Graphic Designer and Illustrator

A graphic designer plans the overall layout and visual appearance of a media product. They decide where text and images sit, which colours and typefaces are used, and how the finished item looks. For a mobile puzzle game, for example, the designer decides where the score sits on the screen, how big the pause button is and which colours make the different tiles easy to tell apart.

Designers may create original artwork themselves, but they also bring together assets made by other people, such as photographs from a photographer or drawings from an illustrator, and make sure they all match. Their responsibilities include developing design concepts, keeping everything consistent with the client's brand, researching current trends and checking the quality of the final work before it is released.

Illustrator or graphic artist

An illustrator, sometimes called a graphic artist, produces original artwork and graphics, usually as assets for a larger product rather than the whole product itself. An illustrator might draw the friendly mascot for a library reading challenge, which the designer then places on posters, bookmarks and the library's website.

Illustrators also produce technical or explanatory illustrations, such as a labelled plan of the stage for a school musical, showing where each piece of scenery is flown in from. The artwork has to be accurate as well as attractive, because its job is to explain something clearly.

How the roles overlap

The two roles are similar and may be carried out by the same person, especially on smaller projects where one person plans the layout and draws the artwork too. An illustrator may work in pre-production, preparing drawings before the layout is built, and/or in production, producing artwork as the product comes together.