No doubt one of the most misunderstood & generalised titles in the IT market these days has to be the term Web-Designer? Web Design takes on board many distinct aspects, & an understanding of these facets could help anybody thinking of getting in the market. You'll find there are fundamentally two sides to web-design - the technical side and the 'creative' 'design' part. The average computer user believes web-site designers determine how a site 'looks' and feels. To put it differently, they look at web designers because artists on the whole. In spite of this, a modern 'web designer' will in reality be as occupied with the technical side of things as they are with the creative side. We can demonstrate this with greater clarity when we separate web design down in to its component parts.

Graphic artists come first - these people design & create the icons & pictures for a web page. They most often bring this about by means of graphic layout & animation software (like Adobe Flash and Photoshop), and are generally not really site designers as such. Many have been through higher-education, with typically a degree-level art qualification. Obviously, this particular role demands a solid artistic bias.

Next come the web-designers, who create the lay-out and overall 'feel' of a web site using a design environment like Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. They employ the actual graphics which are created by the graphic-artist, & work with the clients to initially create the feel and 'navigational' composition of the web-site. A web-designer with only limited understanding would probably start with the form rather than the 'function' of a site. Yet, to actually create a useful web site, it's important to start with a clear understanding of what you need the website to actually do. It could be it's essentially a web based catalogue, or an e-commerce web-site where items are sold there and then. It's possible you need to showcase products via video and a largely 'graphical' inter-face, or it could be its mostly an 'informational' site where the necessity is straightforward access to essential text information (like this web site.) No matter what you want from a website, it must - at it's simplest level - carry out the 'function' for which it is intended. So many websites look brilliant but they are a nightmare to 'navigate' and find what you'd like - and so users move on and never return. The purpose of any professional web-designer is first & foremost to create an event that individuals enjoy and feel happy with - so they will come back again and again.

The design-environments used by web designers are their key tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is really the most commercially utilised in the market nowadays (as of 2010). Whilst Adobe Flash provides access to animated and interactive graphical content material, Dreamweaver is the software which builds websites. You could actually state that Dreamweaver is the Word Processor of the Adobe CS range. Within particular rules and constraints, it lets you display graphics and text, & then via a method called page-linking you can develop basic interactivity within the web-site. Just like other web design environments, 'Dreamweaver' creates the program-code HTML in the background (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language). It's the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a script which basically draws & controls the web-page you are seeing. Together with HTML are the lay-out tag 'languages' - like CSS & XML. These allow more streamlined 'HTML' coding & more efficient lay-out techniques, that will work on multiple-platforms (because they're standardised). The idea is that the web page will look identical on any browser, whether it's Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, 'Opera' or whichever. So although you place the graphic-blocks and add the text, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this into code in the background. Its vitally important to have an in depth comprehension of these 'languages' to be able to be a website designer at a commercial standard.

Further skills that are very useful to professional web-site designers are a knowledge of project-management and e-commerce. Another area - that is not to be underestimated - is 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation). This is all about how to optimize web site indexation on search engines like 'Google' & 'Yahoo'. Also of course, we must not overlook the web server installers & administrators that stay in the background making sure the whole thing works; though they generally come from a network-administration background.

Lots of independent web-designers can handle a number of these tasks themselves; in actual fact we work with a number who are able to quite frequently. But, it takes quite some time to acquire that much knowledge. A web design course therefore that can equip you to enter the work-place should contain the following disciplines - A briefing of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then straight on to using 'Dreamweaver' to a professional level and the main technicalities of 'Flash' as well. Next you need to get to grips with the 'coding' languages 'HTML' and CSS, & after that be taught a synopsis of just how e-commerce works. Some database and SEO knowledge is important, & an awareness of the programming-language PHP (as opposed to the more complex ASP.Net) so that you can build 'dynamic' web sites. The main reason you need these elements is so that you have the technical wherewithal to operate on an array of site builds. Similar to when you were taking driving lessons, you first have to attain the actual physical competencies, before you can effectively move beyond them and achieve an element of 'finesse'. You'd probably need to allow about 400 - 500 hours to study & effectively learn a broad ranging training-program like this - therefore if your aim is to achieve this along-side employment it could be carried out within 12 months. As there's a lot of areas to consider, its well worth finding the time to look carefully at any training programs you're interested in. Speak to someone with knowledge of the industry to help you put things together.

It's important to realise that even the very best web design programs can only provide you with the methods & procedures - none of them will be able to turn you into a professional web designer. Put together as many sites as you can whilst you work through your training course - the exercise will be invaluable and you will have something to show just what you can do. A craft or interest might be an effective starting place, or perhaps your favourite animal, or a holiday-resort you especially liked. Construct an interactive web site, and start building 'traffic' towards it. Everything you do will add to your Curriculum Vitae, & prove more to a recruiter than an Adobe certification.

The most technically trained website experts are often the web-developers. They will not just know HTML, 'CSS' and 'XML', but will have also trained in 'proper' programming languages like 'PHP', ASP.Net, 'VB', C#, Java etc. And since most modern web-sites of any size 'store' their information using 'SQL' Database technology, they're also likely to have a firm handle SQL too. The majority of E-commerce web sites are not the result of a large group of web designers who have built countless web-pages in a lay-out form. What generally occurs is a place holder 'template' is developed, & the contents are automatically fed from the database to the web site. So along with far better efficiencies with the web site build, this method also allows for an infinitely more uniform look & 'feel' as well.

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