Probably just about one of the most misinterpreted & generalised expressions within the I.T. market today has to be the words Web Designer? If you're thinking of getting in the market, some details of the diverse facets might help to clarify things. Basically, there are two key sides to web-design; the 'creative' side & the technical side. The average PC user believes web-designers determine how a website 'looks' & 'feels'. Many people will consider a 'web designer' a form of artist. In fact every web designer's function is an 'inter-related' mixture of 'technical' know-how & design creativity - and the two things have become very difficult to separate. We can illustrate this with more clarity when we separate web design up in to it's different parts.

Graphic-artists are 1st - they design and assemble the icons and images for a webpage. Most often they bring this about by utilising graphic layout & animation software (such as Adobe 'Flash' & Photoshop), & are not strictly web site designers as such. Often, they will have come from an art background, and may possibly have undertaken studies at college or university level. Clearly, this job requires a keen artistic flair.

Next, there are the web site designers, that employ design-environments like Dreamweaver to set-up the layout and feel of the web page. They utilise the visuals that are supplied by the graphic-artist, and work with the clients to firstly develop the feel and navigational composition of the web site. A web designer with only limited understanding would probably begin with the form instead of the 'function' of a web-site. Although, to actually produce an effective web site, you need to begin with an understanding of what you need the site to actually do. It could be it's effectively a web based catalogue, or an E-commerce site where goods are sold there and then. It could be you'll want to accentuate merchandise by means of video & a heavily 'graphical' interface, or perhaps it is largely an 'informational' site where the requirement is easy access to essential text content (such as this web-site.) Basically the web-site must have the capacity to meet it's requirements - whatever those needs are. A lot of websites look amazing but they are a nightmare to 'navigate' & find what you need - and so visitors move on and never come back. The purpose of any professional web-designer is to first and foremost build an experience that visitors enjoy and are happy with - so they come back again & again.

Web-developers are the most technically trained of all. Together with an understanding of HTML, XML and 'CSS', web developers will understand other 'proper' programming-languages such as 'VB', PHP, Java, C# and ASP.net etc. Many also have a solid knowledge of 'SQL', the database language - as the information on many large modern web-sites is stored in this particular 'language'. The majority of e-commerce sites aren't the result of a big group of web-designers who've built thousands of pages in a lay-out form. Rather, a place-holder template will have been created, and the material will be dynamically fed from a database. So in addition to significantly greater efficiency with the web-site construct, using this method also makes for an infinitely more uniform look & 'feel' as well.

The most important point 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 complete your training-course, take some time to construct & develop a broad selection of your own sites to create a portfolio of your work. Your own sites can be about anything - your local music-scene, farm pets, an author you admire or performance cars. Start to build interactive websites & create 'traffic' on to them. 'Adobe' certifications are useful, but showing how you can implement what you've learned says far more about you as a web designer!

Many of these functions can & do crossover needless to say, we use various freelance website designers who each can handle the majority of the previously mentioned roles. Although that degree of knowledge takes a while to master. A web-design course therefore that will prepare you to enter the workplace should consist of the following - A briefing of the basics of web design first, then straight on to using Dreamweaver to a professional level and the primary technicalities of 'Flash' too. This would then move onto an understanding of 'HTML' and 'CSS', with some training within the area of e-commerce. PHP must be mastered in order that dynamic web sites can be constructed (ASP.Net is actually far more involved, & 'PHP' is more straightforward to get into at first,) & a basic understanding of databases & SEO should be achieved. The reason why you'll need all these aspects is so that you have the technical ability to be effective on an array of web site builds. Just like taking driving lessons, you have to first acquire the actual physical competencies, before you can in essence push past them and accomplish a degree of finesse. An intensive program like this would possibly require around 400-500 hrs of part-time practice and study & can therefore be viably carried out part time over 12 months. As there are so many facts to consider, it's worth finding the time to look closely at any training programs you're interested in. Speak to someone with knowledge of the industry to help you put things together.

The design-environments used by web-designers are their most valuable resources. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially utilised in the market now (as of 2010). Whilst Adobe Flash gives access to interactive & animated graphical content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software which builds sites. You could state that Dreamweaver is the Word-Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite range. It lets you lay graphics and text according to specific parameters & rules, & then develop basic interactivity via page linking. Like other web design-environments, 'Dreamweaver' creates the program code HTML in the background (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language). HTML is a script which in essence 'draws' & controls the web-page displayed on your monitor. It is the 'language' of web browsers. Along with 'HTML' are the lay-out 'tag' languages - like CSS and XML. As they are standardised, these tag languages will work on multiple platforms to facilitate more streamlined 'HTML' code and more effective lay-out techniques. And so whichever web browser somebody uses, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and so on.) the page will (hopefully) appear the same. As a result the graphic-blocks you're placing and the text you're including is being converted into 'code' in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. If you're going to be a commercially viable web designer, you'll have to have a thorough understanding of these 'languages'.

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