The definition of Web-Designer is perhaps one of the more over used and misunderstood labels in the I.T. marketplace. Web-Design takes on board a lot of diverse aspects, and a good understanding of these may help anyone wanting to get in to the industry. There are fundamentally 2 sides to web-design - the 'technical' side & the 'creative' design side. Many people think that a 'web-designer' is someone that is in charge of the visual areas of the web-site. Meaning a 'web-designer' is basically an 'artist' with some technical training. But in fact, in modern web design it's becoming more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' part from the creative side, because both are so inter-twined. If you break web design down in to it's different roles, then it becomes more apparent how each thing fits together.

Graphic artists are first - they design & create the icons & pictures for a web site. They most often bring this about by making use of graphic layout and 'animation' software (such as Adobe 'Flash' & Photoshop), and are generally not really web-designers per-se. Most graphic-artists went to university, with a qualification in artistic drawing. Evidently, this role involves a good artistic ability.

Web-designers are second - they make use of design-software such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create & design the appearance and 'feel' of the web site. They work with the actual images that are created by the graphic-artist, and work with the client to start to develop the 'feel' & navigational framework of the web site. A novice web designer often starts with the 'form' of a web site, instead of the 'function'. To build an efficient web site however, it's important to first look at what you actually want the website to accomplish. This might be an online inventory of products and services, or possibly its an e-commerce web-site that would need to have the ability to sell directly from the page. Perhaps you'll want to show off products and solutions by way of video & a largely 'graphical' interface, or it could be it's largely an informational web site where the requirement is simple access to key text content (such as this particular web-site.) Fundamentally the web-site must have the facility to meet its requirements - whatever those requirements are. Visitors will leave a site and not go back if it is too hard to 'navigate' - however great it appears on the surface. The overriding purpose of all good site designers is to have people pay a visit to their website on a regular basis - therefore it needs to be a happy and gratifying experience.

Extra skill-sets which are very useful for commercial web-site designers are an understanding of project management and e-commerce. Another field - which is not to be under-estimated - is 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation). This concerns how to optimise site indexation on Search Engines like 'Google' & 'Yahoo'. And whilst they strictly speaking originate from a network administration background, we should remember the incredibly valuable work of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

A lot of independent web designers can handle several of these roles by themselves; indeed we liaise with a number who can on a regular basis. But, it takes time to develop that level of skill. A web design course then that can equip you to get into the work-place should contain the following disciplines - A basic introduction to web-design, followed by how to use Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & have a fundamental understanding of Adobe Flash. The languages of HTML and 'CSS' should be covered next, with some E-commerce training built-in here. To build 'dynamic' web sites it's important to learn PHP, which is an easier programming language to get into than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a basic grasp of Databases and SEO. The reason you need these elements is so that you have the technical grounding to be effective on a range of web site builds. As with anything, we must learn how to really do the physical skillsets first, & then build greater 'finesse' as a result of practice and experience. Most students can get through a variable program such as this within a year - based upon part-time study & practice of about 400-500 hours. Careful preparation to get the appropriate training program for you is a great investment in your future - experienced career experts will help you to sort the best route for you before you start.

The design-environments employed by web site designers are their most valuable resources. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is really the most commercially accepted in the industry now (as of 2010). The software program that builds websites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and 'Adobe Flash' accesses 'graphical' content material which can be animated & interactive. Dreamweaver could be looked at as a glorified Word Processor in a great many ways. It allows you to lay graphics and text in accordance with certain parameters and rules, and then produce basic inter-activity through page linking. As with other web design-environments, Dreamweaver creates the program code 'HTML' in the background ('HTML' stands for Hyper Text Markup Language). In essence, this language of web-browsers is actually a script which 'draws' & controls the web-page being viewed. Paired with 'HTML' are the layout 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML. These tag languages allow more stream-lined 'HTML' coding & more efficient lay-out techniques, that will work on multiple-platforms (because they are 'standardised'). Therefore the web-page will look exactly the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera', 'Safari' and so on. (at least, that's the plan!) So even though you lay the graphic blocks and add the text, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this into code in the background. Its important to achieve an in-depth understanding of these languages in order to be a web designer at the commercial standard.

Web-developers are members of this group, and they are the most technically-minded. In addition to an understanding of HTML, XML & CSS, web-developers will know other highly regarded programming languages like VB, PHP, Java, C# and 'ASP.Net' for instance. They'll also generally have a good knowledge of 'SQL' Database technology, since this is how most modern substantial web-sites store their data. A typical e-commerce site doesn't have a bunch of web-designers who have produced it's countless pages in layout form. Instead, a place-holder 'template' will have been produced, and the details will be dynamically loaded from a Database. This makes not only the construction, management and upgrades hugely more efficient, it equally makes for a more consistent web site.

The main factor to stress is that the training alone will not make you a web designer; it will merely educate you on the methods. As you get into your training course, spend some time to create and develop a broad range of your own web-sites to create a profile of your work. Build websites about your special interest, your dog, a favourite band or TV show. Start interactive web-sites and generate 'traffic' to them. Everything you do will enhance your Curriculum Vitae, & indicate much more to an interviewer than just an Adobe certification.

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