Its fair to say that one of the more widely interpreted & poorly understood terms in I.T. is the label 'Web Designer'. Web Design includes a number of different aspects, and a good understanding of these facets may help anybody seeking to get in the marketplace. There are essentially 2 sides to web-design - the 'technical' process & the 'creative' 'design' part. To the average person in the street, a 'web-designer' is someone that creates the look and feel of a web-site. Meaning a 'web-designer' is basically an 'artist' who has had some technical instruction. But in reality, within modern web-design it's turning out to be more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the 'creative' aspect, as both of them are so intertwined. If you break web-design down in to its different tasks, then it will become much more evident how each thing sits together.

Firstly, we have the graphic-artists, that design and construct the graphic symbols & images which you find on a web page. In real terms, graphic artists aren't really site designers. More often they're multi-media artists that employ software like Adobe 'Photoshop' & 'Flash' to create their finished results. Usually, they will have come from an art background, and could have studied at college or university level. Evidently, this job demands a good artistic bent.

Next we have the web designers, who generate the lay-out & overall feel of a web-site by using a design environment like Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. They employ the visuals which are supplied by the artist, and talk with the clients to firstly develop the feel & 'navigational' framework of the site. A web-designer with little knowledge would most likely begin with the 'form' rather than the 'function' of a website. However, you should essentially start with an understanding of the functions its required to do to build a truly effective web-site. It might be a web-based catalogue of merchandise, or possibly it is an E-commerce site that would need to be ready to sell straight from the site. Or potentially it'll include a lot of video and graphics. Then again it may be principally an informational website, where it's important to offer easy entry to specific web pages of copy. No matter what the customer would like from a web-site, the fundamental necessity is that it actually addresses the basic specification. Consumers will abandon a web-site and not return if it's too tricky to get around - however attractive it appears at first glance. A good web designer must in essence create an on-line experience that is both fulfilling & instinctive for the people coming to the site - that way they'll come back more than once.

Web developers are members of the equation, and the most technically trained. These people won't simply know HTML, 'CSS' and 'XML', but they will have trained in more official programming languages like 'PHP', 'ASP.Net', VB, 'C#', 'Java' etc. They'll generally also have got a strong knowledge of SQL Database technology, as this is how most contemporary large web-sites store their data. Most e-commerce websites aren't the result of a large crew of web-designers who've built countless pages in layout format. Instead, a place holder template will have been created, & the details will be dynamically fed from a Database. This process makes not only the construction, management & updates vastly more efficient, it equally tends to make a more consistent site.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially-popular design-environment utilised by web site designers today. These essential tools are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software program which builds web sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & Adobe Flash accesses 'graphical' content which can be animated & interactive. In some ways we may see Dreamweaver as a glorified Word-Processor. It lets you lay graphics and text in accordance with certain rules & parameters, & then develop basic inter-activity via page linking. Dreamweaver (as with any web design environment) produces 'HTML' (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program-code in the background. It's the language of web browsers, & is a script that in essence 'draws' & controls the web-page you are seeing. Paired with HTML are the lay-out 'tag' languages like XML and CSS. As these tag languages are standardised, the streamlined and more efficient outcomes perform effectively on a number of different platforms. Therefore the web-page will look the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera', 'Safari' etc. (or shall we say, that's the plan!) Consequently though you're placing graphic blocks & adding text, in the background, 'Dreamweaver' is converting what you're doing into code. It's extremely important to achieve a thorough understanding of these languages if you wish to be a web-designer at the commercial level.

Supplemental skillsets which are important to professional web-designers are a knowledge of project management and E-commerce. Another field - that isn't to be under-estimated - is 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation). This is focused on how to optimize web site indexation on search engines like 'Google' and Yahoo. And whilst they technically originate from a network-administration background, we should remember the valuable job of the web server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

Its important to understand that even the most effective web design courses can only provide you with the methods and processes - not one can convert you in to a bona-fide web-designer. Build as many web sites as you possibly can whilst you work through your studies - the practice will be invaluable and you'll have a portfolio to show what you can do. A craft or other interest can be a good starting place, or simply your favourite dog, or a holiday resort you particularly loved. Start interactive web sites and create 'traffic' on to them. Adobe qualifications are useful, but showing how you can implement what you've learned says far more about you as a web-designer!

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