No doubt just about one of the most misinterpreted & over-worked labels in the I.T. field nowadays must be the words Web Designer? If you're thinking of getting in the industry, an explanation about the distinctive aspects ought to help to de-mystify things. There are essentially 2 elements to web design - the 'technical' process & the creative design part. The majority of people imagine a web designer is someone that is responsible for the visual areas of the website. Meaning a 'web-designer' is basically an artist who has had some 'technical' instruction. But in fact, in modern-day web design its getting increasingly difficult to separate the technical part from the creative part, because both are so intertwined. If you break down web design in to it's various tasks, then it becomes much more apparent how each thing fits together.

Graphic-artists should come first - they design & construct the symbols & images for a site. They are not really web designers per-se, & most of the time are multi-media artists using graphic layout & 'animation' software, (like Adobe Photoshop & Adobe 'Flash'.) Virtually all graphic artists went to university, with a background in artistic drawing. Evidently, this particular role involves a solid artistic bias.

Second, there are the web-site designers, that use design environments like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to set-up the layout and 'feel' of the web site. They employ the images which are supplied by the graphic artist, and work with their client to firstly create the feel and 'navigational' framework of the site. A good number of amateur site designers put emphasis to start with on the 'format' of the site, instead of its 'function'. And yet, you must actually begin with a grasp of the 'functions' it's required to do to build a truly productive website. It may be an online inventory of goods, or possibly its an E-commerce site that would need to have the capacity to sell directly from the web page. It's possible you need to show products and services through video & a largely graphical inter-face, or it could be it's largely an informational website where the need is simple access to essential text data (such as this particular website.) No matter what the purchaser would like from a web-site, the basic necessity is that it meets the basic specification. There is no point making a visually exciting web site that's impossible for people to navigate! The over-riding goal of all professional web site designers is to have people pay a visit to their website regularly - so it needs to be a comfortable & interesting experience.

Commercial web-designers can also up-grade their offering if they choose to branch-out into fields such as project management and e-commerce for example. Another discipline - which isn't to be under-estimated - is 'SEO' ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This is all about how to optimize site indexation on search engines like Google and 'Yahoo'. And behind the scenes but vitally important are the web server installers & administrators that make sure that everything works efficiently. Technically speaking these people are network administrator experts though.

The most technically apt web experts are frequently the web-developers. Not only will these people know the languages already mentioned, they will also have mastered other languages, for instance 'C#', Visual Basic, PHP, Java, 'ASP.Net' and others. Quite a few also possess a good knowledge of SQL, the Database language - because the data on many large modern web sites is stored in this particular 'language'. In reality, its unlikely that a large E-commerce web site has been built in layout format by a group of web designers. Instead, a place holder 'template' will have been developed, and the material will be dynamically fed from a Database. So in addition to significantly larger efficiencies with the website construct, this process also enables a much more consistent look and feel as well.

Naturally you will find cross-overs with many of these roles - in-fact we have interactions with several web-site designers who're capable in a lot of them. However, it will take quite some time to acquire that much expertise. An ideal professional web design program therefore has to teach a number of things: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web-design first of all, then straight on to using 'Dreamweaver' to a commercial standard & the principal technicalities of 'Flash' as well. The languages of HTML & 'CSS' need to be taught next, with some E-commerce teaching incorporated here. Some database & SEO know-how is essential, & an understanding of the programming language PHP (as opposed to the more complicated ASP.Net) so that you can construct 'dynamic' web-sites. All of this is simply to get to a level of ability technically where you can work with a wide enough array of web sites. Much like anything else, we need to learn how to actually do the physical skill-sets initially, & then establish increased finesse through experience and practice. Most trainees can get through a variable program like this within a yr - assuming part-time study and practice of around 400 to 500 hrs. A skilled expert will be able to help you prepare your way through this quagmire of professional training, and we recommend that you take the time to plan your track carefully before you start your web design training.

The design-environments utilised by web designers are their most important resources. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is really the most commercially utilised in the market right now (as of '10). Dreamweaver is the software program which builds web sites, with 'Flash' providing usage of interactive and animated 'graphical' content. In many ways we might view Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word-Processor. It enables you to place graphics & text in accordance with specific parameters and rules, and then produce basic interactivity through page linking. Dreamweaver (or any other web-design environment) produces HTML (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program code behind the scenes. HTML is a script which basically 'draws' & controls the web-page displayed on your screen. It's the 'language' of web browsers. Alongside 'HTML' are the layout 'tag' languages - for instance CSS & XML. Because they are standardised, these tag languages will work on multiple-platforms to facilitate more streamlined 'HTML' coding and more effective lay-out techniques. Therefore the page looks the same on MS 'Internet Explorer', 'Mozilla Firefox', 'Opera', Safari etc. (or shall we say, that's the idea!) So although you're placing graphic blocks & text, in the background, Dreamweaver is converting what you're doing in to code. A well-rounded knowledge of these languages is very important if you're to be a commercially viable web-designer.

The thing you have to realise is that absolutely no training-course can make a web-designer out of you. The course will merely cover all the techniques and skills. Put together as many sites as you can whilst you work through your course - the exercise will be invaluable and you'll have a portfolio to show just what you can do. Your websites can be about anything you like - the local music-scene, farm pets, an author you like or even cars. You could even set up inter-active web-sites & get traffic on them. Anything you do will enhance your CV, and demonstrate more to a company than just an Adobe accreditation.