Surely just about one of the most misinterpreted and over-worked labels in the IT sector these days has to be the words 'Web-Designer'? Website Design takes on board many distinct aspects, and an understanding of these may help anybody considering getting in to the marketplace. Web Design involves the technical components of a website as well as the 'creative' aspects. Lots of people imagine a web-designer is somebody who designs the visual aspects of the web-site. In other words, they view web-designers because artists on the whole. In fact the present day web designer's career is an inter-related mixture of 'technical' understanding & design-creativity - & the two things have become quite difficult to separate. When you break web design down in to it's different roles, then it will become more obvious how each thing fits together.

Graphic-artists are 1st - these people design & create the symbols & pictures for a website. They're not really web-designers as such, and by and large are multimedia artists making use of graphic layout and 'animation' software, (for example Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash.) Often, they will have come from an artistic background, and may possibly have studied at university level. Obviously, this particular job demands a keen artistic bias.

Then come the web-designers, who generate the layout and overall 'feel' of a website by using a design-environment like Dreamweaver. By employing graphics from the graphic-artist, they will put together the 'navigational' composition of the web-site, working together with their clients to make sure the feel is right. A web designer with only limited knowledge might begin with the form instead of the function of a site. To be able to develop an effective internet site though, it's crucial that you first look at what you actually need the site to do. It could be a web based inventory of products and solutions, or maybe its an e-commerce web-site that really needs to have the capacity to sell directly from the page. It could be you want to highlight merchandise via video & a largely graphical inter-face, or it could be it's mainly an informational web-site where the necessity is straightforward access to key text content (like this particular website.) In essence the web site must be able to meet it's required needs - whatever those particular requirements are. There's no value in producing a visually appealing web site that's impossible for individuals to get to where they want! A professional web-designer must essentially produce an on-line 'experience' that is both gratifying & intuitive for those coming to the web site - then they'll visit again and again.

Web developers are members of this equation, and also the most technically minded. They will not only know 'HTML', 'CSS' & 'XML', but will have learnt more official programming languages such as PHP, 'ASP.Net', Visual Basic, C#, Java and others. And as most contemporary web-sites of any size store their data using 'SQL' database technology, they're also likely to have a strong handle SQL too. In reality, its not likely that a large E-commerce website has been put together in lay-out format by a group of web-site designers. Rather, a place holder template will have been built, and the contents will be dynamically loaded from a database. This process makes not only the construction, management & updates massively more straighforward, it also tends to make a more consistent web site.

The most important thing to stress is the fact that training itself will not make you a web designer; it will merely teach you the methods. Build as many websites as you can as you go through your studies - the exercise will be invaluable & you will have a portfolio to show what you can do. Create web-sites about a favourite hobby, your family, a favourite band or even TV show. Start interactive web-sites and create traffic on to them. Every little thing you do will enhance your Curriculum Vitae, & prove much more to an employer than just an Adobe certification.

Several of these functions can & do crossover needless to say, we work with various freelance website designers who each can handle the majority of the previously mentioned tasks. Nevertheless, it will take quite some time to develop that level of expertise. The right commercial web-design training-program therefore needs to teach several things: First of all, an introduction to basic web design, followed on by teaching in Adobe Dreamweaver and an overview of the key components of Adobe Flash. The languages of HTML & 'CSS' should be covered next, with some e-commerce instruction provided here. To build 'dynamic' web-sites you'll need to have a grasp of PHP, which is a less arduous programming language to start off in than ASP.Net. In addition , you need a rudimentary grasp of databases and SEO. All this is merely to reach a standard of technical competence where you can deal with a diverse enough array of web-sites. The physical skillsets must come first, before you finetune them to a more natural flowing style - a lot like the time you were learning to drive a car. An intensive program of this sort would possibly entail about 400 to 500 hours of part-time practice and study & can therefore be viably concluded part-time over 12 months. A professional expert will be able to help you prepare your way through this quagmire of commercial-learning, and we strongly suggest that you take the time to plan your route with care before you start your training.

The design environments employed by web-designers are their key resources. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is really the most commercially utilised in the industry these days (as of '10). Whilst Adobe Flash offers access to interactive & animated 'graphical' content, 'Dreamweaver' is the software that builds sites. You might state that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. Graphics & text can be layed (according to certain limitations) & then a basic inter-activity can be established by page linking. Just like other web design-environments, Dreamweaver produces the program code HTML behind the scenes ('HTML' is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). Basically, this 'language of web-browsers is a script which 'draws' and controls the web page being looked at. Layout 'tag' 'languages' like CSS and XML are associated with 'HTML'. These tag languages allow more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient lay-out techniques, which will work on multiple-platforms (as they're 'standardised'). This means the web-page will look exactly the same on Microsoft 'Internet Explorer', 'Mozilla Firefox', Opera, Safari and so on. (at least, that's the plan!) And so though you're placing graphic-blocks & text, behind the scenes, Dreamweaver is converting this in to code. If you are planning to be a commercially feasible website designer, you will need an in-depth understanding of these 'languages'.

Additional skillsets which are important for commercial web-designers are an understanding of project-management and E-commerce. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') knowledge is extremely valuable for web experts - this concerns the skill of getting websites to or near the top of the Search Engines for frequently used search terms. And of course, we shouldn't forget the web server installers & administrators who work behind the scenes making sure everything works; although they generally come from a network administration background.

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