It's reasonable to state that one of the more widely interpreted & improperly understood definitions in I.T. is the label Web-Designer. Web-Design incorporates lots of different aspects, and a good understanding of these can help anyone thinking of getting in the industry. Basically, there are two key sides to web-design; the 'creative' side and the technical process. Many people think that a 'web-designer' is someone that designs the visible aspects of the website. Lots of people may consider a 'web designer' a form of 'artist'. Having said that, a professional 'web designer' will in fact be as involved with the technical side of things as much as the 'creative' side. It will become a little more obvious how things sit together if we split the work down into its component roles.

People that design and put together the images and graphic icons that go on a website are known as graphic artists. Most are not strictly web designers per-se, & more often than not are multi-media artists using graphic lay-out & 'animation' software, (for instance Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe 'Flash'.) Often, they will have come from an artistic background, and might have undertaken studies at college or university level. Obviously, this particular work calls for a strong artistic bias.

Web-designers come next - they make use of design-software like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create & design the look & 'feel' of the site. They use the graphics done by the graphic-artist, & in partnership with their client deliver an emerging look and navigational structure for the brand-new webpage. A good number of amateur web-site designers place emphasis to start with on the 'format' of the web site, as opposed to its 'function'. If you want to build a successful website however, it's crucial that you first look at what you essentially want the website to accomplish. It could be that its actually a web-based catalogue, or an E-commerce site where products and services can be bought there and then. It's possible you need to accentuate goods via video & a heavily graphical interface, or maybe its predominantly an informational website where the necessity is straightforward access to essential text data (such as this web site.) Whatever the purchaser would like from a web-site, the essential necessity is that it fulfils the basic needs. People will leave a web site and not return if its too complicated to get around - however attractive it looks at first glance. The goal of any good web-designer is first and foremost to design an event that individuals enjoy & feel comfortable with - so they come back again & again.

Many of these jobs can and do cross over obviously, we are involved with a number of free-lance website designers who all cover most of the above functions. Nevertheless, you will need time to develop that much knowledge. A web-design course then that will prepare you to enter the work-place must contain the following disciplines - First, an introduction to basic web design, followed on by training in Adobe Dreamweaver & an overview of the primary elements of Adobe 'Flash'. The languages of 'HTML' and CSS need to be covered next, with a certain amount of E-commerce training provided here. 'PHP' must be taught so 'dynamic' web sites can be created (ASP.NET is much more involved, & PHP is very simple to get into at first,) and a simple understanding of databases and 'SEO' should be mastered. Accomplishing these skillsets will provide you with the ability to start working on a decent cross section of sites. The physical abilities have to come first of all, before you fine tune them to a natural flowing style - just like when you were learning to drive your first car. An all-encompassing training program like this would possibly entail close to four to five hundred hrs of part time study & practice and can therefore be viably completed part time over 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 someone with industry knowledge who can help you put things together.

Web-developers are members of the equation, and the most technically-trained. Together with an understanding of HTML, XML and CSS, web developers will know other respected programming languages like 'VB', PHP, Java, 'C#' & ASP.Net etc. And as most contemporary websites of any size 'store' their information using SQL Database technology, they are likely to have got a solid handle on this as well. A regular e-commerce web site does not have a bunch of web designers who've developed it's thousands of pages in layout format. More usually, after the creation of a place holder 'template', the details will be extracted from a database and dynamically inserted. Apart from being hugely easier to construct, manage and update, it also helps with the 'feel' of the site staying consistent.

Some other skill sets which are highly relevant to web-site designers in the commercial marketplace are a good grasp of e-commerce & project-management. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') knowledge is also very valuable for web-experts - this deals with the art of getting sites at or near to the top of the Search Engines for frequently used search terms. And although they strictly speaking come from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable work of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep everything working in the background.

The design environments used by web designers are their key tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is really the most commercially accepted in the market now (as of '10). Whilst 'Adobe Flash' gives access to animated & interactive graphical content material, Dreamweaver is the software that builds web pages. You could say that Dreamweaver is the Word Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite series. It allows you to lay graphics & text in accordance with certain parameters & rules, & then produce basic interactivity through page-linking. Dreamweaver (as with any web design environment) produces HTML (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program-code behind the scenes. It's the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a script which in essence 'draws' and controls the page you are looking at. Associated with HTML are the layout 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML. As these tag 'languages' are 'standardised', the smoother & more efficient outcomes function successfully on many different platforms. The idea is that the page will look exactly the same on any browser, whether it is Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, 'Opera' or whichever. So although you are placing graphic-blocks and adding text, behind the scenes, Dreamweaver is turning this in to code. A thorough understanding of these various languages is very important if you are going to be a commercially viable web-designer.

Its important to understand that even the very best web design courses can only show you the methods & procedures - none of them can actually turn you in to a bona fide web designer. During your study & training, you have got to apply yourself to constructing and creating as many sites as possible, to practice and assemble your own portfolio. A pastime or other interest can be an effective starting place, or perhaps your favourite pet, or a holiday-resort you particularly loved. Start inter-active sites & create traffic to them. Adobe certifications are of help, but how you can use the knowledge says much more about you as a web designer!

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