wasn't ux design not a thing last week? does design even exist? do i exist? what is this?

Oh but it is a thing. Visual Design is that its like saying "I'm a doctor with a focus in surgery." I'm a designer with a focus on the visual. Putting Visual on the front doesn't rule out other aspects of design. Its just like a specialization.

I work at a company where the title Visual Designer is used and I work in the Visual Design department, but I am not in the business of decorating wireframes. The titles only matter as much as helps to contextually understand what that person does without a long explanation. And it works well enough.

On a side note, anyone else tired of articles about what to call things?

I think all of these articles really blur together into the accepted thesis that design is a process not to be distilled into a single descriptive term. That whether you are fine tuning typography, collecting user research, or strategizing a project's architecture, all steps are key to the final, completed "design" and should be valued by any designer.

Says that guy.