Undoubtedly just about one of the most misunderstood & generalised labels within the I.T. field today has to be the term Web Designer? In actual fact, web-design does include quite a few distinctive areas, and so it may well help to explain things a little if we go through each one. Web Design incorporates the 'technical' elements of a successful website and also the creative aspects. Lots of people presume a web-designer is somebody who is in charge of the visual areas of the site. Many people may consider a web designer a form of artist. But in fact, in modern-day web design it is turning out to be increasingly difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the creative side, as both are so inter-twined. It will become a little more evident just how things fit together if we split the work down in to its various roles.

The people who design & put together the pictures and graphic symbols which go on a web page are known as graphic artists. They are not really web-designers as such, & more often than not are multimedia artists making use of graphic layout & animation software, (for instance Adobe 'Photoshop' & Adobe Flash.) Generally, they will have an artistic background, and may have undertaken studies at college or university level. This particular aspect is a lot more about a creative artistic ability than any other function.

Then come the web designers, who generate the layout & overall feel of a web site by utilising a design-environment such as Dreamweaver. Through the use of artwork from the artist, they'll create the 'navigational' framework of the website, keeping in touch with the client to make sure that the 'feel' is correct. A lot of novice web-site designers concentrate first on the 'format' of the web site, instead of its function. However, you need to actually start with an understanding of the 'functions' it's required to carry out to create a truly productive website. This may be an online inventory of products, or maybe its an E-commerce web-site which needs to have the ability to sell directly from the site. Quite possibly rather like this web-site the primary purpose is easy access to relevant information, or perhaps it will be a showcase for products and solutions through video and a heavily graphical interface. Regardless of what you need from a web-site, it must - at it's most basic level - fulfil the function for which it's intended. There's little value in producing a visually inspiring website that's extremely hard for anyone to get what they want from it! The overriding aim of every professional web site designers is for people to see their web-site repeatedly - so it really needs to be a happy & gratifying experience.

The main thing to stress is the fact that training itself will not make you a web designer; it will merely educate you on the methods. Put together as many sites as you can as you work through your studies - the exercise will be invaluable & you'll have something to show just what you can do. A craft or other interest is a good place to start, or simply your favourite dog or cat, or a holiday-resort you especially loved. Build an inter-active site, & start building 'traffic' towards it. Everything you do will enhance your CV, & indicate more to an interviewer than just an Adobe accreditation.

The most technically apt web experts are normally the web developers. Together with an understanding of 'HTML', 'XML' and 'CSS', web-developers will know other highly regarded programming-languages like VB, 'PHP', 'Java', 'C#' and 'ASP.Net' etc. And because most modern sites of any kind of size 'store' their data using SQL database technology, they're also likely to have a strong handle SQL as well. In reality, its not likely that a large e-commerce site has been created in layout format by a bunch of web-site designers. What generally occurs is a place holder 'template' is produced, & the details are automatically inserted from the database to the website. This process makes not only the building, management & up-dates vastly more efficient, it equally creates a far more consistent site.

The key resources used by web designers are the design environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (currently in version 4 as of 2009/2010) being the most popular commercially. Whilst Adobe Flash provides access to animated and interactive 'graphical' content material, Dreamweaver is the software which builds websites. 'Dreamweaver' could be looked at as a 'glorified' Word-Processor in a great many ways. Graphics & text can be displayed (within known parameters) and then a basic interactivity can be established through page linking. Just like other web design-environments, 'Dreamweaver' creates the program-code 'HTML' behind the scenes (HTML stands for 'Hyper Text Markup Language'). This is the language of web-browsers, & is a 'script' which in essence draws & controls the web-page you're seeing. Layout tag languages like XML & CSS are paired with HTML. These enable more stream-lined HTML code and more efficient layout techniques, which will work on multiple-platforms (because they are 'standardised'). This means the web-page looks 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 & put in the text, Dreamweaver is converting this into coding behind the scenes. If you are aiming to be a commercially viable website designer, you will have to have a thorough understanding of these types of 'languages'.

Many of these roles can & do crossover obviously, we are involved with various freelance website designers who all can handle a lot of the previously mentioned roles. Although that level of understanding will take some time to master. You need to be taught a number of things on a professionally feasible web design training package: A basic introduction to web design, and then how to use Adobe Dreamweaver & gain a basic understanding of Adobe 'Flash'. This should then move onto a comprehension of 'HTML' & 'CSS', with vital insights into the field of E-commerce. To create 'dynamic' sites you'll need to learn PHP, which is a simpler programming-language to get into than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a rudimentary knowledge of databases & 'SEO'. Learning these skillsets will give you the ability to begin working on a very good cross-section of sites. Similar to when you were learning to drive, you must first learn the actual physical competencies, before you in essence push beyond them & gain an element of 'finesse'. A comprehensive training program like this could require about four to five hundred hrs of part time practice & study and can therefore be successfully finished part-time over a year. Detailed preparation to obtain the best training package for you is a worthwhile investment of your time - skilled career advisors will help you to sort the best way forward before you decide to get started.

Other skills which are relevant to web-designers in the commercial market are a good grasp of E-commerce & project management. Another field - which is not to be underestimated - is 'SEO' ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This is all about how to optimize web site listings on search engines like Google and Yahoo. And although they technically come from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable function of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

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