Probably one of the most misunderstood & generalised expressions in the IT field these days has to be the term 'Web Designer'? In actual fact, web-design does contain quite a few distinctive aspects, and so it may help to simplify things a little when we go through each one. There are fundamentally two sides to web design - the technical side and the 'creative' design side. Most people imagine a 'web designer' is somebody that creates the visible aspects of the site. Many individuals will consider a web-designer a type of artist. But in actuality, in contemporary web design it's getting increasingly difficult to split up the technical side from the creative part, as both of them are so inter-twined. It will become more obvious just how things sit together if we break the job down into its different roles.

Graphic-artists come first - these people design & construct the icons and pictures for a web-site. They're not exactly web-designers per-se, & generally are multimedia artists utilising graphic layout and 'animation' software, (for instance Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe Flash.) Most have been through higher-education, typically with a degree standard art background. Obviously, this role demands a strong artistic ability.

Next, we have the web-site designers, that work with design environments such as Adobe Dreamweaver to set-up the lay-out & 'feel' of the site. They utilise the visuals which are created by the artist, and talk with their client to firstly develop the 'feel' and 'navigational' composition of the site. A novice web-designer tends to start with the 'form' of a site, instead of the function. But, you must really start with a grasp of the functions it's required to carry out to construct a really successful web-site. It's possible it's essentially a web-based brochure, or an E-commerce web-site where items are sold directly. Perhaps you want to highlight goods through video and a heavily 'graphical' interface, or maybe it is largely an informational web site where the necessity is straightforward access to essential text content (like this particular web site.) In essence the web site must be able to meet its requirements - whatever those needs are. There is little point building a visually interesting web-site that's difficult for individuals to find their way around! A good web designer must essentially develop an online 'experience' that is both gratifying & user-friendly for those coming to the web-site - that way they'll visit again and again.

Further skills which are very useful to commercial web-site designers are a knowledge of project management & e-commerce. 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation) expertise is also very valuable for web-experts - this deals with the skill of getting web-sites at or near the top of the Search Engines like Google for commonly used search terms. And of course, we must not forget the web-server administrators and installers who sit in the background ensuring the whole thing functions as it should; although they usually come from a network administration background.

The most technically-trained web experts are generally the web-developers. Together with a sound grasp of 'HTML', XML & 'CSS', web developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages such as Visual Basic, 'PHP', 'Java', 'C#' and 'ASP.Net' for example. And since most contemporary web sites of any size 'store' their data using 'SQL' database-technology, they are likely to have a solid grip on this as well. An average e-commerce website doesn't have a crew of web-designers who have produced its many hundreds of web pages in layout format. Rather, a place-holder template will have been built, and the material will be 'dynamically' fed from a Database. In addition to being hugely easier to create, manage and update, it also helps with the feel of the web-site remaining constant.

Several of these functions can and do crossover obviously, we work with a number of free-lance website designers who all cover a lot of the above jobs. Nevertheless, you will need quite some time to acquire that level of knowledge. A web design training course then that can prepare you to enter the work-place must include the following disciplines - A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then directly into using Dreamweaver to a professional standard & the main nuances of Flash too. Next you need to get to grips with the 'coding' languages 'HTML' & CSS, and then be trained in an overview of how E-commerce works. PHP has to be mastered so that dynamic websites can be built (ASP.NET is much more involved, & 'PHP' is easier to get into initially,) and a simple understanding of databases & 'SEO' should be mastered. All of this is merely to get to a standard of technical ability where you are able to work on a diverse enough variety of web-sites. As with anything else, we have to learn how to really do the physical skills initially, and then develop more finesse by way of experience and practice. A comprehensive training-program of this sort would probably involve about four to five hundred hours of part-time study (& practice) & therefore can be viably carried out part time over a year. As there's a lot of things to consider, it's well worth taking a few minutes to look carefully at any training-programs that interest you. Speak to somebody with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

Its vital to appreciate that even the best web design programs can only provide you with the techniques and procedures - none of them can convert you into a professional web-designer. Build as many web-sites as possible as you work through your course - the practice will be invaluable & you'll have a portfolio to show just what you can do. A craft or interest is a very good starting place, or simply your favourite animal, or a holiday-resort you especially enjoyed. Start inter-active web-sites and generate 'traffic' on to them. This will all appear much more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, & in your Portfolio, than a certificate from Adobe will!

The design-environments employed by web-site designers are their key tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially utilised in the market these days (as of '10). The software that builds websites is Adobe Dreamweaver, & Adobe Flash accesses 'graphical' content which can be interactive & animated. In some ways we could possibly view Dreamweaver as a glorified Word-Processor. It allows you to lay text & graphics according to particular rules and parameters, and then create basic interactivity through page-linking. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is developed behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', just as with any other web design environment. HTML is a 'script' which basically 'draws' & controls the page displayed on your monitor. Its the 'language' of browsers. Alongside HTML are the lay-out tag 'languages' - for instance CSS and XML. Because these tag 'languages' are 'standardised', the smoother and rather more efficient results work successfully on a number of different platforms. What this means is the page looks exactly the same on MS 'Internet Explorer', 'Mozilla Firefox', 'Opera', Safari etc. (at least, that's the idea!) So although you place the graphic-blocks & add the text, Dreamweaver is converting this into code in the background. Its crucial to achieve an in depth understanding of these languages to be able to be a website designer at the commercial standard.

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