Its reasonable to say that perhaps one of the most widely interpreted & improperly perceived definitions within IT is the label 'Web Designer'. Website Design includes many distinctive aspects, and an understanding of these facets may help anyone looking to get in to the marketplace. Web Design incorporates the 'technical' elements of a site as well as the 'creative' elements. The average PC user thinks web-designers determine how a website looks and feels. Lots of people may consider a 'web-designer' a form of artist. But in actuality, in modern web design it is becoming increasingly difficult to split up the technical part from the 'creative' element, as both are so intertwined. It will become more evident just how things sit together when we break the profession up into it's various parts.

First, there are the graphic-artists, who design and construct the graphic icons and images which we find on a website. In real terms, graphic artists aren't really web-designers. More commonly they're multi-media artists who use software such as Adobe Photoshop and Flash to produce their finished results. Many have come from further education, with typically a degree standard art qualification. This particular element is more about artistic ability than any other function.

Next, there are the web-designers, who employ design environments such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create the lay-out and feel of the web site. They use the graphics created by the graphic-artist, and in partnership with their client deliver an initial style and navigational composition for the brand-new website. A web designer with fairly limited understanding might start with the form instead of the 'function' of a site. To develop an effective web-site though, its important to first look at what you really want the site to do. It could be that it's effectively an on-line brochure, or an e-commerce site where products and solutions are available there and then. It could be you want to present products and solutions via video & a heavily 'graphical' interface, or maybe its predominantly an 'informational' site where the requirement is simple access to essential text information (like this site.) No matter what the client wants from a web-site, the fundamental necessity is that it fulfils the basic needs. A lot of web sites look brilliant but are a headache to navigate & find what you want - & so users give up and never return. The aim of any professional web-designer is to first and foremost create an experience that people enjoy and are relaxed with - so they return again and again.

The most important thing to emphasise is the fact that training program itself will not make you a web designer; it will merely teach you the techniques. Put together as many websites as you can as you work through your course - the process will be invaluable & you will have something to show what you can do. A pastime or other interest can be a good starting place, or maybe your favourite pet, or a holiday resort you especially loved. Construct an interactive site, and start generating traffic towards it. This will all seem much more favourable on your CV, & in your Portfolio, than a certificate from 'Adobe' will!

The key resources employed by web-designers are the design environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (presently in Version 4 as of '09/10) being essentially the most commercially popular. Whilst Adobe Flash provides access to animated & interactive 'graphical' content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds websites. In many ways we could see Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word Processor. Graphics & text can be displayed (according to certain limitations) and then a basic inter-activity can be established by means of page linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code is created behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', much like any web design environment. It's the language of web browsers, and is a script that basically draws & controls the web-page you're looking at. Lay-out 'tag' languages like XML and CSS are associated with 'HTML'. These tag languages allow more stream-lined 'HTML' coding & more efficient layout methods, that will work on multiple-platforms (because they are standardised). The theory being that the web-page will look the same on any web browser, be it 'Mozilla Firefox', Internet Explorer, 'Safari', Opera or anything else. Consequently the graphic blocks you're placing and the text you are putting in is being turned into code in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. Its essential to gain an in depth knowledge of these various 'languages' if you would like be a web-designer at a commercial level.

A lot of independent web-site designers can fulfil several of these tasks themselves; indeed we liaise with a number who can on a regular basis. But, it will take time to acquire that much skill. A web design course therefore that will equip you to enter the workplace must include the following disciplines - A basic introductory tutorial to web-design, and then how to use Adobe Dreamweaver and gain a basic understanding of Adobe Flash. This should then lead on to a comprehension of 'HTML' & CSS, followed by some coaching within the field of E-commerce. To construct dynamic sites it's important to have a grasp of 'PHP', which is a simpler programming language to get into than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a basic understanding of Databases & 'SEO'. The reason you need each of these elements is they will give you the technical grounding to work on a range of site builds. As with anything else, we need to learn how to actually do the physical skillsets initially, & then acquire greater 'finesse' as a result of practice & experience. An all-encompassing training program of this sort would probably require approximately 400 to 500 hours of part time practice & study and can therefore be reasonably accomplished part-time over 12 months. An industry expert can assist you to prepare the right path through this labyrinth of professional training, & we recommend that you take the time to plan your track with care before you begin your web design training.

Professional web-designers may also enhance their offering if they choose to branch-out into fields such as project-management & e-commerce for instance. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') know-how is extremely useful for web-experts - this concerns the art of getting internet sites at or near to the top of the Search Engines for commonly used keyword phrases. Also of course, we should not forget the web server installers and administrators who stay in the background ensuring everything works; though they usually come from a network-administration background.

Web developers are the most technically-trained of all. Not only will these people understand the languages above, they will also have studied other languages, for example C#, 'VB', 'PHP', 'Java', ASP.net and so on. They'll also generally possess a strong knowledge of SQL database-technology, since this is how the majority of large web-sites store their data. In reality, it's not likely that a big E-commerce site has been put together in layout form by a crew of web-designers. What commonly happens is a place holder template is created, and the details are dynamically fed from a Database to the web-site. This makes not only the construction, management and enhancements vastly more efficient, it equally makes for a far more consistent site.

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