The term 'Web-Designer' is quite possibly one of the most over used & misunderstood labels within the I.T. community. For anyone thinking of getting into the marketplace, some details about the different aspects should help to make things clear. There are essentially two elements to web-design - the technical process & the 'creative' design side. To the average person in the street, a web-designer is someone that creates the look & 'feel' of a website. Meaning a web designer is basically an artist who has had some technical training. Yet, a commercial 'web designer' will in actual fact be as involved with the 'technical' element of things as much as the 'creative' element. It will become a bit more evident how things sit together if we break the job up in to it's different parts.

To start with, we have graphic-artists, that design and construct the graphic symbols and images which you see on any web-page. Strictly speaking, graphic artists aren't really web designers. More commonly they're multi-media artists who work with software like Adobe Photoshop and Flash to bring about their finished results. Normally, they will have come from an artistic background, & may well have undertaken studies at college or university level. This area is more about artistic expertise than anything else.

Second of all, there are the web designers, that use design environments such as Dreamweaver to set-up the layout and feel of the web-site. They use the graphics which are produced by the graphic-artist, and talk with the client to initially develop the 'feel' & navigational composition of the site. A web-designer with fairly limited understanding would most likely start with the form rather than the 'function' of a web-site. To create a good website though, it's important to first of all look at what you essentially would like the web site to do. It's possible it's basically a web-based brochure, or an e-commerce web site where goods can be purchased directly. Or potentially it will include a lot of video and heavy graphics. Then again it could be principally an info web-site, where it is essential to provide straightforward access to appropriate pages of wording. Whatever you require from a web-site, it must - at it's simplest level - fulfil the function for which its designed. There is little point producing a visually appealing site that's impossible for people to navigate! A professional web-designer must effectively create a web-based 'experience' that's both pleasant & instinctive for the people visiting the site - that way they will visit more than once.

The most important tools employed by web designers are their design-environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (now in version 4 as of 2009/2010) staying essentially the most popular commercially. Whilst Adobe Flash provides access to interactive & animated graphical content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software which builds web pages. You could actually say that Dreamweaver is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS series. It will let you lay graphics and text in accordance with certain rules and parameters, & then create basic interactivity through page-linking. Dreamweaver (or any other web-design environment) produces HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code in the background. HTML is a script which essentially 'draws' & controls the web page on your monitor. Its the language of web-browsers. Associated with HTML are the layout tag 'languages' like CSS & XML. As these tag 'languages' are 'standardised', the smoother and more efficient outcomes work effectively on many different platforms. What this means is the page will appear the same on Microsoft 'Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and so on. (at least, that's the idea!) As a result the graphic-blocks you are laying & the text you are putting in is being turned into 'code' in the background by Dreamweaver. A well-rounded knowledge of these types of 'languages' is vital if you are to be a commercially viable web designer.

Commercial web designers can also up-grade their offering if they choose to branch-out into areas such as project-management and E-commerce for example. 'Search Engine Optimisation' (SEO) is another discipline which deals with how the site is listed with Search Engines - so that it may be easily found (this is sometimes an entire job by itself.) And even though they typically originate from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable work of the web server administrators & installers, who keep everything working in the background.

Web developers are members of the equation, and also the most technically minded. As well as being proficient in 'HTML', 'XML' and 'CSS', web-developers will know other respected programming languages such as Visual Basic, 'PHP', Java, C# and ASP.net for instance. A large number also have got a good understanding of SQL, the database-language - as the data on most sizable modern web sites is stored in this particular language. In reality, its un-likely that a big E-commerce website has been created in lay-out format by a bunch of web-site designers. What generally happens is a place holder template is developed, and the contents are automatically fed from the database to the website. Besides being massively more efficient to build, manage & up-date, it also helps with the feel of the web-site being consistent.

Many of these jobs can and do cross over needless to say, we work with various freelance website designers who all cover almost all of the previously mentioned roles. Nevertheless, it will take time to develop that much knowledge. A web-design program therefore that can prepare you to get into the market should encompass the following - A briefing of the basics of web-design first of all, then straight into using 'Dreamweaver' to a commercial standard and the key technicalities of 'Flash' too. The languages of HTML & 'CSS' should be taught next, with a certain amount of E-commerce instruction provided here. Some database and 'SEO' know-how is important, & an awareness of the programming-language PHP (as opposed to the more complex ASP.NET) in order to construct 'dynamic' web-sites. All of this is just to get to a standard of competence technically where you're able to deal with a diverse enough array of web sites. Much like learning to drive, you first have to acquire the actual physical skills, before you essentially progress past them and achieve a degree of 'finesse'. You would need to allow approximately 400 to 500 hours to study and competently grasp a broad ranging training-program such as this - so if your plan is to get this done along with full-time work it could be carried out within a year. Careful preparation to get the correct training program for you is a good investment in your future - knowledgeable training experts can help you sort the best route for you before you decide to get going.

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