No doubt just about one of the most misunderstood and generalised expressions in the IT field these days must be the term Web-Designer? For anybody considering getting in to the market, an explanation of the different aspects should help to clarify things. Web-Design incorporates the 'technical' components of a successful website as well as the creative elements. The typical PC user thinks web designers are responsible for how a site 'looks' & feels. Meaning a web-designer is fundamentally an 'artist' with some 'technical' training. However, a modern 'web designer' will actually be as occupied with the technical element of things as much as the creative side. We'll demonstrate this with greater clarity if we break web design up in to its component parts.

Graphic artists are 1st - they design & build the symbols and images for a web-site. Strictly speaking, graphic-artists aren't really web designers. More commonly they're multimedia artists who work with software like Adobe 'Photoshop' & 'Flash' to create their finished results. Most attended higher education, with typically a degree standard art qualification. This particular area is much more about creative ability than any other function.

Next come the web designers, who develop the lay-out & overall 'feel' of a website using a design-environment like Adobe Dreamweaver. Through the use of graphics from the graphic artist, they'll create the navigational framework of the site, working with their client to make sure the feel is correct. A novice web-designer tends to start with the form of the web-site, rather than the function. And yet, you must essentially begin with an understanding of the functions its required to do to build a truly successful web site. Is it primarily an E-commerce web-site, which really needs to have the ability to receive payments securely, or is it a web based product catalogue listing? Possibly somewhat like this web site the key objective is simple access to pertinent information, or perhaps it will be a show-case for products and services through video & a heavily 'graphical' interface. Essentially the web-site must have the ability to meet it's required needs - whatever those needs are. There's no value in producing a visually exciting website that is impossible for anyone to navigate! The overriding aim of all professional web site designers is to have people check out their web site on a regular basis - so it really needs to be a happy and fulfilling experience.

Several of these functions can and certainly do crossover needless to say, we are involved with various freelance web designers who each cover the majority of the previously mentioned functions. Nevertheless, it takes quite some time to develop that much skill. A web design course therefore that will prepare you to enter the workplace should include the following disciplines - First, an introduction to basic web-design, followed on by training in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & a summary of the primary elements of Adobe Flash. Next you need to understand the 'coding' languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', & after that be trained in an overview of just how E-commerce operates. 'PHP' must be taught so 'dynamic' web-sites can be created (ASP.NET is actually far more involved, & 'PHP' is easier to get into at first,) and a basic idea of databases & 'SEO' should be achieved. All of this is simply to reach a standard of technical competence whereby you can cope with a wide enough variety of web sites. The physical abilities must come first, before you fine-tune them to a more natural and flowing style - similar to when you learned to drive your car. The majority of students can get through a variable course like this inside a year - assuming part time study & practice of close to 400 - 500 hours. An experienced advisor can help you plan the right path through this labyrinth of commercial learning, and we recommend that you plan your track carefully before you start your web design training.

Professional web-designers may also up-grade their offering if they branch-out into areas like project management and E-commerce for instance. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another field which tackles how a web-site is indexed with search engines - so it may be easily found (this really is sometimes a whole job in itself.) And behind the scenes but vitally important we have the web-server installers & administrators that make sure that the whole thing runs as it should. Officially speaking these people are network administrator specialists though.

The most technically trained internet professionals are normally the web developers. Not only will these people understand the languages already mentioned, they will also have had training in additional languages, for instance 'C#', VB, PHP, Java, 'ASP.Net' and so on. Many also possess a very good understanding of SQL, the Database language - since the information on most sizable modern websites is stored in this language. Most e-commerce web-sites aren't actually the result of a sizable bunch of web designers who have built thousands of pages in layout format. More often, after the construction of a place-holder 'template', the material will be extracted from a Database & 'dynamically' inserted. This not only makes the building, management and upgrades vastly more efficient, it equally creates a far more consistent web-site.

The most important resources employed by web-designers are the design environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (currently in Version 4 as of 2009/2010) being essentially the most commercially popular. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' offers access to interactive and animated graphical content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software program that builds web-sites. You might claim that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. Within certain rules & parameters, it allows you to display graphics & text, & then via a method called page-linking you can produce basic inter-activity inside the web-site. Dreamweaver (as with any web-design environment) creates 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code in the background. It's the 'language' of web browsers, & is a 'script' which effectively 'draws' and controls the web page you're seeing. Layout 'tag' 'languages' like XML & CSS are paired with HTML. As they are standardised, these will work on multiple platforms to enable more stream-lined HTML code & more efficient lay-out techniques. So regardless of what web browser a person uses, ('Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera' etc.) the web-page will hopefully look exactly the same. Consequently the graphic-blocks you are laying & the text you're including is being turned into code behind the scenes by 'Dreamweaver'. A comprehensive knowledge of these various 'languages' is vital if you're going to be a commercially-viable web designer.

The thing you have to realise is absolutely no training course can actually make a web designer out of you. The program will only teach all the skills and techniques. As you get into your training-course, spend some time to create & develop a broad selection of your own sites to build a portfolio of your work. Your own web sites should be about anything you like - your local music scene, farm pets, an author you enjoy or performance cars. You could even set up inter-active web sites & get 'traffic' on them. Adobe qualifications are useful, but how you can implement what you've learned says much more about you as a web-designer!

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