No doubt just about one of the most misinterpreted & generalised titles within the IT field today must be the words 'Web Designer'? For anyone seeking to get in to the industry, an explanation about the different aspects ought to help to clarify things. Fundamentally, there are two main areas to web design; the creative element & the 'technical' process. Most people believe a 'web-designer' is someone who creates the visual aspects of the web-site. Many individuals will consider a web-designer a type of 'artist'. The truth is the present day web-designer's career is an inter-related mix of technical knowledge and design-creativity - and the two are becoming very hard to separate. We can illustrate this with more clarity if we break web design up in to it's different parts.

Graphic-artists are 1st - these people design and assemble the icons & pictures for a web site. They're not exactly site designers as such, and more often than not are multimedia artists using graphic lay-out and 'animation' software, (like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash.) Frequently, they'll have an artistic background, & might have undertaken studies at university or college level. More than anything else, this kind of work requires a strong creative ability.

Web designers come next - these people utilise design-software such as Adobe Dreamweaver to prepare & design the appearance & feel of the web site. By using graphics from the graphic artist, they will assemble the navigational framework of the site, keeping in touch with the clients to ensure the 'feel' is correct. A novice web-designer often starts with the form of the website, rather than the function. However, to genuinely produce a successful site, you need to begin with an understanding of the things you need the web-site to actually do. This could be a web based catalogue of items, or maybe it is an E-commerce site which wants to have the ability to sell directly from the site. Possibly rather like this web-site the chief function is simple access to pertinent info, or it could be it will be a show-case for products and services through video and a heavily 'graphical' inter-face. Whatever you require from a website, it must - at it's most basic level - carry out the 'function' for which it's intended. There's no point making a visually impressive site that's hopeless for people to get what they want from it! The over-riding aim of every good web designers is for people to check out their web-site repeatedly - so it really needs to be a comfortable & pleasurable experience.

The most technically trained website experts are generally the web developers. They will not just know 'HTML', 'CSS' and 'XML', but will have learned 'proper' programming-languages like PHP, ASP.Net, VB, C#, Java and the like. And since most contemporary internet sites of any size 'store' their information using SQL database technology, they're also likely to have got a strong handle on this too. In reality, its unlikely that a large e-commerce web-site has been built in lay-out format by a bunch of web designers. More commonly, after the formation of a place holder 'template', the material will be taken from a database & 'dynamically' inserted. This not only makes the construction, management and up-dates vastly more efficient, it equally creates a more consistent website.

A lot of free-lance web-designers can handle several of these jobs by themselves; certainly we come into contact with quite a few who can on a regular basis. Then again that degree of understanding takes a while to master. The right professional web design training-program then has to teach a number of things: A basic introduction to web-design, followed by how to use Adobe Dreamweaver & have a basic knowledge of Adobe Flash. This should then move onto a knowledge of HTML & 'CSS', and then some training within the area of e-commerce. To create dynamic websites it's important to gain knowledge of 'PHP', which is a simpler programming-language to get into than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a rudimentary knowledge of Databases and 'SEO'. All of this is basically to reach a level of technical ability whereby you are able to cope with a wide enough variety of sites. Much like anything, we must learn how to do the physical skills first, and then acquire greater 'finesse' through practice & experience. A comprehensive program of this sort would possibly require approximately four to five hundred hrs of part time study (& practice) and can therefore be viably accomplished part-time over a year. Careful planning to get the appropriate training program for your needs is a great investment of your time - knowledgeable career experts will help you sort the wheat from the chaff before you get started.

Additional skills which are very useful for professional web-site designers are an understanding of project management & E-commerce. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another field that tackles how a site is listed with search engines - so it can be more easily found (this is almost an entire job by itself.) And even though they generally originate from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the incredibly valuable function of the web server installers & administrators, who keep everything working in the background.

The design-environments employed by web-site designers are their most important resources. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially accepted in the industry now (as of '10). The software program which builds web sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & 'Adobe Flash' gives access to 'graphical' content that can be interactive and animated. Dreamweaver could be considered a rather fancy Word-Processor in lots of ways. Graphics and text can be displayed (according to certain rules) & then a basic interactivity can be created via page-linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is developed in the background with Dreamweaver, much like any other web design environment. It's the 'language' of web browsers, and is a 'script' that essentially 'draws' & controls the web-page you are viewing. Alongside 'HTML' are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' - such as XML & CSS. Because they are 'standardised', these can work on multiple platforms to facilitate more stream-lined 'HTML' coding & more efficient lay-out techniques. Therefore the page looks the same on MS 'Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera', Safari and so on. (or shall we say, that's the plan!) So although you place the graphic blocks and put in the textual content, 'Dreamweaver' is turning this into code in the background. A well-rounded understanding of these various languages is critical if you are to become a commercially-viable web-designer.

Its important to appreciate that even the most effective web design courses can only teach you the techniques & processes - not one can turn you into a professional web-designer. As you complete your training-course, take the time to build & develop a broad selection of your own sites to create a profile of your work. Produce sites about a hobby, your family, your favourite music group or Television show. Start to build inter-active web-sites and generate 'traffic' on to them. All this will seem more constructive on your CV, & in your Portfolio, than a qualification from Adobe will!

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