What Is Digital Design? 2025 Industry Guide

Digital design plays a central role in how we experience the online world. Whether you're browsing a website, using an app, interacting with a brand on social media, or playing a video game, digital design shapes how those experiences look, feel, and function. It blends creativity with technology to solve problems, guide user behavior, and enhance usability. If you’re exploring how digital design fits into your personal, professional, or creative goals, you’ll find a wide range of paths, tools, and roles to consider in the following article.

If you're ready to dive into creative thinking and be guided through the digital design process, enroll in the University of Sydney's online course, Innovation Through Design: Think, Make, Break, Repeat. In as little as two weeks, you'll learn the fundamentals of human centered design, prototyping, usability testing, and more. By the end, you'll have earned a shareable certificate for your resume and LinkedIn profile.

What is digital design?

Digital design refers to a type of visual communication that presents information to users on an electronic device, such as a computer, tablet, or mobile phone. As you’ll explore throughout this article, digital design can include web pages, mobile app interfaces, graphics for social media, video game animations, 3D models, and more. Digital design accounts for how users interact with the end product, including:

• Optimizing how a design appears on and adapts to screens of different sizes

• A design's overall aesthetic appeal

• The way buttons, text, images, and other digital elements are positioned

• Making digital experiences accessible to and inclusive of all users

• Conveying a brand's identity

• Enhancing functionality by improving page load times and response times

Types of digital design 

Digital design encompasses many types of user interfaces and purposes and can figure into a variety of personal or professional goals. For example, you may want to start a digital design career, hire a digital designer for a project, or learn specific digital design skills to enhance your business. Explore digital design possibilities below. 

Digital graphic design

While researching this topic, you may be wondering how graphic design relates to digital design. There is some overlap between these fields, as digital designers and graphic designers both use software to communicate ideas visually. You can think of digital design as a broader field encompassing graphic design, UX/UI design, 3D design, and more. Explore additional distinctions below:

Digital UX/UI design

Digital user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design both involve optimizing human-computer interactions so that users can easily find information, take action, and engage meaningfully with a brand on any device. Digital designers who focus on UX and UI might create websites, landing pages, digital products, and apps. Design considerations might include the layout of on-screen elements, including text, buttons, colors, fonts, images, graphics, and more. 

Visual design

Visual design is concerned with the aesthetic presentation of a digital product. It brings together elements like color, typography, imagery, layout, and branding to create a polished, cohesive visual identity. The goal is to make a product look appealing while supporting usability. While visual designers aren’t typically focused on how users interact with a product, their work lays the foundation for an engaging experience. Strong visual design can establish trust, guide attention, and create emotional connection through consistent, intentional styling. Visual designers often work alongside UX designers, developers, and product teams to ensure that digital products are both beautiful and practical.

Interaction design

Interaction design is focused on how a user acts within a digital product. For example, what the users click, tap, type, or swipe, and how the system responds. It’s less about how things look and more about how they work during use. Interaction designers map out how tasks are completed and design behaviors that feel intuitive. This includes thinking about feedback (like animations or messages), error handling, and timing. Their goal is to create seamless, goal-oriented interactions that minimize user confusion or frustration.

Digital product design

Digital product design is the process of creating functional and user-friendly digital tools, such as mobile apps, software platforms, or online services. While visual design is part of the process, product design focuses heavily on usability, user flows, and how the product solves real-world problems. Product designers often conduct user research, prototype features, and test their solutions to ensure the final product is intuitive and effective. This area of digital design often overlaps with UX and UI design, but includes broader responsibilities like product strategy, feature planning, and collaboration with developers and stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle.

Read more: Product Designer vs. UX Designer: The Difference Explained

Digital design audio

Audio is an increasingly important component of digital experiences, especially in areas like podcast production, app development, video editing, and game design. Digital audio design involves creating, editing, and optimizing sound to enhance user engagement and reinforce the goals of a digital product or platform. This can include recording voiceovers, designing sound effects for user interactions (like notifications or button clicks), creating background music, or ensuring that audio elements are accessible across devices and platforms. Designers working with audio tools may use software like Audacity, Adobe Audition, or Logic Pro.

