subject: What Does It Mean for the Web Design Industry? [print this page] What Does It Mean for the Web Design Industry?
So what does this all boil down to? If the web becomes app-based and content-based, where do web designers fit in if at all? The bad news is that if the Internet starts relying much more heavily on access via app rather than browser, there's going to be a lot less demand for web designers. Companies won't see the point in hiring someone to create an entirely bespoke website when they can just use a template and then feed all their content to Google and Facebook and Twitter.
Developers, on the other hand, will likely see a boom in business. A lot of money will be exchanging hands for apps that work better than current offerings and apps that might be able to undermine the big players. Of course, all these apps also need design work, but it will be a lot less demand than there is now for website design. It's likely a lot of designers will need to expand their offerings to cater to content creation rather than just web design.
Websites aren't going to go away any time soon. It's likely that there will be a bigger market for templates and themes as companies stop paying for custom designs. And there will be certain kinds of sites (like portfolios or art projects) that will always want to be designed.
Multimedia content will also still have a strong market. Those who can produce high-quality videos and even web-based apps (for things like Chrome OS) will have a strong business for years to come.
