No doubt one of the most misinterpreted & over-worked titles within the I.T. sector today has to be the term 'Web-Designer'? In reality, web design does consist of a number of different aspects, and so it might help to simplify things a little if we break it down. Effectively, there are two main areas to web design; the 'creative' element and the technical side. To the average man or women in the street, a 'web designer' is someone who designs the 'look' and feel of a site. Lots of people will consider a 'web designer' a form of artist. In reality the modern web designer's work is an inter-related combination of technical understanding & design-creativity - & the two things have become very difficult to split up. We'll demonstrate this with greater clarity when we break web design down into its component parts.

First, we have graphic artists, who design and put together the graphic symbols and pictures that we see on any web page. Most are not exactly site designers per-se, & most of the time are multi-media artists making use of graphic lay-out and 'animation' software, (like Adobe 'Photoshop' & Adobe 'Flash'.) Many have been through higher-education, with typically a degree standard art qualification. This particular aspect is more about creative expertise than any other function.

Then we have the web-designers, who generate the lay-out & overall 'feel' of a web-site by using a design environment like Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. They employ the graphics which are provided by the artist, and talk with the client to initially develop the 'feel' & 'navigational' structure of the website. A lot of novice web site designers place emphasis to begin with on the format of the web site, as opposed to it's 'function'. But, to really develop an effective website, you have to start with an understanding of what you require the site to actually do. Is it principally an E-commerce web site, that would need to have the capacity to receive payments securely, or is it an online product brochure listing? Maybe somewhat like this website the chief objective is straightforward access to relevant information, or it could be it will be a show-case for items by means of video and a heavily 'graphical' inter-face. Whatever the purchaser would like from a site, the basic prerequisite is that it meets the basic needs. So many web-sites look fantastic but they are a headache to navigate and get what you want - and so visitors leave and never come back. The goal of any professional web-designer is to first and foremost create an experience that visitors enjoy and feel happy with - so that they will come back again & again.

Several of these functions can and certainly do cross over of course, we work with several free-lance website designers who each can handle almost all of the previously mentioned functions. It will require time however to create such a selection of professional skillsets. The right commercial web design training-program therefore has to instruct on a number of things: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then directly into using 'Dreamweaver' to a professional level and the key nuances of 'Flash' as well. This would then move onto an understanding of 'HTML' and CSS, followed by vital insights into the field of e-commerce. Some Database and 'SEO' knowledge is essential, and an awareness of the programming language 'PHP' (instead of the more complex ASP.Net) so that you can construct dynamic sites. All this is basically to get to a standard of technical ability where you can deal with a wide enough array of sites. Similar to when you were taking driving lessons, you have to first develop the physical competencies, before you in essence push past them & accomplish an element of 'finesse'. An intensive program of this sort could entail approximately 400-500 hours of part time study and practice & therefore can be successfully carried out part time over 12 months. Careful planning to get the appropriate training program for you is a good investment of your time - knowledgeable training advisors can help you sort the wheat from the chaff before you decide to get started.

The thing you have to understand is absolutely no training course can actually make a web-designer out of you. The actual program will merely cover all the techniques & skills. Put together as many web sites as you can whilst you go through your training course - the process will be invaluable and you will have something to show just what you can do. A hobby or interest can be a very good place to start, or simply your favourite dog or cat, or a holiday-resort you particularly enjoyed. Construct an interactive web site, and start building 'traffic' towards it. Every little thing you do will add to your CV, & illustrate much more to a company than just an 'Adobe' accreditation.

Commercial web-designers may also up-grade their offering if they choose to branch out in to fields like project-management & E-commerce for example. Another field - which is not to be under-estimated - is SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This is focused on how to optimize website listings on search engines like Google & Yahoo. Also of course, we shouldn't overlook the web-server installers and administrators who work behind the scenes ensuring the whole thing functions as it should; though they generally come from a network administration background.

The key tools employed by web designers are the design environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (now in version 4 as of '09/10) being essentially the most popular commercially. 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds web-sites, with Flash delivering usage of interactive & animated graphical content material. You could claim that Dreamweaver is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. It will let you place text & graphics according to specific rules and parameters, and then build basic inter-activity through page linking. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program coding is produced in the background with 'Dreamweaver', as with any web design environment. Basically, this language of web browsers' is actually a 'script' which 'draws' and controls the web-page being watched. Paired with 'HTML' are the lay-out tag languages like CSS & XML. Because they are standardised, these tag languages will work on multiple platforms to allow more streamlined HTML coding and more efficient lay-out techniques. And so which-ever internet browser a person uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and so on.) the page will ideally look exactly the same. As a result the graphic blocks you are placing & the text you're including is being turned into 'code' behind the scenes by Dreamweaver. Its important to achieve a thorough understanding of these types of languages if you would like be a website designer at the commercial standard.

The most technically-trained web professionals are often the web-developers. Along with an understanding of HTML, XML and 'CSS', web-developers will know other 'proper' programming languages like VB, PHP, Java, C# and ASP.Net for example. They will also generally have got a strong knowledge of SQL Database technology, as this is how most modern large web-sites store their information. A typical E-commerce website doesn't have a bunch of web-designers who've created it's 1000s of pages in lay-out form. Instead, a place-holder template will have been built, & the details will be 'dynamically' fed from a database. So in addition to far larger efficiency with the web-site build, using this method also provides for a more consistent look and feel as well.

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