Without doubt just about one of the most misinterpreted & generalised expressions within the IT field nowadays must be the words 'Web Designer'? Web Design takes on board a number of distinctive facets, & an understanding of these may help anybody thinking of getting in to the industry. In essence, there are two principal areas to web-design; the creative element & the 'technical' side. The majority of people assume a web designer is somebody that creates the visible areas of the website. Many individuals might consider a 'web-designer' a sort of artist. But in actuality, within modern day web-design its getting increasingly difficult to separate the 'technical' part from the creative side, because both are so intertwined. It will become a bit more evident how things sit together when we break the job up into it's various roles.

Graphic-artists are first - they design & assemble the symbols & images for a web site. Strictly speaking, graphic-artists ordinarily are not really web-designers. More usually they're multimedia artists who use software such as Adobe Photoshop and Flash to generate their end results. The majority of graphic-artists attended university, and have a qualification in art & design. This element is much more about artistic ability than anything else.

Web-designers are next - these people use design-software like Dreamweaver to create & design the 'look' & 'feel' of the site. They use the graphics created by the artist, and alongside their clients deliver an emerging style and navigational framework for the brand-new web page. A novice web designer tends to start with the 'form' of the web site, rather than the 'function'. And yet, you must actually begin with a grasp of the functions its required to do to build a truly effective web site. Is it for the most part an E-commerce website, that wants to be ready to take payments securely, or is it an online product catalogue listing? Or perhaps it'll consist of a lot of video and heavy graphics. On the other hand it might be predominantly an information web-site, where it is necessary to offer simple entry to relevant pages of text. Whatever you want from a website, it must - at it's most basic level - carry out the function for which its designed. There is no point producing a visually exciting site that is hopeless for people to get to where they want! The purpose of any reputable web designer is first & foremost to build an experience that individuals enjoy and are relaxed with - so that they will come back again & again.

It's important to realise that even the most effective web design courses can only teach you the techniques & processes - none of them can actually convert you into a bona fide web designer. Put together as many web-sites as you possibly can whilst you work through your studies - the exercise will be invaluable and you'll have something to show just what you can do. Your own web sites should be about anything - your local music scene, farm pets, an author you like or even performance cars. Create an interactive website, & start building 'traffic' towards it. All this will appear much more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, and in your Portfolio, than a qualification from 'Adobe' will!

Many of these jobs can & certainly do cross-over obviously, we work with a number of freelance web designers who all cover almost all of the previously mentioned tasks. It takes time though to acquire such an array of commercial abilities. You should be trained in several things on a professionally viable web-design training course: A briefing of the basics of web-design first, then straight on to using 'Dreamweaver' to a commercial standard & the main nuances of 'Flash' as well. Next you need to understand the 'coding' languages HTML and 'CSS', & after that be taught a synopsis of just how e-commerce works. Some database & SEO expertise is important, & an understanding of the programming-language 'PHP' (instead of the more complex ASP.Net) so that you can construct 'dynamic' web sites. The reason why you will need each of these aspects is so that you have the technical ability to be effective on all sorts of website builds. The actual physical skills must be learned first, before you fine-tune them to a more natural flowing style - just like when you were learning to drive a car. The majority of candidates can work through a versatile program of this nature inside a year - supposing part time study & practice of approximately 400 - 500 hrs. A professional advisor will be able to help you plan the right path through this quagmire of commercial learning, and we recommend that you prepare your track carefully before you start your training program.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially popular design environment employed by web-site designers today. These essential tools are currently ('10) on Version 4. Whilst Adobe Flash gives access to animated & interactive graphical content, Dreamweaver is the software which builds web pages. In some ways we could possibly look at 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word Processor. In accordance with certain rules & parameters, it helps you place graphics and text, & then through a procedure known as page linking you can develop basic inter-activity within the site. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is produced in the background with 'Dreamweaver', just as with any web design environment. Basically, this 'language of web-browsers is a 'script' which 'draws' & controls the web page being watched. Together with 'HTML' are the lay-out tag 'languages' - for instance XML and CSS. Because these 'tag' languages are standardised, the streamlined and rather more efficient outcomes function successfully on a number of different platforms. This means the web-page looks the same on MS 'Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, Opera, 'Safari' and so on. (or shall we say, that's the idea!) Consequently the graphic-blocks you're placing and the text you're adding is being converted into code in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. If you're aiming to be a commercially feasible web designer, you will need a thorough knowledge of these 'languages'.

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