Without doubt just about one of the most mis-interpreted & generalised labels in the I.T. field these days has to be the words 'Web-Designer'? In reality, web-design does include a number of distinctive areas, and so it may help to clarify things a little if we break it down. There are essentially two sides to web design - the 'technical' side and the 'creative' 'design' part. To the average person on the street, a 'web-designer' is someone that designs the look & 'feel' of a site. Which means a web-designer is basically an artist who has had some 'technical' instruction. But in reality, within modern day web-design its getting more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' part from the 'creative' aspect, as both are so inter-twined. If you break down web-design into its component tasks, then it becomes much more evident how each thing sits together.

Firstly, there are the graphic artists, who design and construct the graphic symbols & pictures that we find on any website. They're not really site designers per-se, and more often than not are multi-media artists making use of graphic layout and animation software, (such as Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe 'Flash'.) Virtually all graphic artists attended college or university, with a background in art and design. Above all else, this role requires a good artistic ability.

Next, there are the web site designers, who make use of design-environments like Adobe Dreamweaver to set-up the lay-out & feel of the web-site. Through the use of graphics from the graphic-artist, they will develop the navigational structure of the site, keeping in touch with their client to be sure the feel meets their needs. A good number of amateur web site designers focus to begin with on the 'format' of the site, as opposed to it's 'function'. Yet, to really build a useful web site, it's important to begin with a clear understanding of the things you need the web-site to really do. Perhaps it's basically a web based brochure, or an e-commerce site where products and services are offered there and then. Or potentially it will include a lot of video and graphics. On the other hand it might be principally an informational website, where it is necessary to provide straightforward entry to relevant pages of text. Whatever the purchaser needs from a website, the fundamental prerequisite is that it addresses the basic needs. People will give up on a web-site & not return if its too hard to navigate - however great it appears at first glance. The purpose of any professional web-designer is to first & foremost construct an experience that people enjoy and are comfortable with - so that they come back again.

Many of these functions can & certainly do cross-over of course, we use a number of free-lance web designers who all cover most of the above tasks. Although that degree of knowledge takes a while to master. An appropriate professional web-design program therefore should instruct on several things: First of all, an introduction to basic web-design, followed on by teaching in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and an understanding of the primary aspects of Adobe Flash. Next you need to get to grips with the 'coding' languages HTML and CSS, & after that be trained in an overview of just how E-commerce operates. Some database & 'SEO' know-how is essential, and an awareness of the programming-language 'PHP' (instead of the more complex ASP.Net) so that you can create 'dynamic' web-sites. All this is basically to reach a standard of technical ability whereby you can work on a diverse enough variety of web-sites. Similar to when you were taking driving lessons, you first have to learn the physical skillsets, before you can in essence progress beyond them & accomplish a certain amount of 'finesse'. Most candidates can work through a versatile course like this inside a yr - based on part time study and practice of around 400 - 500 hrs. A skilled expert can assist you to plan the right path through this labyrinth of professional training, & we highly recommend that you allow time to plan your track with care before you begin your web design training.

Its important to understand that even the very best web-design programs can only teach you the techniques and procedures - not one will be able to turn you in to a professional web designer. Build as many websites as you can as you work through your studies - the practice will be invaluable & you will have a portfolio to show what you can do. Your sites should be about anything - your local music scene, horses, a writer you like or motor bikes. Start inter-active websites and create traffic to them. Anything you do will enhance your CV, and demonstrate more to an employer than an 'Adobe' accreditation.

The design-environments employed by web-designers are their most important tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is really the most commercially accepted in the industry right now (as of 2010). 'Dreamweaver' is the software that builds websites, with 'Flash' providing usage of interactive and animated 'graphical' content material. In some ways we could see Dreamweaver as a glorified Word Processor. Text & graphics can be displayed (within known rules) & then a basic interactivity can be established through page-linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program coding is developed behind the scenes with Dreamweaver, as with any web design environment. 'HTML' is a 'script' which in simple terms draws & controls the page displayed on your screen. It's the language of browsers. Paired with HTML are the layout tag 'languages' like CSS & XML. These tag languages allow more streamlined HTML coding and more efficient lay-out methods, that will work on multiple-platforms (as they're standardised). What this means is the web page will appear exactly the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, 'Safari' and so on. (or shall we say, that's the idea!) So although you are placing graphic blocks and text, in the background, Dreamweaver is turning what you're doing into code. A thorough knowledge of these 'languages' is critical if you are to become a commercially viable web-designer.

Professional web designers may also upgrade their offering if they choose to branch out into areas such as project management and e-commerce for instance. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another area which handles how the website is listed with search engines - so it may be easily found (this really is sometimes an entire job in itself.) And in the background but very crucially we have the web server administrators & installers that make sure that the whole thing operates as it should. Officially speaking these people are network administrator experts though.

Web-developers are members of this group, and also the most technically-minded. These people will not just understand HTML, 'CSS' and 'XML', but will have learned 'proper' programming languages such as 'PHP', ASP.net, Visual Basic, C#, 'Java' and the like. Many also have got a good knowledge of 'SQL', the Database language - since the information on many large modern web-sites is stored in this particular language. The majority of E-commerce websites aren't the result of a big crew of web-designers who've built many hundreds of web-pages in lay-out format. Rather, a place-holder template will have been built, and the material will be 'dynamically' loaded from a Database. This makes not only the building, management and updates vastly more straighforward, it equally produces a more consistent web site.

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