Its fair to say that perhaps one of the more broadly interpreted & badly defined definitions within I.T. is the expression 'Web-Designer'. Web-Design incorporates several different aspects, and an understanding of these facets may help anybody seeking to get in the market. There are fundamentally 2 sides to web design - the 'technical' process and the creative 'design' side. The typical PC user thinks web-designers determine how a website 'looks' & feels. Many individuals may consider a 'web designer' a form of artist. But in reality, in contemporary web-design it's getting more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the 'creative' element, because both of them are so inter-twined. We'll illustrate this with greater clarity if we break web-design down in to its various parts.

Graphic-artists are first - these people design and create the icons & pictures for a web site. They are not exactly web-site designers per-se, and generally are multi-media artists utilising graphic layout and 'animation' software, (for example Adobe Photoshop and Adobe 'Flash'.) Normally, they'll have come from an art background, & may possibly have studied at college or university level. Most importantly, this specific work calls for a sound creative skill.

Site designers are next - these people work with design software like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to plan and design the visual aspects and 'feel' of the site. Using artwork from the graphic artist, they will develop the navigational framework of the web-site, keeping in touch with the clients to confirm the feel is right. A large number of amateur web site designers place emphasis first of all on the format of the web-site, instead of its function. However, to actually produce an effective web-site, you have to begin with an understanding of the things you require the web site to actually do. It could be a web-based inventory of products and solutions, or possibly it's an E-commerce web site which requires to have the ability to sell directly from the site. Or maybe it will consist of a lot of video and heavy graphics. On the other hand it could be largely an information website, where it is important to provide easy entry to appropriate web pages of wording. Quite simply the web-site must have the ability to meet it's needs - whatever those needs are. There is little point producing a visually interesting web-site that is hopeless for individuals to find their way around! A professional web designer must basically create a web-based 'experience' that is both gratifying and intuitive for those visiting the site - then they'll come back more than once.

A lot of free-lance web-designers can carry out a number of these jobs by themselves; in fact we liaise with a number who are able to on a regular basis. Nevertheless, you will need time to acquire that much expertise. A web-design program therefore that will prepare you to get into the market must include the following - Firstly, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed by training in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and an overview of the primary elements of Adobe Flash. The languages of HTML & 'CSS' should be covered next, with some E-commerce training included here. To create dynamic web sites it's important to learn 'PHP', which is a simpler programming language to get into than ASP.Net. You additionally need a rudimentary grasp of databases and 'SEO'. The reason you need all these aspects is so that you have the technical wherewithal to be effective on a range of web-site builds. Just like taking driving lessons, you must first learn the actual physical skill-sets, before you ultimately push beyond them and gain an element of finesse. You'd need to give yourself approximately 400-500 hours to study and effectively grasp a broad-ranging program such as this - therefore if your aim is to do this along-side employment it could be done within 1 year. As there are various points to consider, its well worth finding the time to look closely at any training programs you're interested in. Talk to a person with industry knowledge who can help you put things together.

The thing it's essential to realise is no training-course can make a web designer out of you. The course will merely teach all the skills and techniques. As you work on your training-course, make an effort to create & develop a good selection of your own sites to create a profile of your work. Build web sites about your special interest, your pet, a favourite band or TV programme. Start to build interactive web-sites & create 'traffic' on to them. This will all seem more favourable on your CV, and in your Portfolio, than a document from Adobe will!

Extra skillsets which are very useful for professional web-designers are a knowledge of project management and e-commerce. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another discipline which deals with how the website is indexed with search engines like google - so it can be found more easily (this is almost a whole job in itself.) And whilst they generally come from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable job of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working behind the scenes.

Web developers are the most technically trained of all. These people won't just understand 'HTML', 'CSS' and 'XML', but they will have trained in 'proper' programming languages such as PHP, 'ASP.Net', Visual Basic, 'C#', 'Java' among others. Many also possess an effective understanding of SQL, the Database language - as the information on many large modern web sites is stored in this language. A typical E-commerce web site does not have a group of web-site designers who have created its 1000s of web pages in layout format. What normally happens is a place-holder 'template' is created, & the details are dynamically fed from a Database to the site. In addition to being hugely easier to construct, manage and update, it also aids in the feel of the site being constant.

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