The term 'Web Designer' is quite possibly one of the more over-used and misinterpreted labels within the I.T. community. Web Design takes on board a lot of distinctive aspects, and an understanding of these could help anybody considering getting in to the marketplace. Web-Design incorporates the 'technical' components of a website in addition to the 'creative' aspects. Many people believe a web designer is someone that designs the visible aspects of the website. Quite simply, they look at web-site designers because 'artists' on the whole. In spite of this, a modern web designer will in reality be as occupied with the technical element of things as much as the creative element. If you break web design down into it's various tasks, then it will become more evident how each thing fits together.

To start with, we have graphic-artists, that design and put together the graphic icons and images that we see on a web-page. They're not exactly web-designers per-se, and generally are multimedia artists utilising graphic layout and animation software, (for example Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe Flash.) The majority of graphic artists have been to university or college, and have a background in artistic drawing. Plainly, this job involves a good artistic flair.

Web designers are next - these people use design software like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create & design the appearance and 'feel' of the site. They take the graphics completed by the graphic artist, & together with their clients create an emerging style and navigational framework for the new site. A lot of amateur web-designers put emphasis to start with on the format of the web-site, as opposed to it's 'function'. But, you must really start with a grasp of the 'functions' it's required to do to develop a really productive web-site. This might be a web-based catalogue of items, or possibly it is an e-commerce web-site that requires to be able to sell directly from the site. Maybe much like this web site the main function is simple access to pertinent information, or perhaps it will be a show-case for products through video and a heavily graphical inter-face. Regardless of what you want from a web site, it must - at its simplest level - fulfil the function for which it is intended. A lot of sites look brilliant but they are a nightmare to 'navigate' & get what you want - & so people give up and never return. A good web designer must effectively produce a web-based 'experience' that's both satisfying and instinctive for the people coming to the web-site - that way they will visit more than once.

The key factor to emphasise is that the training alone will not make you a web-designer; it will simply educate you on the methods. Put together as many sites as you possibly can as you work through your course - the process will be invaluable and you will have something to show what you can do. Create sites about your hobby, your family dog, a favourite band or Television programme. You could even build inter-active websites and get traffic on them. This will all seem more constructive on your CV, and in your Portfolio, than a document from 'Adobe' will!

The key resources employed by web site designers are the design-environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (currently in Version 4 as of 2009/2010) being essentially the most popular commercially. Whilst Adobe Flash gives access to interactive & animated graphical content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds websites. In some ways we could possibly view 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word-Processor. In accordance with certain rules and constraints, it helps you place text and graphics, & then through a procedure called 'page linking' you can develop basic interactivity inside the web site. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program coding is produced in the background with 'Dreamweaver', just like any web design-environment. Essentially, this 'language of web-browsers is actually a script which 'draws' & controls the web-page being looked at. Along with 'HTML' are the layout 'tag' languages - like CSS and XML. As they are standardised, these can work on multiple platforms to enable more streamlined HTML coding & more effective lay-out techniques. And so no matter which web-browser a person uses, ('Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, Opera or anything else.) the web page will (hopefully) appear the same. Subsequently the graphic blocks you're placing and the text you're including is being converted into 'code' behind the scenes by 'Dreamweaver'. Its important to achieve an in-depth knowledge of these types of languages to be able to be a website designer at the commercial standard.

Some other skill-sets that are highly relevant to web-site designers in the professional marketplace are a good grasp of E-commerce & project-management. 'SEO' ('Search Engine Optimisation') know-how is also very useful for web-experts - this concerns the art of getting internet sites at or near the top of the Search Engines for frequently used search phrases. And even though they generally originate from a network-administration background, we should remember the incredibly valuable job of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

Many freelance web-site designers can handle several of these jobs by themselves; in fact we work with quite a few who can on a regular basis. It will require time though to acquire such a range of commercial skills. A good commercial web-design training-program then must teach a number of things: First of all, an introduction to basic web design, followed by teaching in Adobe Dreamweaver and an understanding of the primary elements of Adobe Flash. This would then lead on to a comprehension of 'HTML' and 'CSS', followed by some training into the area of e-commerce. To build 'dynamic' websites you'll need to have a grasp of PHP, which is an easier programming-language to get into than ASP.NET. You additionally need a basic grasp of databases and 'SEO'. All this is just to reach a level of ability technically where you can deal with a diverse enough variety of web-sites. The actual physical skill-sets must develop first of all, before you elevate them to a natural flowing style - much like when you were learning to drive a car. You'd have to allow somewhere around four hundred to five hundred hrs to study and effectively grasp a broad-ranging training-program of this nature - so if your plan is to accomplish this alongside a job it could be completed within one year. A skilled advisor will be able to help you prepare your way through this labyrinth of professional training, & we strongly suggest that you take the time to plan your track carefully before you begin your web design training.

Web-developers are the most technically apt of all. Not only will web developers understand the languages mentioned above, they will also have studied additional languages, for example 'C#', VB, PHP, 'Java', ASP.Net etc. They will also generally possess a solid knowledge of SQL database-technology, as this is one way most contemporary large websites store their data. In reality, it is un-likely that a big E-commerce web site has been created in lay-out form by a crew of web designers. What normally occurs is a place holder 'template' is built, and the contents are automatically inserted from the database to the website. So apart from much greater efficiency with the web-site build, using this method also allows for an infinitely more consistent look & feel as well.

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