Its reasonable to state that one of the more widely interpreted and improperly perceived definitions in IT is the expression 'Web Designer'. Web Design includes quite a few different facets, and a good understanding of these may help anybody wanting to get in to the industry. There are essentially 2 elements to web-design - the 'technical' side & the 'creative' 'design' side. The majority of people think a 'web-designer' is somebody that designs the visible areas of the web-site. Which means a 'web-designer' is fundamentally an artist with some 'technical' training. But in reality, in modern day web-design it's turning out to be more and more difficult to separate the technical part from the creative part, because both are so intertwined. It will become more obvious just how things sit together if we split the profession up in to its different parts.

First, we have graphic-artists, who design and build the graphic symbols and images that you find on a web-site. They most often make this happen by means of graphic lay-out and 'animation' software (such as Adobe Flash & 'Photoshop'), & are not strictly web-site designers as such. Often, they will have come from an artistic background, & could have undertaken studies at university level. Above all else, this specific job calls for a strong artistic skill.

Second, there are the web designers, who work with design environments such as Adobe Dreamweaver to generate the layout & 'feel' of the web site. They employ the graphics which are made by the graphic artist, & talk with their client to firstly develop the feel and navigational composition of the web-site. A novice web designer often starts with the 'form' of a website, instead of the 'function'. And yet, to actually create a useful web site, you must start with a clear understanding of the things you need the web-site to actually do. Is it mainly an e-commerce web site, which would need to have the capacity to receive payments safely and securely, or is it perhaps a web-based product or service brochure listing? It's possible you want to highlight products and solutions through video & a heavily 'graphical' inter-face, or maybe its predominantly an informational web-site where the requirement is simple access to key text content (such as this web-site.) No matter what the customer needs from a website, the essential necessity is that it meets the basic specification. A lot of web sites look amazing but they are a pain to get around & find where you'd like - & so visitors give up & never return. The purpose of any good web designer is first & foremost to design an event that individuals enjoy and are happy with - so they come back again and again.

Web developers are members of this group, and the most technically minded. They will not only understand 'HTML', CSS and 'XML', but will have trained in 'proper' programming languages such as 'PHP', ASP.net, VB, 'C#', 'Java' etc. They will also generally possess a strong understanding of 'SQL' database technology, as this is how most modern significant sites store their information. An average e-commerce web-site does not have a bunch of web designers who have created its many hundreds of pages in lay-out format. Instead, a place-holder 'template' will have been created, and the material will be 'dynamically' fed from a database. So in addition to much higher efficiency with the web-site build, this method also makes for an infinitely more uniform look & feel as well.

Many freelance web-designers can fulfil several of these roles by themselves; in fact we work with quite a few who are able to on a regular basis. But that degree of understanding takes a little while to master. A web design program therefore that will prepare you to get into the market must include the following - A basic introduction to web design, and then how to use Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & have a fundamental knowledge of Adobe Flash. The languages of 'HTML' and 'CSS' need to be covered next, with a certain amount of e-commerce instruction included here. Some database and 'SEO' knowledge is vital, & an understanding of the programming language 'PHP' (as opposed to the more complex ASP.NET) for you to construct 'dynamic' sites. Learning these skills will give you the ability to begin working on a decent cross section of websites. Similar to when you were learning to drive, you first have to attain the physical skillsets, before you can in essence progress beyond them and accomplish a certain amount of finesse. You'd need to allow somewhere around 400-500 hours to study and competently master a broad-ranging training-program of this nature - therefore if your aim is to achieve this along-side employment it could be carried out within a year. As there are various facts to consider, its worth taking a few minutes to look closely at any training programs that interest you. Talk to a person with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

The design-environments utilised by web-site designers are their key resources. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the most commercially utilised in the industry these days (as of '10). The software that builds website pages is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & Adobe Flash gives access to 'graphical' content which can be animated & interactive. 'Dreamweaver' could be looked at as a rather fancy Word-Processor in many ways. Text and graphics can be placed (within certain limitations) and then a basic inter-activity can be produced via page linking. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program-coding is developed behind the scenes with Dreamweaver, just as with any other web design environment. This is the 'language' of web browsers, and is a 'script' which essentially 'draws' & controls the page you are seeing. Along with 'HTML' are the lay-out 'tag' languages - for instance CSS and XML. As they are standardised, these can work on multiple platforms to allow more streamlined HTML code and more efficient layout techniques. And so which-ever web browser a person uses, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and so on.) the web-page will (hopefully) look the same. Subsequently the graphic-blocks you are placing and the text you're adding is being turned into 'code' behind the scenes by Dreamweaver. Its very important to achieve a thorough understanding of these 'languages' if you would like be a web-designer at the commercial level.

The thing you have to understand is absolutely no training-course can actually make a web-designer out of you. The actual course will only cover all the techniques & skills. Put together as many websites as possible whilst you go through your studies - the exercise will be invaluable and you will have a portfolio to show just what you can do. Produce websites about your special interest, your family dog, your favourite music group or even Television programme. Start inter-active web-sites and generate traffic on to them. All this will seem more favourable on your CV, and in your Portfolio, than a document from Adobe will!

Alternative skills that are relevant to web-designers in the professional market are an in-depth understanding of e-commerce & project management. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) know-how is extremely valuable for web-experts - this concerns the skill of getting sites to or near to the top of the Search Engines like Google for frequently used search terms. And behind the scenes but hugely important are the web server administrators and installers that make sure that the whole thing operates efficiently. Strictly speaking these people are network-administrator specialists though.

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