Probably one of the most misinterpreted and over-worked titles in the IT market today has to be the term 'Web-Designer'? For anyone looking to get in to the industry, an explanation of the different aspects might help to clarify things. Web Design involves the technical elements of a website plus the creative elements. Lots of people assume a web designer is someone that is in charge of the visible aspects of the site. Many people may consider a 'web-designer' a kind of 'artist'. Yet, a commercial web designer will really be as involved with the 'technical' side of things as much as the 'creative' side. It becomes much more apparent how things sit together when we split the profession down in to its various roles.

Graphic-artists come 1st - they design and construct the icons & images for a web-site. They are not exactly web designers per-se, & most of the time are multimedia artists utilising graphic lay-out and animation software, (for example Adobe 'Photoshop' & Adobe 'Flash'.) Most graphic artists attended university, with a background in art and design. This area is more about artistic ability than any other function.

Second, there are the web site designers, that make use of design environments such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to set-up the layout & 'feel' of the webpage. They employ the actual images which are produced by the graphic-artist, & talk with the client to initially create the feel and navigational structure of the web site. An amateur web designer tends to start with the 'form' of a web site, rather than the function. However, you need to really begin with a grasp of the functions it needs to do to construct a truly effective website. Is it for the most part an e-commerce website, which wants to have the capacity to take payments securely, or is it a web-based product or service brochure listing? Perhaps you'll want to show off products and services through video and a largely 'graphical' inter-face, or maybe its mostly an 'informational' web-site where the need is straightforward access to key text content (such as this particular web-site.) Regardless of what you want from a site, it must - at its simplest level - fulfil the 'function' for which it is intended. People will abandon a web site & not return if its too complicated to get around - however attractive it appears on the surface. The goal of any good web-designer is to first and foremost produce an experience that visitors enjoy and feel comfortable with - so they return again & again.

The key tools employed by web site designers are their design environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (currently in version 4 as of 2009/2010) staying the most commercially popular. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' gives access to interactive and animated 'graphical' content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds websites. 'Dreamweaver' could be looked at as a glorified Word-Processor in a great many ways. Within particular rules & constraints, it allows you to place text & graphics, & then through a process known as page-linking you can develop basic inter-activity throughout the site. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program coding is developed in the background with Dreamweaver, just as with any web design environment. 'HTML' is a 'script' which essentially draws & controls the web page on your monitor. It is the 'language' of browsers. Lay-out tag 'languages' like XML and CSS are associated with 'HTML'. Because these tag languages are 'standardised', the smoother & more efficient outcomes function successfully on many different platforms. And so which-ever internet browser someone uses, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, 'Opera' and so on.) the web page will hopefully look the same. So although you lay the graphic-blocks & put in the textual content, Dreamweaver is converting this into code behind the scenes. It is vitally important to gain a thorough comprehension of these languages if you would like be a web designer at a commercial standard.

The main point to emphasise is the fact that training itself won't make you a web-designer; it will merely teach you the methods. Put together as many sites as you can whilst you go through your course - the process will be invaluable & you'll have something to show what you can do. Produce web-sites about a special interest, your family, your favourite music group or even TV programme. You might even build inter-active web-sites & get 'traffic' on them. This will all seem much more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, & in your portfolio, than a certificate from 'Adobe' will!

The most technically trained website experts are often the web-developers. Not only will web-developers know the languages mentioned above, they will also have mastered additional languages, for instance C#, Visual Basic, PHP, Java, 'ASP.Net' and so on. They'll also generally have got a good understanding of 'SQL' database-technology, as this is how the majority of substantial sites store their data. In reality, its unlikely that a big E-commerce website has been created in layout format by a bunch of web designers. What typically happens is a place holder 'template' is developed, & the contents are dynamically fed from a Database to the website. Besides being vastly easier to construct, manage & up-date, it also helps with the 'feel' of the web-site remaining constant.

Extra skillsets that are very useful to professional web designers are a knowledge of project management and e-commerce. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) knowledge is also extremely useful for web experts - this deals with the art of getting websites to or near to the top of the Search Engines like Google for frequently used search phrases. Also of course, we should not overlook the web-server administrators & installers who sit in the background making sure the whole thing functions as it should; though they typically come from a network administration background.

A lot of free-lance web designers can carry out a number of these jobs by themselves; indeed we come into contact with a number who are able to on a regular basis. Then again that level of knowledge takes some time to master. An appropriate professional web design training-program therefore needs to teach a number of things: First of all, an introduction to basic web design, followed by training in Adobe Dreamweaver and an overview of the primary aspects of Adobe 'Flash'. Next you need to get to grips with the coding languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', and then be trained in a synopsis of how e-commerce operates. 'PHP' really should be covered so that dynamic sites can be created (ASP.NET is far more involved, & 'PHP' is more straightforward to get into at first,) and a basic understanding of databases & 'SEO' should be mastered. The reason you need these elements is they will give you the technical grounding to operate on an array of website builds. As with anything else, we must learn how to do the physical skill-sets initially, and then build greater 'finesse' by experience and practice. A comprehensive program like this would probably take approximately 400-500 hrs of part-time practice and study & can therefore be successfully completed part time over a year. Detailed planning to obtain the appropriate training course for your needs is a good investment of your time - knowledgeable training advisors will help you sort the wheat from the chaff before you decide to begin.

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