It's fair to state that one of the more widely interpreted and badly understood terms in I.T. is the expression Web-Designer. Website Design takes on board numerous distinct aspects, and an understanding of these facets may help anybody seeking to get in the marketplace. You'll find there are essentially two elements to web-design - the technical side & the creative design side. Many people believe a 'web-designer' is somebody that is responsible for the visible areas of the website. Meaning a 'web designer' is essentially an 'artist' with some technical instruction. But in reality, within modern-day web-design it is becoming increasingly difficult to split up the technical side from the 'creative' side, as both are so intertwined. When you break down web design into it's different roles, then it will become more evident how everything sits together.

Graphic artists come first - these people design and build the icons and pictures for a web page. Most often they make this happen by utilising graphic layout and 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash and 'Photoshop'), and are not strictly web-site designers as such. Most have been through higher education, with typically a degree level art qualification. Plainly, this particular job involves a solid artistic ability.

Then there are the web-designers, who create the layout and overall feel of a website using a design environment such as Dreamweaver. They take on the graphics done by the graphic-artist, & alongside their clients create an emerging style and 'navigational' composition for the new web page. A web-designer with fairly limited knowledge would probably focus on the 'form' instead of the function of a web-site. But, to genuinely produce an effective site, you must begin with a clear understanding of the things you need the website to really do. This might be a web based catalogue of products and solutions, or possibly it is an E-commerce web-site which wants to be able to sell straight from the site. It could be you'll want to show off products and services by means of video & a largely 'graphical' interface, or it could be it is predominantly an informational web-site where the requirement is straightforward access to key text content (such as this website.) Essentially the web-site must have the ability to meet it's required needs - whatever those particular requirements are. People will leave a website & not return if its too tricky to 'navigate' - however pretty it looks at first glance. A good web-designer must essentially develop an on-line 'experience' that is both enjoyable and instinctive for the people coming to the web-site - that way they'll visit again and again.

Its vital to realise that even the very best web-design courses can only provide you with the techniques and procedures - not one will be able to turn you into a bona-fide web-designer. As you complete your training course, take some time to put together and develop a good selection of your own websites to build a collection of your work. Produce web sites about a special interest, your family dog, a favourite band or even Television show. You could even build interactive websites and get 'traffic' on them. All this will look more favourable on your Curriculum Vitae, and in your Portfolio, than a qualification from 'Adobe' will!

Some other skill-sets which are relevant to web-designers in the commercial market are an in-depth understanding of e-commerce and project-management. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another field that deals with how a website is indexed with search engines - so that it may be more easily found (this really is almost a whole job in itself.) And of course, we mustn't forget the web server installers & administrators who stay in the background ensuring everything works; although they normally come from a network administration background.

Web developers are members of the equation, and the most technically minded. These people will not only know 'HTML', CSS and 'XML', but they will have learnt 'proper' programming-languages such as 'PHP', ASP.net, 'VB', 'C#', Java among others. And because most modern web sites of any size store their information using 'SQL' Database technology, they're also likely to have got a strong handle SQL too. Most E-commerce websites aren't the result of a large crew of web-designers who've built countless web pages in a lay-out format. What generally occurs is a place-holder template is built, & the details are dynamically inserted from the Database to the web site. So apart from far greater efficiency with the site build, this process also provides for an infinitely more consistent look & 'feel' as well.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially popular design-environment used by web site designers nowadays. These essential programs are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software program that builds web sites is Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Flash accesses 'graphical' content material which can be animated & interactive. In a great many ways we might see Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word Processor. In accordance with specific rules and parameters, it allows you to place graphics and text, and then via a procedure called page-linking you can create basic inter-activity within the web site. HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program code is produced in the background with Dreamweaver, much like any web design environment. It's the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a 'script' that basically 'draws' & controls the web-page you are seeing. Lay-out 'tag' languages like CSS and XML are paired with 'HTML'. These tag languages enable more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient layout techniques, which will work on multiple-platforms (because they're 'standardised'). So which-ever web browser someone uses, ('Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, Opera etc.) the web page will hopefully appear exactly the same. Consequently the graphic blocks you are laying & the text you're putting in is being turned into 'code' in the background by Dreamweaver. A comprehensive understanding of these types of languages is vital if you're going to be a commercially viable web-designer.

Obviously there are cross-overs with a lot of these roles - in-fact we have interactions with quite a few web-designers who are competent in a lot of them. Although that degree of knowledge takes some time to master. You have to be taught a number of things on a commercially viable web design training program: A briefing of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then directly into using 'Dreamweaver' to a professional standard and the key nuances of 'Flash' as well. This should then lead on to a knowledge of HTML & CSS, and then some training within the area of E-commerce. To create 'dynamic' web sites you'll need to have a grasp of PHP, which is a simpler programming-language to start off in than ASP.NET. You also need a basic knowledge of Databases & SEO. The main reason you will need these elements is so that you have the technical wherewithal to be effective on an array of web-site builds. Similar to when you were learning to drive, you have to first develop the physical skills, before you effectively move past them and accomplish a degree of finesse. An intensive training program like this would probably take around 400-500 hrs of part-time practice & study and therefore can be viably finished part time over a year. An experienced expert can assist you to prepare your way through this quagmire of professional training, and we strongly recommend that you prepare your route with care before you begin your web design training.

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