Undoubtedly one of the most mis-interpreted and generalised titles within the IT field today must be the term 'Web-Designer'? Web-Design takes on board many distinctive facets, and a good understanding of these could help anybody looking to get in to the marketplace. Basically, there are two key areas to web-design; the 'creative' element & the 'technical' side. To the average person on the street, a web-designer is somebody who designs the look & 'feel' of a site. Quite simply, they see web designers because artists on the whole. In fact the modern web designer's occupation is an inter-related blend of technical knowledge & design creativity - and the two things have become very difficult to split up. If you break down web-design into its component tasks, then it will become much more obvious how everything sits together.

First, we've got the graphic artists, that design & build the graphic symbols and images that we find on any web-page. They most often do this by means of graphic lay-out and 'animation' software (such as Adobe 'Flash' & Photoshop), & aren't actually web site designers as such. Typically, they'll have come from an art background, and may possibly have undertaken studies at university level. This particular role is a lot more about creative expertise than anything else.

Second, we have the web designers, that make use of design environments like Adobe Dreamweaver to create the lay-out and 'feel' of the webpage. They take the work created by the graphic artist, & along with their clients deliver an initial style & navigational structure for the new web site. A web designer with limited understanding would probably focus on the 'form' instead of the function of a web site. To build a good web-site however, its important to first of all look at what you actually want the site to do. It could be that its in effect a web-based catalogue, or an e-commerce web site where items can be bought directly. Or maybe it'll incorporate a lot of video and heavy graphics. On the other hand it could be predominantly an informational web-site, where its necessary to supply easy entry to appropriate web pages of wording. Quite simply the website must have the facility to meet its required needs - whatever those requirements are. There is no value in designing a visually inspiring web site that is too hard for anyone to get what they want from it! The goal of any good web-designer is first and foremost to build an event that individuals enjoy and feel comfortable with - so that they come back again & again.

Web-developers are members of this equation, and they are the most technically trained. They will not only understand HTML, CSS and XML, but they will have learned 'proper' programming languages like PHP, 'ASP.Net', VB, C#, 'Java' and the like. They'll also generally have got a solid knowledge of 'SQL' database-technology, because this is how most contemporary significant web-sites store their data. The majority of e-commerce sites are not the result of a big crew of web designers who have built thousands of pages in lay-out form. What normally happens is a place holder template is developed, & the contents are dynamically fed from a Database to the web-site. In addition to being massively more efficient to construct, manage and up-date, it also aids in the feel of the web site remaining consistent.

The thing it's essential to grasp is absolutely no training course can make a web-designer out of you. The actual training course will merely teach all the skills & techniques. During your study and training, you need to apply yourself to constructing & developing as many sites as you possibly can, to practice and build your own portfolio. Your websites can be about anything you like - your local music scene, farm pets, an author you enjoy or motor bikes. Start to build inter-active sites and generate 'traffic' on to them. This will all appear much more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, & in your portfolio, than a qualification from 'Adobe' will!

Professional web designers can also upgrade their offering if they branch-out into fields like project-management & e-commerce for example. Search Engine Optimisation ('SEO') is another area which handles how the website is listed with Search Engines - in order that it may be easily found (this is sometimes a whole job in itself.) And whilst they typically come from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable function of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep everything working in the background.

The most important resources used by web-site designers are the design-environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (presently in version 4 as of 2009/2010) being the most commercially popular. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' gives access to animated & interactive graphical content, Dreamweaver is the software which builds web pages. Dreamweaver could be considered a glorified Word Processor in a great many ways. Graphics and text can be layed (according to certain limits) and then a basic interactivity can be created by way of page-linking. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program coding is created in the background with Dreamweaver, as with any web design-environment. 'HTML' is a script which in essence 'draws' & controls the web page on your monitor. It's the language of browsers. Layout 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML are paired with 'HTML'. These allow more stream-lined HTML coding and more effective layout techniques, which will work on multiple platforms (because they're 'standardised'). What this means is the web page looks the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, 'Mozilla Firefox', 'Opera', Safari etc. (at least, that's the plan!) So even though you place the graphic blocks and put in the textual content, 'Dreamweaver' is turning this in to coding behind the scenes. If you are planning to be a commercially feasible web designer, you'll need an in-depth knowledge of these types of 'languages'.

Needless to say there are crossovers with many of these roles - we ourselves have contacts with quite a few web-site designers who're competent in most of them. It takes time however to build such a variety of professional skillsets. The right professional web-design training-program then needs to instruct on a number of things: A synopsis of the basics of web design first of all, then directly into using Dreamweaver to a commercial standard & the main nuances of Flash too. Next you need to get to grips with the coding languages 'HTML' & CSS, & then be taught an overview of how e-commerce operates. PHP should be covered so 'dynamic' web sites can be constructed (ASP.NET is far more involved, and PHP is more straightforward to get into initially,) and a basic idea of Databases and SEO should be achieved. The reason why you need these components is so that you have the technical grounding to work on an array of web site builds. As with anything, we have to learn how to actually do the physical skillsets initially, and then build more 'finesse' via practice & experience. A thorough program of this sort could require around 400-500 hours of part time practice and study & can therefore be reasonably finished part time over 12 months. Detailed preparation to get the right training program for you is a worthwhile investment of your time - knowledgeable career experts will help you to sort the best way forward before you decide to start.