Its fair to say that perhaps one of the most widely interpreted and improperly defined definitions in I.T. is the label Web-Designer. Website Design includes numerous distinct aspects, & a good understanding of these facets may help anyone seeking to get in to the marketplace. Fundamentally, there are 2 principal areas to web design; the creative side & the 'technical' side. To the person in the street, a web designer is someone that creates the look and 'feel' of a site. In other words, they think of web-site designers as artists in the main. Yet, a professional 'web-designer' will in fact be as occupied with the technical side of things as they are with the 'creative' side. We'll demonstrate this with more clarity if we break web-design down in to it's component parts.

Individuals that design & construct the pictures & graphic icons which go on a website are called graphic-artists. In real terms, graphic-artists usually aren't really site designers. More commonly they are multi-media artists who make use of software like Adobe 'Photoshop' & 'Flash' to create their results. Most graphic artists went to university or college, and have a qualification in artistic drawing. Clearly, this job involves a solid artistic ability.

Web-designers are second - these people utilise design software like Dreamweaver to plan & design the look & 'feel' of the web site. They take on the visuals done by the artist, and in partnership with their client generate an emerging look and navigational structure for the brand-new web site. A large number of amateur web-designers concentrate first of all on the format of the site, instead of it's function. And yet, you need to essentially start with a grasp of the 'functions' it needs to perform to construct a truly productive web-site. Is it principally an E-commerce website, that really needs to be ready to receive payments securely, or is it an online product catalogue listing? Possibly somewhat like this web-site the chief purpose is simple access to relevant information, or maybe it'll be a showcase for merchandise via video & a heavily 'graphical' interface. Basically the site must have the facility to meet its needs - whatever those requirements are. There's little point creating a visually interesting site that's hopeless for anyone to get what they want from it! The overriding aim of all professional web-designers is to have people see their web site on a regular basis - therefore it needs to be a happy & enjoyable experience.

Additional skill-sets that are very useful to professional web designers are a knowledge of project-management and e-commerce. Another area - that is not to be under-estimated - is SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This is focused on how to optimise web-site listings on search engines like Google and 'Yahoo'. And although they typically originate from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable function of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

Web developers are members of this equation, and also the most technically-trained. Not only will web-developers know the languages mentioned above, they will also have had training in other languages, for example C#, 'VB', 'PHP', 'Java', 'ASP.Net' and others. They'll also generally have a solid knowledge of 'SQL' database technology, as this is how most modern large web-sites store their data. Most E-commerce web sites aren't the result of a large group of web-designers who have built thousands of web-pages in layout form. What normally happens is a place holder 'template' is created, and the contents are dynamically fed from a database to the site. So as well as much larger efficiencies with the site build, this process also allows for a more consistent look and 'feel' as well.

The most important resources utilised by web site designers are the design environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (presently in version 4 as of '09/10) staying the most popular commercially. Dreamweaver is the software program which builds website pages, with Flash delivering usage of interactive and animated 'graphical' content material. In a great many ways we might view 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word-Processor. It allows you to lay text & graphics according to particular rules & parameters, & then build basic inter-activity via page-linking. Just like other web design-environments, Dreamweaver creates the program code 'HTML' in the background (HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). HTML is a script which in essence 'draws' & controls the web page displayed on your monitor. Its the 'language' of web-browsers. Lay-out 'tag' languages like XML & CSS are matched up with 'HTML'. These tag languages enable more streamlined 'HTML' coding and more efficient layout methods, which will work on multiple platforms (because they are 'standardised'). The concept is that the web page will look exactly the same on any internet browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', Safari, 'Opera' or anything else. As a result the graphic-blocks you are laying & the text you are putting in is being turned into 'code' in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. A thorough understanding of these 'languages' is essential if you are to become a commercially viable web-designer.

Several of these functions can & certainly do cross-over needless to say, we use various free-lance website designers who all cover a lot of the previously mentioned roles. But that degree of understanding will take a little while to master. You need to be trained in several things on a professionally feasible web-design training package: A basic introduction to web design, followed by how to utilise Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and gain a basic understanding of Adobe Flash. The languages of HTML and 'CSS' need to be covered next, with a level of e-commerce training built-in here. To build dynamic sites you'll need to have a grasp of 'PHP', which is an easier programming-language to start off in than ASP.Net. You additionally need a basic grasp of Databases & SEO. All of this is just to get to a level of competence technically whereby you can cope with a wide enough variety of sites. The actual physical abilities have got to come first of all, before you fine tune them to a more natural flowing style - much like the time you were learning to drive a car. The majority of trainees can get through a variable training course like this within a yr - based upon part-time study & practice of close to 400-500 hours. As there's a lot of areas to consider, its worth making the effort to look closely at any training-programs that interest you. Talk to someone with knowledge of the industry who can help you sort things out.

The one thing you must grasp is that no training-course can in fact make a web designer out of you. The course will simply teach all the techniques & skills. Throughout your training and study, you have got to apply yourself to building & creating as many web sites as you can, to practice and assemble your portfolio. Your own web sites can be about anything you like - your local music scene, farm pets, a writer you like or motor bikes. You could even set up inter-active websites and get traffic on them. Everything you do will add to your Curriculum Vitae, & prove more to a recruiter than just an Adobe certificate.

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