No doubt just about one of the most mis-interpreted and over-worked expressions within the I.T. field nowadays has to be the term Web-Designer? For anybody looking to get into the industry, some details about the distinct facets should help to make things clear. There are fundamentally two elements to web-design - the technical process and the creative 'design' side. The typical laptop or computer user believes web-designers determine how a web-site looks & 'feels'. Meaning a web designer is fundamentally an artist with some technical training. Yet, a professional 'web-designer' will in fact be as occupied with the 'technical' element of things as they are with the 'creative' side. We'll demonstrate this with more clarity if we break web-design down in to it's component parts.

To start with, we have graphic artists, who design and construct the graphic icons & pictures that we see on a web-site. They are not exactly web designers per-se, & by and large are multi-media artists utilising graphic lay-out & animation software, (for example Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe 'Flash'.) Many have been through higher education, typically with a degree level art qualification. This part is more about artistic expertise than anything else.

Second, there are the web-site designers, who make use of design environments like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create the lay-out and feel of the website. They utilise the actual graphics which are supplied by the artist, & work with their client to start to develop the feel and navigational framework of the web-site. A good number of amateur web designers put emphasis to start with on the 'format' of the site, rather than its function. And yet, you must really start with a grasp of the functions it's required to carry out to develop a really effective site. It could be that its effectively a web-based inventory, or an E-commerce website where products are sold directly. Or perhaps it will consist of lots of video and graphics. Then again it may be principally an informational site, where its essential to supply simple entry to relevant web-pages of textual content. Fundamentally the web-site must have the facility to meet it's requirements - whatever those particular requirements are. There is little value in producing a visually appealing web-site that is extremely hard for people to get to where they want! A professional web-designer must effectively create a web based experience that's both satisfying and user-friendly for the people visiting the website - then they'll visit again.

The key factor to emphasise is the fact that training program itself will not make you a web designer; it will simply provide you with the methods. As you work on your training-course, take some time to put together & develop a large selection of your own web sites to produce a collection of your work. A hobby or other interest is a very good starting place, or maybe your favourite dog or cat, or a holiday resort you particularly liked. Construct an inter-active web-site, & begin building 'traffic' towards it. 'Adobe' accreditations are helpful, but showing how you can apply the training says much more about you as a web-designer!

Commercial web-site designers may also upgrade their offering if they choose to branch-out into areas such as project-management & E-commerce for instance. Another field - that is not to be under-estimated - is 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation). This is all about how to optimise web-site indexation on search engines like Google & Yahoo. And behind the scenes but very crucially we have the web-server administrators and installers who make sure that the whole thing works as it should. Officially speaking they are network administrator experts though.

The 'Adobe Creative Suite' is the most commercially popular design-environment utilised by web designers right now. These vital applications are currently ('10) on Version 4. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' offers access to animated and interactive 'graphical' content material, Dreamweaver is the software program that builds websites. You could actually claim that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. Text and graphics can be layed (within known limitations) & then a basic interactivity can be produced by way of page linking. Just like other web design-environments, Dreamweaver creates the program-code 'HTML' behind the scenes ('HTML' stands for Hyper Text Markup Language). Essentially, this 'language of web-browsers is actually a script that draws and controls the web page being looked at. Associated with 'HTML' are the lay-out tag languages like XML & CSS. Because they are standardised, these can work on multiple platforms to enable more streamlined HTML code and more efficient lay-out techniques. The concept being that the web page will appear the same on any web browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', Safari, Opera or anything else. Consequently although you're placing graphic blocks & text, behind the scenes, Dreamweaver is converting this into 'code'. Its important to gain an in depth comprehension of these various 'languages' if you would like be a web-designer at the commercial level.

A lot of independent web-designers can fulfil several of these functions by themselves; indeed we come into contact with quite a few who are able to quite frequently. Nevertheless, it will take quite some time to develop that much skill. A web design training course then that will prepare you to enter the market should contain the following - A basic introductory tutorial to web-design, and then how to utilise Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & have a basic knowledge of Adobe 'Flash'. This should then lead on to a knowledge of HTML and CSS, with some training within the area of E-commerce. Some database and 'SEO' knowledge is essential, and a knowledge of the programming language 'PHP' (instead of the more complex ASP.NET) so that you can construct 'dynamic' sites. All this is simply to reach a level of ability technically whereby you're able to work with a diverse enough variety of sites. The actual physical skill-sets must develop first, before you can finetune them to a natural and flowing style - just like when you were learning to drive your first car. Most trainees can get through a manageable training course such as this inside a year - based on part time study and practice of close to 400 to 500 hours. An experienced expert will be able to help you prepare the right path through this labyrinth of commercial-learning, and we strongly suggest that you allow time to plan your track carefully before you begin your web design training.

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