What type of Designer or Copywriter do you need for your marketing project?

Stuck on which professional creative to hire? We reveal the key differences between various types of designers and copywriters.

Figuring out who you need to undertake various marketing tasks can be the biggest headache you encounter when running a small business. Many designers and copywriters have skill sets from across mediums and disciplines, but it can be confusing if you don’t know what they actually do and if they are the right person for your latest marketing project.

When it came to marketing our own businesses, Forelocks and Fleece and Lauren Bird Design, we discovered many people didn’t know the difference between a graphic or visual designer, or even what a copywriter does (hint – not handle copyright or any sort of IP). We decided to write a quick blog for you since it can be challenging to convey all the different types of designers and copywriters in a few sentences.

DESIGNERS

First things first: What kind of designer do you need? Graphic? Web? UI? Visual? Digital? Campaign?

A graphic designer is probably one of the most overused terms when you are searching online for a designer. It is often applied as an umbrella term to cover all of the design types. But when you take a breath and peek behind the curtain, a graphic designer is much more specialised. Traditionally, graphic designers deal with your tangible design items – your branding, business cards, stationery and the layout of meaty documents like annual reports or magazines.

A web designer deals with – you guessed it – websites. They are focused on bringing you the items for your website such as icons, web banners, infographics and presentations. UI designers are responsible for the look and feel of websites – they are often referred to interchangeably with web designers. UI designers occupy the strategic side as they pull together the foundational look and feel of your website, app or other digital products. They live and breathe experience, so they are the ones that have your user’s experience in mind.

A visual designer is a solution lead designer – they are the ones responsible for getting your brand’s unique style across eyeballs. Visual designers are strategically led and are able to explain in intimate detail why they’ve chosen certain fonts and colour combinations to elevate your brand message and have an impact on your audience’s psyche. They are across it all and while they may not relish having to do print based designs, they do have a solid foundational understanding of graphic design.

A digital designer spends a lot of their time on digital advertising, graphics for social media and email marketing. They are amazing at being able to get your message to cut through the white noise of social media and email marketing with strategically lead visual campaign messaging.

Finally a campaign designer is able to take the visual concept for an advertising campaign and apply it to both digital and traditional marketing – allowing you to have a campaign that’s visible across magazine and newspapers, direct mail, email marketing, digital advertising streams and social media.

COPYWRITERS

Now that your mind is boggled with all the types of designers, let us look at the different types of copywriters, such as SEO copywriters, UX copywriters and content writers. Bit like the design stream, some areas of expertise overlap, and many copywriters have skills from different areas of specialisation.

Traditionally a copywriter writes words that sell. You might have seen them portrayed in TV shows or movies as working at advertising agencies and smoking cigars all day while hammering away on a typewriter. Sadly, few of us own a functional typewriter these days; however, the arrival of digital technology has allowed copywriters go beyond producing copy for print advertisements.

Basically, a copywriter writes words (the copy) to communicate your message to your target market to persuade them to take a particular action. This could be to buy your product, engage your service, or even just subscribe to a newsletter. Copy is considered the ‘push’ to content’s ‘pull’, and it is essential to have accurate, compelling copy for your marketing materials.

SEO Copywriters are concerned with writing optimised copy for the web. The SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. The process involves identifying keywords, researching what keywords your competitors use, and what keywords you can strategically use in a website’s copy to help it rank higher in search engine results. SEO influences relevance and popularity and helps a website be found when consumers are searching for products, services, or information. However, search engines also reward readability, so you can forget keyword stuffing like the old days. Quality SEO copywriters will write with the human reader in mind then modify the copy accordingly. Many copywriters who write across print and digital mediums understand how to write for SEO but might not necessarily market themselves as a SEO copywriter.

UX copywriters are involved during the web development or design of a website and are concerned with the user experience (UX) of digital interfaces. They differ from copywriters and SEO copywriters in that they focus on enabling the user to instinctively navigate a website or application. The copy written by UX copywriters is aimed at guiding a user (customer) through a website or application while making the process as seamless as possible. An element of UX copywriting is the microcopy – all the small pieces of copy on a website (buttons, forms, footer links, pop-ups) that could feature generic text but with a bit of creativity can convey the brand’s personality to users and/or encourage a particular action.

Content writers are usually associated with writing blogs and articles. They write entertaining and educational content which can often be repurposed for social media to attract customers to your brand’s website. Content acts as the ‘pull’ to copy’s ‘push’ – in that while copy is about selling, content is about brand awareness: engaging with customers, providing information, and building a relationship that will hopefully lead to interest when the sales pitch is launched. Content is a useful way to help build your website’s rankings in search engines because if you have blogs or articles about certain topics people frequently search, and if the blogs or articles contain relevant keywords (SEO), then people are more likely to click through to your website.

So, do you need a copywriter or content writer? Most copywriters do both – the main difference is the purpose of your project and what you want the words to achieve. Some professionals regardless of which type of writing they do (Forelocks and Fleece included) refer to themselves as copywriters because that is the term used within the industry, but not everyone outside of the industry recognises it. Sometimes people think their services have to do with copyright (IP). Additionally, with the frequent upskilling by copywriters these days many possess the knowledge on how to write for SEO and basic UX, but don’t necessarily attach a specific label to what they do when promoting their services as that can further confuse non-copywriters.

We hope this post helped demystify the different types of designers and copywriters available. Sometimes varying terminology is used to describe the roles, but when in doubt ask the designer or copywriter directly if they are able to supply the skills required to complete your marketing project.

If you have any questions about Lauren Bird Design or Forelocks and Fleece’s services, feel free to give us a shout. 😊 If you are struggling with designing or updating your website design and copy, don’t forget that we are available to work collaboratively or separately to solve your marketing woes.

Keep an eye out for next week’s blog post where we discuss how to communicate what you want with a designer or copywriter and which questions you should ask before deciding who to hire.