Surely one of the most misinterpreted & generalised titles in the IT market today has to be the words Web Designer? For anybody seeking to get into the marketplace, an explanation about the distinctive aspects ought to help to de-mystify things. There are fundamentally 2 elements to web-design - the technical process and the 'creative' 'design' part. Many people presume a 'web designer' is someone that is responsible for the visible aspects of the site. Which means a 'web designer' is fundamentally an artist who has had some 'technical' instruction. But in reality, within contemporary web design its becoming increasingly difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the 'creative' part, because both of them are so inter-twined. If you break web-design down into its component tasks, then it will become more apparent how everything sits together.

The people that design & assemble the pictures and graphic icons to go on a web-site are generally known as graphic-artists. They most frequently accomplish this by utilising graphic lay-out and 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash and Photoshop), and are generally not strictly web-site designers as such. The majority of graphic-artists went to university or college, and have a qualification in art & design. Most importantly, this role involves a sound artistic skill.

Then there are the web designers, who develop the layout and overall 'feel' of a web site by utilising a design-environment such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. They use the actual images which are created by the graphic-artist, & talk with their client to firstly create the feel & navigational structure of the website. Many novice site designers concentrate to start with on the 'format' of the web-site, rather than its 'function'. But, you need to actually begin with an understanding of the functions it needs to carry out to construct a truly productive web-site. Is it predominantly an e-commerce web-site, which needs to be able to receive payments safely and securely, or is it perhaps an online product catalogue listing? It's possible you want to highlight products and services by means of video and a heavily 'graphical' inter-face, or maybe its predominantly an informational website where the necessity is easy access to key text information (such as this particular website.) No matter what the client needs from a web-site, the fundamental requirement is that it fulfils the basic needs. People will leave a web site & not come back if it's too difficult to navigate - however great it looks at first glance. A professional web-designer must in essence develop an online experience that's both satisfying & user-friendly for those coming to the website - then they'll visit again and again.

The design-environments employed by web designers are their most important resources. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is really the most commercially popular in the market these days (as of 2010). The software that builds web-sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & Adobe Flash gives access to graphical content which can be animated & interactive. In some ways we could see 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word Processor. It allows you to place graphics & text according to particular parameters and rules, & then produce basic interactivity via page-linking. HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program code is developed in the background with Dreamweaver, just as with any other web design-environment. 'HTML' is a 'script' which essentially draws and controls the web page displayed on your screen. It's the language of browsers. Together with HTML are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' - like CSS and XML. As they are 'standardised', these can work on multiple-platforms to enable more streamlined HTML code & more effective layout techniques. Therefore the web-page will look the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera', Safari etc. (or shall we say, that's the idea!) So even though you place the graphic blocks and put in the text, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this in to code behind the scenes. If you are planning to be commercially feasible as a web designer, you'll have to have an in-depth knowledge of these languages.

Further skill-sets that are important for commercial web-designers are a knowledge of project management & E-commerce. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another discipline which tackles how a site is indexed with Search Engines - in order that it may be easily found (this is almost a whole job by itself.) And in the background but vitally important we have the web-server installers & administrators that make sure that the whole thing operates as it should. Strictly speaking these people are network-administrator professionals though.

Needless to say you'll find cross overs with a lot of these roles - in-fact we have contacts with several web-site designers who're capable in many of them. It takes time however to develop such an array of professional competencies. A web-design course then that can prepare you to get into the work-place must encompass the following - First, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed by training in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & a summary of the primary components of Adobe Flash. The languages of 'HTML' and 'CSS' need to be covered next, with a level of E-commerce training built-in here. Some database & SEO expertise is crucial, and an awareness of the programming language 'PHP' (rather than the more complex ASP.Net) so that you can build dynamic web-sites. All this is simply to get to a level of technical competence where you're able to deal with a wide enough array of web sites. Just like taking driving lessons, you have to first learn the actual physical abilities, before you can ultimately move beyond them & accomplish a certain amount of finesse. You'd have to give yourself approximately 400 to 500 hours to study and effectively grasp a broad-ranging training-program of this nature - so if your aim is to get this done alongside full-time work it could be done within 1 year. Detailed planning to obtain the best training course for your needs is a great investment in your future - experienced training experts will help you sort the wheat from the chaff before you start.

Web 'developers' are essentially the most technically trained of all. These people won't just know HTML, 'CSS' and 'XML', but will have learnt 'proper' programming languages such as PHP, 'ASP.Net', 'VB', 'C#', Java and the like. They'll generally also have a strong understanding of 'SQL' Database technology, as this is one way most modern big web sites store their data. In reality, its un-likely that a big e-commerce site has been created in layout format by a bunch of web-site designers. Instead, a place holder template will have been built, & the contents will be dynamically inserted from a database. So apart from significantly larger efficiencies with the web site build, this method also enables a more consistent look and feel as well.

The key factor to stress is the fact that training alone won't make you a web-designer; it will merely educate you on the methods. All through your study and training, you have to apply yourself to constructing and developing as many web sites as you can, to practice & build your portfolio. Create websites about your favourite hobby, your dog, your favourite band or Television show. Start to build interactive web sites & generate 'traffic' to them. Adobe accreditations are of help, but how you can apply what you've learned says much more about you as a web designer!

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