Without doubt one of the most misunderstood and generalised expressions in the I.T. sector today has to be the words Web-Designer? In fact, web design does consist of quite a few different areas, and so it may well help to simplify things a little when we go through each one. There are essentially 2 elements to web-design - the 'technical' side & the creative 'design' part. The average PC user believes web-designers determine how a website looks & feels. Which means a web designer is basically an 'artist' who has had some 'technical' instruction. But in fact, in modern web-design its becoming increasingly difficult to separate the 'technical' side from the 'creative' element, because both of them are so inter-twined. We can illustrate this with more clarity if we separate web design up into it's component parts.

Graphic artists should come 1st - these people design & create the icons & images for a site. These are not exactly web site designers per-se, & more often than not are multi-media artists utilising graphic lay-out & animation software, (like Adobe Photoshop & Adobe 'Flash'.) Many attended higher education, with typically a degree-level art background. More than anything else, this kind of work involves a strong artistic talent.

Then come the web-designers, who develop the lay-out & overall feel of a web-site by utilising a design environment such as Dreamweaver. By employing artwork from the artist, they'll construct the navigational framework of the web-site, working with their clients to make sure the 'feel' is right. A web designer with little knowledge may well begin with the 'form' instead of the 'function' of a web-site. To be able to develop a good internet site however, it is crucial that you first look at what you really would like the site to accomplish. It's possible it is effectively a web-based inventory, or an e-commerce web site where merchandise are offered there and then. Perhaps you need to show off items through video & a largely 'graphical' inter-face, or maybe it is mainly an 'informational' web-site where the necessity is straightforward access to essential text information (such as this particular website.) Fundamentally the web site must have the ability to meet it's required needs - whatever those particular needs are. There's no point designing a visually interesting site that is too hard for individuals to get to where they want! The purpose of any reputable web-designer is to first and foremost build an experience that people enjoy and feel comfortable with - so that they will come back again and again.

Extra skillsets which are important to professional web-site designers are a knowledge of project-management & e-commerce. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another discipline which tackles how a web site is listed with Search Engines - so it can be found more easily (this is almost a whole job by itself.) And whilst they technically originate from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the incredibly valuable job of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

The key thing to emphasise is that the training itself won't make you a web-designer; it will simply coach you on the methods. Throughout your training & study, you must spend time building and developing as many sites as you possibly can, to practice and build your portfolio. Build web sites about a special interest, your dog, a favourite band or even Television programme. You could even build interactive web-sites & get 'traffic' on them. All this will appear more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, and in your portfolio, than a certificate from Adobe will!

The most technically apt web professionals are frequently the web-developers. Not only will these people know the languages above, they will also have had training in other languages, for example 'C#', 'VB', PHP, 'Java', ASP.net and so on. They'll generally also have got a good knowledge of 'SQL' Database technology, since this is one way most contemporary large websites store their information. In reality, it's unlikely that a big e-commerce website has been built in lay-out format by a bunch of web-designers. More usually, following the formation of a place holder 'template', the details will be extracted from a database & 'dynamically' inserted. So apart from far better efficiency with the web-site build, using this method also allows for a more consistent look and feel as well.

Of course you'll find cross overs with many of these jobs - in-fact we have connections with a number of web designers who're proficient in many of them. Nevertheless, it takes time to acquire that level of expertise. You should be taught several things on a professionally feasible web-design training program: A synopsis of the basics of web-design first, then straight on to using Dreamweaver to a professional standard and the key technicalities of Flash too. This should then move onto a comprehension of 'HTML' and 'CSS', followed by some training into the field of E-commerce. 'PHP' must be covered in order that 'dynamic' web sites can be constructed (ASP.Net is actually much more involved, and PHP is more straightforward to get into at first,) and a basic understanding of Databases and 'SEO' should be achieved. The reason why you require all these elements is so that you have the technical wherewithal to work on a range of website builds. As with anything else, we have to learn how to really do the physical skillsets initially, & then acquire more finesse through practice and experience. You'd have to give yourself roughly 400 to 500 hours to study and properly learn a wide ranging training program like this - so if your plan is to accomplish this along-side a job it could be completed within twelve months. A professional expert will be able to help you prepare the right path through this labyrinth of commercial-learning, and we highly recommend that you allow time to plan your path with care before you start your web design training.

The 'Adobe Creative Suite' is the most commercially popular design-environment used by web designers these days. These essential applications are currently (2010) on Version 4. 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds web sites, with Flash delivering access to interactive and animated 'graphical' content material. You could actually say that Dreamweaver is the Word-Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite series. In accordance with specific rules and parameters, it enables you to display graphics & text, & then via a method called page-linking you can develop basic interactivity throughout the web-site. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program coding is produced in the background with Dreamweaver, just as with any web design-environment. This is the 'language' of web browsers, and is a script that in essence draws & controls the web page you're viewing. Lay-out tag languages like CSS and XML are paired with 'HTML'. As they are standardised, these tag languages can work on multiple-platforms to facilitate more stream-lined 'HTML' coding and more efficient lay-out techniques. The idea is that the web page will appear identical on any web browser, whether it's 'Mozilla Firefox', Internet Explorer, 'Safari', 'Opera' or whatever. So though you are laying graphic-blocks & adding text, in the background, Dreamweaver is turning this into 'code'. Its very important to achieve an in depth understanding of these types of languages to be able to be a web designer at the commercial level.

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