Its reasonable to say that perhaps one of the more widely interpreted & improperly understood terms within IT is the expression 'Web Designer'. For anybody seeking to get into the marketplace, an explanation about the different facets might help to clarify things. Fundamentally, there are two key sides to web design; the creative side and the 'technical' process. The average laptop or computer user thinks web designers determine how a site looks & feels. To put it differently, they look at web designers because 'artists' on the whole. But in actuality, within contemporary web-design it is getting increasingly difficult to separate the 'technical' part from the creative part, as both of them are so intertwined. When you break web design down into its various roles, then it becomes much more obvious how each thing sits together.

The people that design and construct the pictures and graphic-icons which go on a website are generally known as graphic artists. They're not really site designers as such, & most of the time are multi-media artists employing graphic lay-out & 'animation' software, (like Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe 'Flash'.) The majority of graphic artists attended college or university, with a qualification in artistic drawing. This area is much more about a creative artistic ability than any other function.

Web-designers are next - they employ design software such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to prepare and design the 'look' and 'feel' of the website. They utilise the visuals which are created by the graphic-artist, & work with the clients to firstly create the 'feel' and 'navigational' structure of the web site. An amateur web designer tends to start with the form of a website, rather than the function. Although, to really develop an effective website, you should begin with an understanding of what you require the site to really do. It could be it's in effect a web-based catalogue, or an e-commerce web site where products are available there and then. It's possible you need to highlight merchandise by means of video and a largely graphical interface, or maybe it's predominantly an 'informational' web-site where the requirement is straightforward access to essential text data (such as this site.) Regardless of what you need from a website, it must - at its most basic level - fulfil the 'function' for which its designed. There is little point designing a visually inspiring web-site that's too hard for individuals to get to where they want! The goal of any good web-designer is to first and foremost produce an experience that individuals enjoy and feel relaxed with - so that they will come back again & again.

The Adobe Creative Suite is regarded as the most commercially-popular design environment employed by web designers nowadays. These vital applications are now ('10) on Version 4. The software program which builds websites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and Adobe Flash accesses graphical content material which can be interactive & animated. In a great many ways we could view 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word Processor. It enables you to lay text & graphics in accordance with particular rules & parameters, & then develop basic inter-activity through page linking. Dreamweaver (or any other web design environment) creates HTML (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program code behind the scenes. Effectively, this 'language of web browsers' is a 'script' which draws & controls the web-page being looked at. Matched with HTML are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' like XML & CSS. These tag languages enable more streamlined HTML coding and more effective lay-out techniques, which will work on multiple-platforms (as they are 'standardised'). Therefore the web-page will look exactly the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, 'Mozilla Firefox', Opera, 'Safari' and so on. (at least, that's the idea!) So though you are placing graphic-blocks and text, behind the scenes, 'Dreamweaver' is turning what you're doing into code. A well-rounded understanding of these various 'languages' is essential if you are to be a commercially viable web-designer.

Web developers are essentially the most technically trained of all. Not only will web developers know the languages above, they will also have studied additional languages, for example 'C#', VB, PHP, 'Java', ASP.Net and so on. A large number also possess an effective knowledge of SQL, the database-language - because the information on many large modern web sites is stored in this language. A typical E-commerce website doesn't have a group of web-site designers who've developed it's many hundreds of pages in layout form. What generally happens is a place holder template is produced, & the contents are automatically fed from the database to the web-site. So apart from far better efficiency with the site build, this process also makes for a much more consistent look and feel as well.

Lots of freelance web designers can fulfil a number of these jobs themselves; in fact we work with quite a few who can quite frequently. However, it will take time to acquire that level of knowledge. An ideal professional web design training program then needs to teach a number of things: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web-design first, then straight into using Dreamweaver to a professional level and the main technicalities of Flash too. This would then lead on to an understanding of 'HTML' & CSS, and then some training into the field of e-commerce. To build dynamic web-sites it's important to have a grasp of 'PHP', which is an easier programming-language to start off in than ASP.Net. You also need a rudimentary grasp of databases & 'SEO'. The reason why you need all these elements is so that you have the technical wherewithal to work on a range of web site builds. The physical competencies have to come first of all, before you can elevate them to a natural and flowing style - just like when you were learning to drive your first car. You'd need to allow around four hundred to five hundred hours to study & effectively master a wide ranging program like this - so if your plan is to achieve this along with full-time work it could be carried out within twelve months. A professional expert will be able to assist you to plan the right path through this labyrinth of commercial-learning, & we recommend that you take the time to plan your track carefully before you start your training.

The most important point to emphasise is the fact that training program alone won't make you a web-designer; it will merely coach you on the techniques. Put together as many sites as possible as you work through your course - the exercise will be invaluable and you'll have something to show what you can do. A craft or other interest can be an effective place to start, or perhaps your favourite pet, or a holiday-resort you particularly liked. You could even set up inter-active web-sites & get traffic on them. 'Adobe' certifications are helpful, but showing how you can use the knowledge says far more about you as a web designer!

Additional skills that are important to professional web-site designers are a knowledge of project-management and E-commerce. 'SEO' ('Search Engine Optimisation') know-how is also extremely useful for web experts - this deals with the art of getting web sites to or near to the top of the Search Engines like Google for commonly used search phrases. Also of course, we should not overlook the web-server administrators & installers who sit in the background ensuring the whole thing works properly; though they generally originate from a network-administration background.

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