Its reasonable to state that perhaps one of the more broadly interpreted and poorly defined definitions within IT is the expression Web Designer. If you're thinking of getting into the market, an explanation about the different aspects should help to de-mystify things. Basically, there are two principal areas to web-design; the creative element and the 'technical' process. To the person on the street, a web designer is somebody that creates the look & feel of a website. Meaning a 'web designer' is fundamentally an 'artist' with some technical training. However, a modern web designer will in actual fact be as occupied with the 'technical' side of things as much as the creative side. It becomes more evident just how things sit together if we break the job up in to its different parts.

Graphic-artists are first - these people design & assemble the icons & pictures for a site. They're not strictly site designers as such, and generally are multimedia artists using graphic layout and animation software, (for example Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Flash.) Generally, they will have an artistic background, & may have studied at university or college level. This particular part is a lot more about artistic ability than anything else.

Second, we have the web-designers, that use design-environments such as Adobe Dreamweaver to create the lay-out and 'feel' of the webpage. By using visuals from the graphic artist, they will put together the navigational structure of the site, working together with their client to make sure that the feel is right. A novice web-designer tends to start with the form of a site, rather than the 'function'. To construct a good internet site though, its crucial to first of all look at what you essentially would like the web site to do. It may be a web based inventory of products and solutions, or maybe it's an e-commerce web site which wants to be ready to sell directly from the site. Perhaps much like this web site the chief function is straightforward access to pertinent information, or maybe it's going to be a showcase for items by means of video & a heavily graphical interface. Quite simply the web site must have the ability to meet its needs - whatever those requirements are. There is no point designing a visually impressive site that's difficult for individuals to navigate! The overriding goal of all good site designers is for people to pay a visit to their website repeatedly - therefore it needs to be a relaxed & satisfying experience.

Web-developers are members of this group, and also the most technically-minded. In addition to 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. Quite a few also possess a solid understanding of 'SQL', the Database language - as the data on most sizable modern web sites is stored in this particular 'language'. In reality, it is not likely that a big e-commerce site has been built in layout format by a group of web-designers. More often, following the creation of a place-holder 'template', the contents will be taken from a database and 'dynamically' inserted. In addition to being massively more efficient to build, manage and update, it also aids in the feel of the website being constant.

The thing you need to realise is that no training course can make a web-designer out of you. The course will simply teach all the skills and techniques. All through your training & study, you have got to spend time constructing and creating as many websites as possible, to prepare & assemble your portfolio. Your sites can be about anything you like - the local music scene, horses, an author you enjoy or motorbikes. Start inter-active websites & generate 'traffic' on to them. Adobe certifications are of help, but showing how you can implement the training says far more about you as a web designer!

Extra skill-sets which are very useful to commercial web-site designers are a knowledge of project-management and e-commerce. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') know-how is also extremely valuable for web experts - this concerns the skill of getting web sites at or near to the top of the search engines for commonly used keyword phrases. And behind the scenes but very crucially are the web-server installers and administrators who ensure that the whole thing runs as it should. Strictly speaking they are network administrator experts though.

Naturally there are crossovers with a lot of these tasks - we ourselves have connections with quite a few web-site designers who are competent in most of them. But, it takes quite some time to develop that level of knowledge. A good commercial web design program then needs to teach several things: A briefing of the basic fundamentals of web design first of all, then directly into using 'Dreamweaver' to a commercial level and the principal nuances of 'Flash' too. The languages of HTML and 'CSS' should be taught next, with a level of E-commerce instruction included here. Some Database & SEO expertise is vital, & an awareness of the programming language PHP (as opposed to the more complicated ASP.NET) so that you can create 'dynamic' sites. All this is just to reach a level of technical ability whereby you are able to work with a broad enough array of web-sites. As with anything else, we have to learn how to do the physical skillsets initially, and then acquire increased finesse via practice & experience. The majority of students can get through a variable course such as this inside a year - supposing part time study and practice of close to four to five hundred hrs. As there are plenty of things to consider, it's worth taking the time to look carefully at any training-programs that interest you. Speak to someone with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

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