closely connected, which is why they sometimes are confused with one another.

Importance of Graphic Design in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is highly visual in nature. Even text-based marketing, like content marketing or blogging, involves images and layouts that employ graphic design principles. Thus, effective graphic design often is an important part of a digital marketing strategy.

Career Outlook

Both digital marketing and graphic design are careers that are in high demand. To draw customers to them and create a professional image, companies must have a good visual design from their web design to their social media pages. Brand awareness is the key to effectively running a modern business, and visual communication is a huge part of building a positive, recognizable brand in today’s marketing world. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not specifically track digital marketing, but based on projections for 2023 to 2033, the BLS estimates a 8% increase in demand for marketing professionals in general.* Due to the increasing importance of digital platforms in modern society, it makes sense to assume that many of these marketers will be digital marketers. Graphic designers do not have quite as strong of a growth projection, but they are still expected to see a growth of about 2% between 2023 and 2033 based on BLS data. This slower growth may be due to the work of many graphic designers getting assimilated into the work of general and digital marketing professionals. Still, without people skilled in graphic design, digital marketing efforts will fall flat.

Careers in Digital Marketing

The world of digital marketing has several potential career paths. These include:

• Digital Marketing Specialist: This is the most common path someone with a digital marketing career will take. Digital marketers plan, implement and analyze the digital marketing efforts of a brand. They can work directly for a company, or they can be freelance, independent contractors that work with multiple companies.
• Content Strategist: Content strategists focus on the content marketing efforts for a brand. Since content includes website content, blog posts, press releases, and social media content, this can be a full-time job. Content strategists may write the content themselves or contract it to a writer and use their marketing knowledge to optimize, post, and analyze the content.
• Social Media Manager: A social media manager manages and optimizes the social media presence for a brand. They will use research and analytics to determine the best tools to reach a target audience on social media and then will plan for and implement the posts for those pages. Social media managers will often need to interact with page visitors and analyze the various metrics available on social media platforms.
• Search Engine Strategist: Digital marketing involves knowing how to market through the search engines. Search engine strategists work alongside businesses to help them learn how to rank well in the various search engine results pages. This requires a knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, both of which you can learn in a digital marketing degree program.

Careers in Graphic Design

Graphic design is a little more focused on one area of marketing than the broader field of digital marketing, but there are still a number of career paths for people who graduate from a graphic design degree program. These include:

• Graphic Designer: Most people who choose a graphic design degree do so because they want to put their creative abilities to work as a graphic designer. Graphic designers create visual designs that match the creative ideas of their clients with their branding goals. This may include designing logos, images, illustrations, layouts, and even text-based visual items.
• Graphics Production Assistant: A graphics production assistant works alongside a graphic designer to troubleshoot problems, perfect designs, create the product a client will use to review designs, and resolve problems that may pop up during the design process. The assistant may also be the one who analyzes data related to a graphic design project.
• Digital Designer: A digital designer is a graphic designer who focuses solely on digital designs. They may create static and interactive or animated designs for their clients. The overall work is the same as a graphic designer, but the media used is more specialized.

Start Your Journey Today!

Whether you are interested in using graphic design knowledge to create visual communication or are looking to launch a career in digital marketing, Bryant & Stratton College has a program for you. We offer a fully online digital marketing bachelor’s degree program that can be the start of a rewarding career. If you need to get launched more quickly, consider our digital marketing associate degree. This online degree takes two years or less to complete, giving you the ability to start your career quickly. We also have a digital marketing specialist diploma for those who want to kickstart or explore this potential career even faster. If you are more interested in learning how to use design elements to create pleasing digital designs rather than focusing on brand awareness and marketing strategies, consider our graphic design associate degree.

Unsure which degree or diploma program is best for your career goals? Reach out to our team to get expert guidance or request more information about your programs of interest.

*Cited projections may not reflect local and/or short-term economic or job conditions and do not guarantee actual job growth.