Digital design for marketing 

Digital design for marketing involves the design of digital assets to increase brand awareness, communicate messages to a target audience, capture a brand’s look and feel, and promote products. Some of the assets that a digital designer might create include infographics, email templates, banner ads and display ads, social media pages, social media graphics, and animated GIFs. 

Digital design for desktop publishing

Digital publishing design refers to designing layouts for digital documents composed mostly of text. Some of the projects that a designer might complete include ebooks, online newsletters, magazines, or pamphlets. Designers might optimize the visual layout of elements, functionality, and the overall aesthetics so the user can interact meaningfully with the material. 

3D design 

3D design involves the use of 3D modeling software to create a three-dimensional representation of a physical object or space. The object can then be printed or manufactured in physical form or appear on screen in 3D. 3D design can encompass fields such as architecture, fashion, product design, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), event design, and animation for film and gaming. Designers can create 3D models of buildings, interior spaces, characters, garments, physical products, and more. 

3D design can play an important role in the evolution and mainstream adoption of the metaverse, as immersive virtual experiences transform work environments, gaming, and more. 

4 components of effective digital design 

The priority for every digital designer is to create with the user’s needs, interests, and experience in mind. Let’s explore the qualities that make a digital design effective: 

• Accessible: Users can easily understand and interact with digital design elements. 

• Engaging: A design reflects the brand it represents, captures an audience’s attention, and provides an aesthetically pleasing experience.

• Interactive: A design enables and encourages interaction, including clicking, scrolling, and inputting information.

• Adaptable: A design can adjust to different screen sizes. 

Digital design jobs: compare and contrast

Digital design offers a wide range of career paths, from creating visually engaging interfaces to shaping how users interact with digital products. As more industries rely on digital tools and platforms, demand for skilled designers continues to grow across fields like tech, marketing, entertainment, education, and e-commerce. Here's a quick summary and comparison of digital design jobs:

• Visual designers craft the overall look and feel of digital products.

• UX designers focus on user research and structuring user-friendly experiences.

• UI designers design the layout and interactive elements of screens.

• Interaction designers shape how users engage with a product’s features.

• Product designers take a broader approach, balancing business goals, user needs, and technical feasibility.

• 3D designers create models and visual assets for games, AR/VR, or simulations.

• Digital marketing designers produce creative content for campaigns and social media.

Many digital design roles are collaborative, involving work with developers, product managers, and researchers. Depending on the job, you might work in-house, at a design agency, or as a freelancer.

How to get into digital design

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of digital interface and web designers will increase from 222,600 in 2023 to over 241,300 by 2033 [1]. This kind of job growth could signal a demand for digital designers and point to an increasing need for effective user interfaces on any device or program. If you're considering entering the field, job listings often ask for experience with tools like Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, or Blender. You'll need a design portfolio that demonstrates your process and results. Want to learn more about becoming a digital designer? Check out the article What is a Digital Designer? (And How to Become One).

Explore our free digital design resources

Exploring a new career path? Keep your finger on the pulse with our LinkedIn newsletter, Career Chat! Or, check out the following digital design resources to keep learning more:

• Take the Quiz: Which Course is Best for Learning Graphic Design?

• Watch on YouTube: UX Design Career Path: 5 Routes to Success or TOP 10 Game Design Skills You Learn in the Epic Games Certificate

• Hear from an industry professional: Meet the Video Game Designer Who’s Leveling Up with AI

Accelerate your career growth with a Coursera Plus subscription. When you enroll in either the monthly or annual option, you’ll get access to over 10,000 courses.

Build job-ready skills with Coursera Plus

Start 7-day free trial

• 
• 
• 
• 

Start 7-day free trial