Undoubtedly just about one of the most mis-interpreted & over-worked titles in the I.T. sector today must be the words 'Web Designer'? In reality, web design does include quite a few distinctive fields, & so it may well help to simplify things a little if we go through each one. You'll find there are essentially two sides to web design - the 'technical' process & the creative 'design' side. The typical computer user believes web-site designers determine how a web-site 'looks' & feels. Many people will consider a web-designer a type of 'artist'. Having said that, a modern web designer will really be as involved with the 'technical' element of things as they are with the 'creative' side. It will become a bit more evident just how things fit together when we break the profession up into its different roles.

The people that design & construct the images & graphic symbols to go on a web page are generally known as graphic-artists. In real terms, graphic artists aren't really web-designers. More commonly they are multimedia artists that utilise software such as Adobe 'Photoshop' & 'Flash' to bring about their end results. Normally, they'll have come from an art background, and may well have undertaken studies at university or college level. This particular role is more about creative ability than anything else.

Next, there are the web site designers, that use design-environments like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to set-up the lay-out & 'feel' of the web-site. They use the work created by the graphic artist, and in conjunction with their client deliver an emerging style and 'navigational' framework for the brand new web site. A web-designer with only limited knowledge may well begin with the form instead of the 'function' of a web site. And yet, to really produce a useful website, you have to start with an understanding of what you require the web-site to actually do. Maybe its effectively an online catalogue, or an e-commerce site where goods are available directly. Or perhaps it will contain lots of video and heavy graphics. Then again it could be predominantly an information site, where it's essential to provide straightforward entry to appropriate web pages of text. Whatever you want from a site, it must - at its most basic level - carry out the 'function' for which its intended. Visitors will give up on a site and not come back if it's too difficult to get around - however pretty it looks at first glance. A good web-designer must essentially develop a web-based experience that is both pleasurable and instinctive for those visiting the web site - that way they'll come back again.

Professional web-site designers can also improve their offering if they branch out in to areas like project-management and e-commerce for instance. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') expertise is extremely valuable for web experts - this deals with the art of getting sites to or near to the top of the Search Engines for frequently used search phrases. And whilst they strictly speaking come from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the incredibly valuable role of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep the whole thing working behind the scenes.

Its essential to understand that even the most effective web design courses can only teach you the methods & processes - not one can actually turn you into a bona-fide web designer. All through your training and study, you should apply yourself to building & creating as many sites as possible, to prepare and assemble your portfolio. Your own websites can be about anything you like - your local music scene, horses, a writer you like or even motor bikes. Start to build interactive sites and create 'traffic' on to them. Adobe accreditations are useful, but how you can use the knowledge says a lot more about you as a web designer!

The 'Adobe Creative Suite' is regarded as the most commercially-popular design-environment used by web site designers right now. These valuable programs are currently ('10) on Version 4. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' provides access to interactive & animated 'graphical' content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software program that builds web-sites. You could actually state that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. In accordance with particular rules & constraints, it lets you place text and graphics, & then via a process known as page linking you can develop basic interactivity within the web site. Dreamweaver (or any other web-design environment) creates 'HTML' (HyperText Markup Language) program code in the background. It's the language of web browsers, & is a script which basically 'draws' & controls the web-page you're seeing. Matched with HTML are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML. As these tag languages are 'standardised', the streamlined and rather more efficient results function successfully on many different platforms. The concept being that the web page will appear identical on any internet browser, be it 'Mozilla Firefox', Internet Explorer, 'Safari', Opera or whatever. So even though you lay the graphic-blocks & put in the textual content, Dreamweaver is converting this into coding in the background. It's essential to achieve a thorough comprehension of these types of languages if you would like be a web designer at a commercial level.

Web-developers are members of this equation, and they are the most technically-minded. Together with being proficient in HTML, 'XML' & 'CSS', web developers will know other respected programming languages like VB, PHP, Java, 'C#' and 'ASP.Net' for example. A large number also have a very good knowledge of 'SQL', the Database language - as the data on many large modern web-sites is stored in this particular language. A normal E-commerce website does not have a group of web-site designers who've developed its countless web pages in layout format. More usually, after the construction of a place holder template, the material will be taken from a Database and dynamically inserted. Besides being hugely easier to build, manage and update, it also helps with the feel of the web site being constant.

Lots of freelance web-site designers can carry out a number of these tasks themselves; in actual fact we liaise with a number who can regularly. It takes time though to acquire such a range of commercial skill-sets. A web-design course then that will prepare you to get into the workplace should consist of the following - A basic introductory tutorial to web design, and then how to utilise Adobe Dreamweaver & have a basic understanding of Adobe 'Flash'. Next you must understand the 'coding' languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', and then be taught an overview of how E-commerce works. 'PHP' must be learned in order that dynamic web-sites can be designed (ASP.NET is far more involved, and PHP is easier to get into at first,) & a simple idea of databases and 'SEO' should be achieved. All of this is merely to reach a standard of ability technically whereby you are able to cope with a diverse enough array of web-sites. As with anything, we must learn how to do the physical skills initially, & then build greater finesse by means of practice & experience. Most people can work through a versatile training course like this inside a year - assuming part time study and practice of approximately 400 - 500 hours. As there are numerous points to consider, its well worth finding the time to look carefully at any training-programs you're interested in. Talk to someone with industry knowledge who can help you put things together.

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