No doubt just about one of the most misunderstood & generalised labels in the IT market nowadays must be the words 'Web Designer'? Web Design incorporates several different aspects, and an understanding of these facets can help anyone looking to get into the industry. Web Design incorporates the technical components of a successful site and also the 'creative' elements. The average computer user considers web-site designers are responsible for how a web-site looks and feels. Which means a web designer is basically an artist with some technical instruction. Yet, a professional 'web-designer' will frankly be as involved with the technical element of things as much as the 'creative' element. If you break web-design down into its component roles, then it becomes much more apparent how everything sits together.

To start with, we have graphic artists, that design and construct the graphic symbols & pictures that we see on a web-site. They are not strictly web-designers as such, & more often than not are multi-media artists making use of graphic lay-out and 'animation' software, (like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe 'Flash'.) The majority of graphic artists went to university or college, with a background in art and design. Most importantly, this kind of job involves a sound creative skill.

Second of all, we have the web designers, who work with design environments like Adobe Dreamweaver to generate the lay-out and 'feel' of the website. They work with the actual graphics that are created by the graphic-artist, & work with the client to firstly develop the 'feel' & 'navigational' structure of the site. A lot of inexperienced web designers put emphasis to begin with on the 'format' of the web site, as opposed to its 'function'. In order to create an effective web site though, it's crucial that you first of all look at what you really would like the web-site to accomplish. Is it mainly an E-commerce web-site, which really needs to have the facility receive payments safely and securely, or is it perhaps an online product or service brochure listing? Possibly somewhat like this web site the chief purpose is simple access to pertinent info, or perhaps it'll be a show-case for merchandise by means of video & a heavily 'graphical' interface. No matter what the purchaser wants from a web-site, the basic necessity is that it addresses the basic needs. Most people will give up on a site & not return if it's too difficult to 'navigate' - however great it appears at first glance. The overriding goal of all professional site designers is to have people see their website on a regular basis - therefore it really needs to be a comfortable and satisfying experience.

Web-developers are essentially the most technically-trained of all. These people won't only understand HTML, CSS and XML, but will have studied 'proper' programming-languages like PHP, 'ASP.Net', VB, 'C#', 'Java' etc. And as most modern web sites of any kind of size store their data using 'SQL' Database technology, they are likely to have a solid grip SQL as well. The majority of E-commerce sites are not the result of a large group of web designers who have built many hundreds of pages in a lay-out format. What usually occurs is a place holder template is produced, & the details are automatically inserted from a database to the web-site. This not only makes the construction, management and up-dates hugely more straighforward, it equally makes for a far more consistent site.

The key resources employed by web-site designers are their design-environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (presently in version 4 as of 2009/2010) staying the most commercially popular. The software program which builds website pages is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and Adobe Flash gives access to graphical content material which can be animated & interactive. In many ways we might see Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word Processor. It allows you to lay graphics and text according to specific parameters & rules, and then develop basic interactivity through page linking. As with other web design environments, Dreamweaver produces the program-code HTML behind the scenes (HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). Effectively, this 'language of web-browsers is actually a 'script' that draws & controls the page being viewed. Lay-out tag 'languages' like CSS and XML are matched up with 'HTML'. As these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother and rather more efficient results function successfully on a number of different platforms. This means the web-page looks exactly the same on Microsoft 'Internet Explorer', 'Mozilla Firefox', Opera, Safari and so on. (at least, that's the plan!) So even though you lay the graphic-blocks & add the textual content, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this in to code behind the scenes. It's crucial to achieve a thorough comprehension of these languages to be able to be a web-designer at the commercial standard.

The most important factor to stress is the fact that training alone will not make you a web designer; it will merely educate you on the techniques. As you get into your training-course, take the time to put together and develop a large range of your own sites to produce a profile of your work. A sport or interest is a good place to start, or perhaps your favourite dog or cat, or a holiday resort you especially liked. Start to build inter-active web-sites & create traffic on to them. Adobe certifications are helpful, but showing how you can use what you've learned says much more about you as a web-designer!

Other skill-sets which are relevant to web designers in the commercial marketplace are a good grasp of E-commerce and project management. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') expertise is also very useful for web experts - this deals with the skill of getting web-sites to or near the top of the Search Engines like Google for commonly used search phrases. And behind the scenes but hugely important we have the web server administrators and installers who ensure that everything works smoothly. Strictly speaking they are network administrator experts though.

Of course there are cross-overs with a lot of these roles - in-fact we have connections with a number of web-site designers who're capable in most of them. However, it will take time to acquire that level of knowledge. You should be trained in a number of things on a professionally viable web design training program: First, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed by training in Adobe Dreamweaver & a synopsis of the main components of Adobe 'Flash'. This should then lead on to a comprehension of HTML & CSS, followed by some coaching within the area of E-commerce. To build 'dynamic' websites you'll need to gain knowledge of PHP, which is a less arduous programming-language to get into than ASP.Net. In addition , you need a rudimentary understanding of Databases & SEO. Grasping these abilities will provide you with the ability to begin working on a very good cross section of web sites. Just like learning to drive, you first have to learn the actual physical competencies, before you ultimately progress beyond them & achieve a certain amount of finesse. Most candidates can work through a manageable program like this within a year - assuming part-time study and practice of about 400-500 hrs. Detailed preparation to obtain the correct training package for you is a great investment of your time - experienced training experts can help you sort the best way forward before you get going.

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