It's fair to state that one of the more broadly interpreted and badly understood terms in I.T. is the expression 'Web Designer'. Web Design takes on board a number of different aspects, and an understanding of these facets can help anybody looking to get into the market. Web Design involves the technical elements of a successful website plus the 'creative' elements. To the average man or women in the street, a web designer is someone who designs the 'look' & 'feel' of a website. Many individuals might consider a web-designer a kind of 'artist'. In spite of this, a commercial web designer will in fact be as involved with the 'technical' element of things as they are with the 'creative' side. We'll demonstrate this with greater clarity if we separate web design down in to its component parts.

To start with, there are graphic artists, who design and construct the graphic symbols and pictures that we see on any web-site. Most are not really web designers as such, and more often than not are multimedia artists making use of graphic layout and 'animation' software, (such as Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Flash.) Many have been through further education, typically with a degree standard art qualification. Above all else, this specific role involves a strong creative ability.

Second, there are the web-designers, that make use of design-environments such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to produce the layout and 'feel' of the site. They take on the work completed by the graphic artist, and in conjunction with their client generate an emerging look and 'navigational' framework for the brand new web site. A web designer with limited understanding may well start with the 'form' instead of the function of a web site. In order to build an effective web-site however, it is important to first of all look at what you really need the site to do. Is it largely an e-commerce web site, which needs to have the capacity to take payments securely, or is it an online product catalogue listing? Perhaps somewhat like this web site the primary function is easy access to relevant details, or perhaps it's going to be a show-case for products and solutions by means of video and a heavily 'graphical' inter-face. In essence the site must have the ability to meet it's requirements - whatever those particular needs are. Visitors will leave a web site & not return if its too tricky to 'navigate' - however pretty it looks on the surface. The over-riding purpose of all good web-site designers is to have people check out their web site repeatedly - therefore it really needs to be a pleasant & enjoyable experience.

The key tools employed by web site designers are the design-environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (currently in version 4 as of '09/10) staying the most commercially popular. The software that builds websites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & Adobe Flash accesses 'graphical' content material that can be animated & interactive. 'Dreamweaver' may be looked at as a glorified Word Processor in lots of ways. Graphics and text can be layed (according to known limitations) & then a basic interactivity can be created by means of page linking. Dreamweaver (as with any web design environment) produces HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code in the background. Essentially, this language of web-browsers is a 'script' which draws and controls the web-page being viewed. Matched with HTML are the layout 'tag' 'languages' like XML & CSS. These enable more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient lay-out techniques, that will work on multiple-platforms (as they're standardised). And so whichever internet browser a person uses, ('Internet Explorer', Firefox, Opera and so on.) the page will ideally appear exactly the same. And so though you're laying graphic blocks and adding text, in the background, Dreamweaver is converting what you're doing in to 'code'. Its vitally important to achieve a thorough understanding of these languages in order to be a website designer at the commercial level.

Further skills that are important for professional web designers are a knowledge of project-management and e-commerce. Another field - that isn't to be under-estimated - is SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This is focused on how to optimize web site indexation on Search Engines like Google and 'Yahoo'. And even though they strictly speaking come from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the incredibly valuable work of the web server administrators & installers, who keep everything working in the background.

The most technically-trained internet experts are often the web-developers. Along with an understanding of 'HTML', XML and 'CSS', web developers will know other highly regarded programming languages like Visual Basic, 'PHP', Java, C# & ASP.net for instance. And because most contemporary internet sites of any size 'store' their information using 'SQL' Database technology, they're likely to have a strong handle SQL as well. In reality, its un-likely that a large E-commerce site has been built in lay-out format by a bunch of web designers. What typically occurs is a place holder template is developed, & the details are dynamically fed from the Database to the web-site. So in addition to significantly higher efficiencies with the web-site build, using this method also allows for an infinitely more uniform look & 'feel' as well.

The one thing it's essential to grasp is that absolutely no training course can actually make a web-designer out of you. The actual training course will merely cover all the techniques and skills. As you get into your training-course, take some time to create & develop a large range of your own websites to create a profile of your work. Build sites about your favourite hobby, your family dog, a favourite band or Television show. Construct an interactive web-site, and begin building 'traffic' towards it. Every little thing you do will enhance your CV, & prove much more to a recruiter than just an Adobe accreditation.

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