Probably one of the most misinterpreted & generalised labels within the IT sector today must be the words Web Designer? Web Design takes on board a lot of different aspects, and a good understanding of these facets may help anyone thinking of getting in the market. There are essentially 2 elements to web design - the 'technical' process & the creative 'design' side. To the average person in the street, a 'web-designer' is somebody who designs the look and 'feel' of a website. Which means a 'web designer' is basically an artist who has had some 'technical' training. The truth is every web-designer's work is an 'inter-related' combination of 'technical' know-how & design creativity - & the two things have become quite difficult to split up. It will become much more obvious how things sit together if we split the profession up into it's various parts.

People who design & put together the images and graphic symbols which go on a web-page are known as graphic-artists. They most frequently accomplish this by means of graphic lay-out & 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash & Photoshop), & are not strictly web site designers per-se. The majority of graphic artists went to university, and have a background in art & design. Plainly, this particular work requires a strong artistic ability.

Web site designers come second - they work with design-software like Adobe Dreamweaver to create and design the look and feel of the web site. Through the use of visuals from the artist, they'll build the 'navigational' composition of the web site, keeping in touch with the clients to ensure the 'feel' is right. An amateur web-designer often starts with the 'form' of a site, instead of the 'function'. However, you need to actually begin with a grasp of the functions it's required to do to build a truly successful site. It may be a web-based catalogue of products, or possibly it is an E-commerce web-site that needs to have the ability to sell straight from the page. Or perhaps it'll have a lot of video and heavy graphics. On the other hand it may be largely an info website, where it is essential to supply straightforward entry to relevant pages of textual content. Whatever the customer needs from a web-site, the basic necessity is that it actually addresses the basic specification. Such a lot of web sites look wonderful but they are a headache to navigate & get where you want - & so people leave and never come back. A professional web-designer must effectively produce an online 'experience' that's both pleasant and intuitive for those visiting the website - then they will visit over and over again.

Extra skills which are important to professional web-site designers are an understanding of project management & e-commerce. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another field that handles how the web site is indexed with search engines like google - so it can be easily found (this is almost an entire job in itself.) And of course, we must not overlook the web server administrators and installers that work in the background ensuring the whole thing functions as it should; though they usually originate from a network-administration background.

Its essential to realise that even the very best web-design courses can only show you the methods and procedures - none of them will be able to turn you into a bona-fide web designer. During your study & training, you have got to apply yourself to building & creating as many sites as you possibly can, to prepare and assemble your own portfolio. Your own web-sites can be about anything you like - the local music scene, farm pets, an author you like or even performance cars. You could even set up interactive websites and get traffic on them. This will all appear much more constructive on your CV, and in your portfolio, than a document from Adobe will!

Needless to say there are cross overs with a lot of these roles - we ourselves have connections with a number of web-site designers who're proficient in many of them. It takes time however to acquire such a range of commercial skill-sets. You have to be taught a number of things on a professionally viable web-design training package: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then directly into using 'Dreamweaver' to a professional level and the primary technicalities of Flash as well. Next you must learn the coding languages HTML and CSS, & then be trained in a synopsis of how e-commerce operates. To build dynamic web sites it's important to gain knowledge of 'PHP', which is a simpler programming language to start off in than ASP.NET. You also need a basic understanding of databases and 'SEO'. The main reason you will need each of these components is they will give you the technical grounding to be effective on all sorts of website builds. As with anything, we must learn how to really do the physical skillsets first, & then establish increased finesse as a result of practice and experience. The majority of candidates can get through a manageable program like this inside a yr - assuming part-time study & practice of approximately 400-500 hours. A skilled advisor can help you prepare your path through this labyrinth of commercial-learning, and we strongly recommend that you allow time to plan your track carefully before you begin your web design training.

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