The term Web Designer is quite possibly one of the most over used & mis-interpreted titles within the IT industry. If you're seeking to get into the marketplace, an explanation of the different facets ought to help to clarify things. Effectively, there are 2 main sides to web design; the 'creative' element & the 'technical' side. To the person in the street, a web designer is somebody that designs the 'look' & 'feel' of a website. Which means a 'web designer' is fundamentally an artist who has had some 'technical' instruction. Yet, a professional web designer will realistically be as occupied with the 'technical' side of things as they are with the creative side. We can illustrate this with more clarity if we break web design down into it's component parts.

Firstly, we have the graphic-artists, that design & put together the graphic icons and pictures that we see on a web page. Most often they make this happen by means of graphic lay-out & animation software (like Adobe 'Flash' & Photoshop), and aren't really web-site designers per-se. Most have come from further education, typically with a degree-level art background. Obviously, this work demands a keen artistic bias.

Next we have the web designers, who develop the layout and overall feel of a web-site using a design-environment such as Dreamweaver. They utilise the images that are provided by the graphic-artist, & talk with the clients to initially create the feel and 'navigational' framework of the web-site. A lot of inexperienced web site designers focus first on the 'format' of the site, rather than it's function. To develop an effective site however, its vital that you first look at what you essentially want the website to do. It could be it's basically an online brochure, or an e-commerce web site where products and solutions are available there and then. Maybe somewhat like this web site the key function is easy access to relevant details, or maybe it'll be a showcase for products and solutions by means of video & a heavily graphical inter-face. No matter what you want from a site, it must - at it's simplest level - carry out the 'function' for which its intended. Visitors will leave a website & not go back if it's too complicated to 'navigate' - however attractive it looks on the surface. A good web designer must basically produce a web-based 'experience' that's both interesting and user-friendly for the people coming to the web site - that way they will visit again and again.

The design environments employed by web-designers are their key tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially utilised in the market now (as of 2010). Whilst 'Adobe Flash' provides access to interactive and animated 'graphical' content, Dreamweaver is the software program that builds web-sites. You could say that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite range. Within certain rules & parameters, it helps you place text and graphics, & then via a method known as page linking you can generate basic inter-activity inside the site. Just like other web design-environments, 'Dreamweaver' produces the program-code 'HTML' behind the scenes (HTML stands for 'Hyper Text Markup Language'). Essentially, this 'language of web browsers' is a script which 'draws' and controls the page being viewed. Along with 'HTML' are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' - for instance CSS & XML. Because these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother & more efficient results work effectively on many different platforms. The theory being that the page will look the same on any browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', Safari, 'Opera' or anything else. Subsequently the graphic blocks you're placing & the text you're adding is being turned into code in the background by Dreamweaver. If you are aiming to be commercially feasible as a web designer, you'll have to have a thorough understanding of these types of languages.

Commercial web-site designers can also enhance their offering if they choose to branch-out in to areas such as project-management and E-commerce for instance. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another area which handles how a web-site is indexed with Search Engines - in order that it can be found more easily (this is almost a whole job by itself.) And behind the scenes but vitally important we have the web-server administrators and installers that make sure that the whole thing operates smoothly. Technically speaking they are network administrator professionals though.

Web-developers are members of the equation, and also the most technically-minded. As well as an understanding of HTML, 'XML' & 'CSS', web-developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages such as 'VB', 'PHP', Java, 'C#' and ASP.net for example. They'll generally also have a good knowledge of 'SQL' database technology, as this is one way most contemporary significant web sites store their data. The majority of E-commerce web-sites aren't the result of a large bunch of web-designers who've constructed many hundreds of web-pages in a lay-out format. What normally happens is a place holder 'template' is produced, & the contents are dynamically inserted from the Database to the web site. This not only makes the construction, management and enhancements massively more efficient, it equally creates a more consistent website.

Lots of free-lance web designers can fulfil a number of these functions by themselves; indeed we liaise with quite a few who can on a regular basis. Although that level of knowledge takes a little while to master. The right commercial web design training-program then must instruct on a number of things: A basic introduction to web design, and then how to utilise Adobe Dreamweaver & have a fundamental understanding of Adobe Flash. This would then move onto an understanding of HTML and CSS, followed by vital insights into the field of e-commerce. PHP should be taught to ensure that dynamic sites can be built (ASP.Net is actually much more involved, and 'PHP' is easier to get into initially,) and a basic understanding of Databases and SEO should be mastered. All this is simply to get to a level of technical ability whereby you are able to work with a broad enough variety of sites. Similar to when you were learning to drive, you must first learn the physical competencies, before you ultimately progress past them and achieve an element of 'finesse'. Most candidates can work through a versatile training course of this nature within a year - based on part time study & practice of close to four to five hundred hrs. As there are numerous points to consider, it's well worth taking a few minutes to look closely at any training programs you're interested in. Speak to somebody with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

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